Flanelled Fools

I miss cricket. I miss playing it. I miss watching it. I miss talking about it. I miss having ridiculous conversations about the game.

This is personal. I've played cricket since I was 6 or 7 when my mum would bowl to me in the back garden. Something clicked.

I love the smell of linseed oil (this is what you oil bats with). I miss the sound of leather on willow (bats are made predominantly of willow). I miss the buzz of insects on the lovely green cricket field. I miss the fantastic teas (every club would pride itself on the quality of the teas which was a huge highlight as well as a major factor in how you rated the opposition, definitely it was not skill), I miss the cricket fields themselves: when I was younger, virtually every village had a green in the middle of the village with a church, maybe two pubs, a memorial to the fallen and a cricket field upon which people would play football, hockey or rugby during winter. My cricket club's ground was in the middle of a park. The clubs would rent the fields but the cricket strips themselves would often be maintained by the parkies (sorry, the park keepers).

The strip at Cup Match in Bermuda

I miss the beer afterwards; the jugs if you made 50 runs or took 5 wickets. I miss the fines for transgressions during the match (more commonly these would be on tour). I miss the fact that after 12 hours on a weekend afternoon, the captain would come around and ask for your contribution to the match in the bar after the game was over (ridiculously cheap), most of which would go on beer shared with the other team. I miss the fact that most matches ended in draws (the best matches often ended in draws. Wins/losses were usually more one sided so less dramatic and certainly less enjoyable for one of the teams). I miss the bad umpire decisions (I could go on and on about this). I miss the scoring and the scoring books which required the skill of ... I don't know what the equivalent would be these days. Einstein couldn't have managed, that's all I'm saying. In short, I miss a lot of things.

The last match I played with Indy and Dee Dee: I miss this too.

In March usually, there would appear curious roped off areas in the middle of the larger open green spaces. Within this roped off area would soon appear the signs of a roller and more care from the mower for this was the strip; usually a number of long strips of grass side by side which during the summer will become the wicket upon which matches will be played. Care devoted now is essential for the slightest imperfection could result in the wicket becoming 'sticky'. All cricketers know what I mean for this is the language that all cricketers speak. These are the classic signs of approaching summer in England.

Cricket arrives in early April and leaves with regret in late September or early October, depending on the weather. It should be there now. No, it should be everywhere now in the northern hemisphere.

Our cricket season in Bermuda strictly followed the English season (for no very good reason as the weather outside of this time was perfectly good for cricket. Maybe the clocks going back cut off some time, but it certainly wasn't the weather). This meant that in July and August, if you were unlucky you could stand for hours on end under blindingly cloudless sky in monstrous heat and humidity. Personally, I stopped playing at the weekend in the longer format of the game some time in my 50's after getting out first ball of the match around 12.01 pm (LBW to a terrible decision which made it worse), standing as umpire from the end of the 2nd over for the remainder of the 50 overs (around 3 hours) and then taking my place in the field for another 3 hours whilst our opponents had their innings. I was a basket case by the end of the match. Nobody sympathised.

Moving to only after work evening games (I'd played evening matches since I was in my 20's as well as at weekends), I played until 2017 when we left Bermuda and there has not been a day that I haven't missed it. But, that is due to my choice not through regulations enforced by law (courtesy of coronavirus).

The upside of right now is that the BBC for example is re-running great old matches on both video and radio. The media is writing lengthy screeds eulogising matches, times and players from years gone by.

I read a terrific Guardian piece recently linking great players together throughout cricket's history via the Yorkshire great, Wilfred Rhodes. Mr Rhodes played in one of the greatest of Ashes test matches at the Oval in 1903 when England beat Australia by 1 wicket (this is known as Jessup's match) with the immortal words at the end from Mr. Rhodes being "we'll get 'em in singles".  He did.

Wilfred Rhodes

Every cricket enthusiast knows this catch phrase and will use it during their cricket careers, guaranteed. I have used it many times, not always successfully. In fact most often unsuccessfully but then again I wasn't Wilfred Rhodes. Mr. Rhodes played his last test match when he was 52 which was the basis of the story (first class cricketers playing past 50), the year before the incomparable Don Bradman played his first test match in England in 1930, and he had played his first test match in the same game as the great Victor Trumper played his first test match (he was Australian but I won't hold that against him) but more importantly this was the last test match of the even more legendary and incomparable W.G. Grace.

With WG at Lords

And then there are the insane rules... which of course everyone somehow intuitively knows. Or rather they used to. If you read the autobiography of Peter Ustinov (who? shows my age!), he made the wonderful comment that somehow if you went to school in England (he was Russian), you would absorb the rules of the game by osmosis even if you didn't play the game, and be able to talk intelligently about the LBW rule, how many different times a batsman can be out, the amazing varietals of the leg spin bowler in particular the googly, demonstrate with an orange how to swing a new ball, and a whole host of other wonderful arcane cricketing things.

Can other games do this?

How can summer be the same without this wonderful, wonderful game? Let's hope things loosen up before too long.

The Summer Game

I have been addicted to cricket probably since I was 5 or 6. My mum introduced me to the game by bowling to me in the back garden (my dad was Polish so thought we were all mad). My forward defensive stroke is all down to her. Not a bad one either, even if I have to say so myself.

The thing that really did it for me though was the TV coverage by the BBC. Back then (we are talking 1959-60), this was the era of Peter May, Colin Cowdrey, Ted Dexter, Fred Trueman, Brian Statham and others. Glorious to watch but they did always seem to lose when they played Ashes test matches. Actually, it has pretty much always been a battle against the Aussies in Ashes tests and in my memory with only relatively few high spots; virtually never away from England.

Earliest cricket memories include the batting card on TV. These days all computer driven and presented. Certainly more efficient, faster in production and informative but what a loss! In those days it was hand written by someone who had beautiful copper plate writing. I can't remember who the opposition was but my first first TV memory was Ted Dexter getting out for 180 and the batting card disappeared and then reappeared with the full details.

I started formally playing when I went to Eton House School at the age of 8; no chance of that when I was at the catholic convent Lindisfarne as the school was run by Belgian nuns. I'd had great success playing in our driveway against other boys and girls (yes, even then) but discovered after being no balled for 3 successive deliveries in my first over at Eton House that that was most likely due to the fact that I had been throwing the ball all the time. This meant a total reworking of my action and is most likely a key reason that I never quite made it to play for England at Lords. My pace dropped sharply!

I did make it finally to Eton House 1st XI a few years later. Back row, 2nd from right

Fortunately, and this is where I tip my hat yet again to my mum, my forward defensive stroke proved a formidable barrier and surprised everyone at a time when nobody owned one. The typical 8 year old stroke was a wild swish or a curious type of prod of the type you'd use if you had a hoe in your hand and you'd come across a snake in the grass. Many years later I'd endlessly train/torture both Indy and Dee Dee in the back garden on the use of the forward defensive with tennis ball or cricket ball as they got older. They didn't make as much use of it as I did but when we all played together it was noticeably still there, somewhere.

Our last game all together at Shelly Bay, Bermuda

I mention this as the wonderful cricket season has just about come to an end in England. My county Essex is challenging for the county championship with Somerset but it is a tight thing as the final game is against Somerset so will be a sort of winner take all affair. I shall be on tenterhooks!  However the Ashes test matches against Australia have just finished with an England victory in the 5th test making the series 2-2 with one match drawn, even though sadly the Aussies retained the Ashes as England didn't win the series.

If you are cricket followers you will know that the matches themselves were pretty low standard affairs. Neither set of batsmen could cope with the quality of the bowlers and on balance the Aussie bowlers were the better lot... except for a couple of the guys. One Aussie, one Brit. The Aussie simply ground away for hours on end and scored a gazillion runs in the series evoking memories of Don Bradman, the greatest of them all. His name is Steve Smith and do look for articles about him or rather his performances. Here's one to start with. The Brit is a totally different kettle of fish and is a fine stroke maker but in this series with England only one ball away from collapse on every delivery, he was forced to adjust his style to grind away too. It is strange to watch someone who clearly isn't that good at something but puts so much effort into doing it anyway because that is what the team needs and really has to happen, but that is what watching Ben Stokes bat like that was all about. Where Smith knew what he was doing and could go about things calmly, Stokes had to force it with the result that for much of the time he was stroke less and run less. This whilst all about him collapse and panic reined (this is England's batting) until there came a point that there was only him and the last man and another 73 runs to win. Total mindset change.

Stokes knew he could not rely on the last man, after all he was a bowler not a batter even though he was one of those salt of the earth, get knocked down but get up again, kind of guys. Totally gawky but very, very brave. Where others ducked and bobbed and weaved as the ball whizzed past their heads... and then got out to very poor efforts, the 11th man, Jack Leach, stood tall, swayed in and out, kept his eye on the ball and bat away from it so it could not inadvertently take an edge and be caught. He 100% looked the part and immediately became a legend, rather like Eddie the Eagle in ski-jumping. Not very good but very brave and very determined.

And totally against the odds at the other end Stokes simply did what he does best and smashed the formerly formidable attack to all parts. Sixes and fours everywhere off everyone. Until the score reached single figures left to win when Stokes grew nervous. First he went for a wild thrash and missed it and the ball hit him on the leg right in front of the wicket. The Aussies appealed for LBW (leg before wicket, one of the ways in which a batsman can get out. If the ball hits the leg and would have gone on to hit the wicket, that could be out LBW). Not out said the umpire.... the TV announcers were howling at this point. They knew that was wrong. The ball WAS going to hit the wicket but the Aussies were not able to review this decision as they had already reviewed two others incorrectly in the innings and were consequently all out of challenges. The TV showed the review and it was absolutely out. Stokes would have been out, should have been out and the Aussies should have won the test match but the umpire got it wrong! The crowd were going crazy. Next ball another frenetic thrash and both Stokes and Leach made a total hash of running with Leach running towards the bowler's end where the ball was being returned and he knew he would be yards short... when the bowler blinked and missed the ball and as he fumbled Leach was able to scramble home. Again, Leach should have been run out, England should have lost, and the Aussies should have won the match and the Ashes, but this time it was the bowler who made a hash of the whole thing.

Next ball Stokes thrashed it into the crowd again (in all he hit 8 sixes in this final dramatic run assault/chase) and that was 2 to win. But it was also the end of the over and now Leach had to face all 6 balls of the currently finest fast bowler in test cricket. He casually flicked a single, his only run in the entire process, which brought the teams level and next ball Stokes thrashed the winning boundary and the celebrations began.

I was screaming too at this point. I recorded it and have watched the last amazing hour 3 or 4 times. Every time I still don't believe England did it. They really shouldn't have.

**

I'd thought that the World Cup final some 6 weeks ago now was the most dramatic, exciting, unlikely day of cricket I had ever seen... In that game between England and New Zealand played over 50 overs per side, the Kiwis scored some 245 runs, way below what an acceptable score should be. These days teams knock off 300+ with regularity so all of a sudden England was firm favourite. This changed within 5 overs as the English batters realised to their alarm (and doom) that although the English bowling had been mean, tight and penetrating and did a great job restricting the Kiwis to such a small score, the Kiwi attack was every bit as good and that in fact the pitch was extremely awkward and did not allow for a side to simply smash a decent bowling side all over the place. It took one batsman, again Stokes, to steady the ship after a clatter of wickets and amidst an ongoing debacle at the other end and approach the final over with the not inconsiderable amount of 15 required to win.

The first two balls he did not score. Then the third he hit for 6!! Then on the fourth he wanted to run 2 and hit it to the boundary where he tried to run 2 but it looked very much like he would end up short and be run out .... when the ball thrown in from the boundary hit him as he was running and ran off to the boundary for 4 overthrows, making this shot a .... 6!! Or maybe something else. Did Stokes mean to do this or was it an accident? If accidental, then overthrows. If deliberate, then out. The crowd was going crazy. The umpires hadn't a clue what to signal for that 4 overthrows ball but after deliberations it was obvious that Stokes hadn't a clue what was going on either and that the ball had simply hit him and run away. So after multiple TV replays, they came up with 6 scored and 3 left to win. Two balls to do it. The bowler bowled and I'm afraid like Dirty Harry in the first movie, in all the excitement I kinda forget what exactly happened, but they did run one and the number 10 batsman was run out going for the second. And then on the final ball, the exact same thing happened again. He tried to run 2 but only managed 1 with the new batsman run out well short of making his ground. So a tie!!

Sudden death single over ensued. England to bat first. It would be Stokes of course and another big hitter. 6 balls. Most runs win. Only 2 wickets allowed. First ball Stokes hit the ball into the crowd!!.... which went even more crazy, and for the remaining balls the pair of them managed to amass 14 runs. A decent amount. The Kiwis turn was next and first ball was a .... no run, dot ball!!! The crowd were going wild. I was going wild.... I was watching it on my phone, I think in the car. My friend John was on a bus in France.... and he was screaming! Next ball the batsman hit it miles into the crowd! Aaagh!! 9 left and 4 balls to do it. Runs and balls ensued and left 2 runs needed on the last ball. One to tie, 2 to win. The batsman hit it to the fielder on the boundary who collected it cleanly and threw it in what was probably his greatest ever piece of fielding and the batsman was run out by a whisker. Another tie but England won it.... not because they scored more runs than the Kiwis but because they scored more boundaries in their innings.

Did I say that cricket is full of weird rules?

**

I'm a Test Match guy. I just love the fact it takes 5 days to reach a conclusion which may well be a draw... no result in fact. I know this makes no sense to some people but it is how it is. In the old days, test matches could be played to completion; so-called 'timeless tests'. That's how teams could rack up nearly 1,000 runs in an innings and still get a result... think Ashes test of 1938 at the Oval. In the 1980's it was decided to add a 6th day to one Ashes test match as an experiment. The result was one of the dullest day's play I have ever watched and with one batsman scoring the dullest century of all time (it wasn't, most like. It just felt like it). So even enthusiasts like me have their limits.

The 50-over One Day Internationals (ODI in modern parlance) are also fine. In club cricket this is effectively what everyone in the world only plays. It may not be limited to 50 overs per side but games have to be finished in a single weekend day and the practicality of it all makes it to be around 50 overs per side. Of course in club cricket, a draw is possible whilst in official ODI matches (like the World Cup final for example), there has to be a result. This is a key difference as it makes the end of any match a frenetic thrash for the team batting second whilst in club cricket the game meanders along most pleasantly.

The shorter form matches, called T20 these days... 20 overs per side, are usually played by we humble amateurs as an after work thing. Again practicality kicking in. In June/July in England you can squeeze in 25 overs but by August you are struggling to make 20 overs as the evenings start to close in. By September you are lucky to get 16 overs in. In Bermuda, we always struggled to get 20 overs in with 14 being usual by late August. Again no draw possible in these games which resemble a thrash from start to finish.

My Bermuda evening league team in 1995

15 or so years ago, cricket left terrestrial TV in England (formerly the BBC). Yes, the English Cricket Board sold its soul for money to the subscription TV services. In this year's World Cup final, by special concession, the subscription TV service Sky agreed to let terrestrial TV take the feed so people could watch free. 10 million people watched. For the final day of the most exciting test match for a generation, barely 2 million paying customers watched. Not a coincidence.

In 2020 a new limited over series called the Hundred will take place. Only 100 balls will be bowled per innings making this even faster than the already frenetic T20 competitions. The already crowded cricket schedule is being changed to accommodate this new circus and the 4-day championship and 5-day test matches are being shunted aside willy nilly. Sponsors are flooding in. Mercenary cricketers for every nation are signing up. TV companies and the ECB are rubbing their hands together thinking about all the lovely cash they'll rake in as the shorter forms of the game are highly popular with non-cricket fans .... of course for the good of cricket and not to line their own pockets, solidify their power base or ironically (or maybe not so) in any way improve the quality of test cricket played by the national team.

Sounds like a lot of sports, governments, quangos, corporations.... tail wagging dog.

I hope the 2 million or so that have subscription TV enjoy the circus. I'll stay with the live feed I've found of Essex playing county championship cricket.

Bermuda retrospective

Six weeks or thereabouts in Bermuda has gone like a flash. Well not to start with of course. Things never go that way but by about half way things had picked up to the extent that we added an extra two weeks onto our expected stay. Happily it was to see our children who on their own without prompting by us visited Bermuda.

Highlights of course were being with the children but in addition it was all about reminiscing. Would things be like they used? Would there be changes that exponentially change the place? Have things actually moved on, ahead or simply further along? What change to the political environment which when we first left on our travels had just seen an election with a change in government?

So in no particular order, this is what struck me.

1. Bermudaful but...

Well this one is easy. We all knew this but it still gets me that the place is so stunningly beautiful it couldn't really have been manufactured. It has happened thankfully in the typical laid back, somewhat shambolic manner in which Bermuda typically operates. Sounds pretty bad when written like that but for as long as I remember (and that is quite a long way back), there really hasn't been a plan in Bermuda. From an economist's point of view, this isn't ideal but for people living there really it has been a dream. Things meander along for the most part peacefully. People get along more or less and the environment is staggeringly beautiful.

Flatts Inlet

However behind the scenes, maybe under the surface even though it isn't really. Pretty much everything is known within seconds of it happening... often before. In a small place, this is pretty typical as everyone knows everyone else. Viv tells the story of how she was walking along Queen Street in Hamilton when she ran into a couple of old ladies struggling to open a door to a building. She proffered help and was met with "do I know you?" Viv didn't but sort of recognized a family resemblance to a friend so mentioned this and of course it turned out that these two ladies were her aunties and as Viv looks rather like her friend, so the ladies did a momentary double take too. These ladies as it turned out wanted to visit a betting shop but finding it closed decided on a Plan B that included KFC just down the street. Viv said it took an hour to walk the less than 200 yards down the road as these ladies stopped to chat to every other person that happened to walk by. When you are Bermudian and reach a certain age, you know every other person as either a relation, friend or child of a friend. I imagine this is typical in other places with a 60,000 population like Bermuda, but it is also something that makes the island what it is.

A couple of years ago, one of the three Bermuda banks did an IPO (one being sold to HSBC many years earlier and the other involved in transfer of ownership to a private equity firm) meaning that no longer would any Bermuda bank be Bermuda owned. This is important for as a previous CEO of the Bank of Bermuda (sold to HSBC) once famously said to a management meeting "the decisions we take here may not always be in the best interests of the bank... but they will be in the best interests of Bermuda". This has changed with profit motive taking over. Disturbing, for the banks were typically very large employers of Bermudians and just before we arrived in mid-May, this bank laid off 40 staff in one swathe. Most being long time employees. Couched as being an exercise in encouraging early retirement, the reality is simple cost cutting. Something US listed companies do all the time courtesy of their need to report ever improving quarterly financial results. The simplest thing of all to do is lay off staff. I fear that this is not an isolated event but do hope otherwise.

2. Sports

It is that time of the year when the northern hemisphere moves into summer and with that outdoor summer sports. And my goodness there are plenty of them.  Overseas were the US Open (golf), French Open (tennis), World Cup (cricket) and others. I have been riveted to these although I prefer to play rather than watch. Most of all it was tennis at Pomander Gate but increasingly it has become pickle ball too.

Southampton Princess golf course

Tennis at Pomander Gate

So what is pickle ball? It is a construct that appears to me to simply enable older ex-tennis players to play a similar kind of racquet and ball game. The court has the dimensions of a badminton court (without the tramlines) and the net is much lower than on a tennis court. You play with what sounds like a wooden paddle and a large, yellow plastic ball with holes in it. Simple rules that you can grasp on the first try. Simple to learn too as the mechanics of everything are something like table tennis but on a larger scale. Both racquet and ball are light so available for all ages.

Pickle ball at Pomander Gate

The growth has been startling to me. This time last year, the club had two nets that it simply lifted onto a tennis court. One on either side of the net. It was a busy day when 6 people turned up to play and those that were were usually organized by the same two people who had first come across it in Florida where it is very popular. This year, the club has taken over the centre court and whilst leaving the net in place has repainted the remainder of the court so as to create 4 permanent courts, 2 on either side of the net. These days it is typical to have 16+ people come to play... and they play Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday evenings. And Sunday mornings too. It has attracted so many people from outside the club that it created a new pickle ball membership which has proved to be very popular. Far less so with the tennis players who sadly for the club actually don't play that much. Certainly when pickle ball is taking place, it is rare that the tennis courts are in use.

Most interesting to me is the dynamic. This time last year, comparatively speaking nobody played the game. Today there are 40 people that regularly play with more turning up to try it all the time. Quite a few have given up on tennis to concentrate on pickle ball and have become very good players. So much so that there is already the growing question of people not wanting to play with others that aren't up to their standard. Last year, it was great just to play. Now things have moved on very quickly as people's competitive natures kick in.  The first tournament was last week. I took part, lost more than I won but along the way hammered the winner and lost quite comfortably to one of the perceived weaker players. Personally I am just happy to play. I am looking forward to seeing how it pans out.

3. F&B

Being visitors, we spent a lot of time eating, drinking and being entertained. Both in people's homes and out and whilst my waistline expanded at a greater rate than my steely will evaporated, boy are things expensive. Noticeably so since last year.  For sure, we spend a lot of time during the course of the year in Penang, which is a lower cost environment, but really. On our first visit to a supermarket, we saw a cauliflower priced at $11.99. It has always been the way that local produce was expensive, but it didn't feel like this. On the other hand booze and beef in supermarkets aren't that expensive but put them into a restaurant and vroom! Apparently restaurants mark up wine a minimum 4 times these days so good luck with finding a $50 bottle of wine at a restaurant.

This said I did go through my list of favorite things to eat in Bermuda. Pretty much.

 i) Multi-grain roll with tuna fish and chopped egg, lettuce and tomato, butter on the bread and those cute little yellow peppers that go pop in the mouth. 

Only from my friend Paul at Hickory Stick on Bermudiana Road in Clarendon House. I used to eat this sandwich probably three times a week when I was working just down the road. On the other days it would be Paul's fish cakes on Tuesdays and on the other day I'd go somewhere else. I know... traitor. Creature of habit...me? No way.

 ii) Beef patty

Quite a few places do patties but I found one of the nicest to be from Supermart on Front Street. Find them in the hot shelf near the whole chickens. One is not enough, two is too many. These are great hand held foods for maybe a morning after. On such days, an apple doesn't quite cut it.

 iii) Club sandwich with coleslaw

OK, with French fries!

Loads of places, some up market, do perfectly adequate club sandwiches but my favorite is at The Spot on Burnaby Hill. It may not be the best but I like it. You eat at the counter and get to drink their famous coffee which they generously refill whenever you want.

 iv) Bermuda fish sandwich. Layered pieces of fish, lettuce and tomato, butter on the white toasted bread, ketchup, tartar sauce and lots of hot sauce on top.

Mahi Mahi 

Many places do fish sandwiches, most aren't that good. The best tend to be in the least attractive looking places. Viv went to Woody's in Somerset and raved about it. I went on a search for a fish sandwich on a public holiday and found none of the best places open so had to settle for a very poor second best. However I was recommended to the Seaside Grill on North Shore next to the Clay House as the fish was purported to be really fresh. We went twice, the first being mahi mahi, the second and best time being when I had red hind. Boy, was that good.

 v) Liver and onions, maybe with bacon but always lots of gravy

I really like liver from several places but finally settled on the Red Carpet on Reid Street which serves it with mashed potatoes, veggies and lashings of gravy. The maitre d' Chris asked me how I'd like it done... cooked of course. You don't have liver medium rare. It is the gravy that makes it for me and this was pretty terrific.

 vi) Auntie Blanche's cherry and walnut cake

This is almost undescribable as it is so sublime. Traditional Bermuda cakes are rum cakes, Christmas cakes laced with rum, mince pies and somewhere along the line fruit cakes the king of which is the cherry and walnut cake. Our old neighbors Blanche and Brenda were great bakers and fine exponents. Blanche in particular did wonderful cherry and walnut cake. She once told me that her secret was the gin she soaked the fruit in. Others are much dryer but Blanche's are moist and simply lovely. She only made these cakes at Christmas time as she would soak fruit in their respective booze for a month or two before and make them a couple of weeks or so before the big day. More latterly she would make cakes ostensibly for me as I am a fanatic about them. As she has become older, these occasions have grown fewer but a week or so ago, she made me a beautiful cake. Simply lovely. Thanks Auntie Blanche!

4. Transport

For such a small island, getting around Bermuda is really key to enjoying it properly and fortunately we had a car at our disposal for much of the time we were there. Thanks Dave and Jeremy! However I had a fantastic time on the local public transport as with the passage of time, I turned 65 and on renewing my driving license, the fine people at TCD also awarded me a Bermuda Senior's ID card. Nice photo too! Amongst other wonderful things, this little card enables me to enjoy free travel on buses and ferries!!! Beat that! So I did at every opportunity and found the number 1 and 3 buses are pretty darned good.

We went for quite a few walks on the Railway Trail which I really do enjoy. I am impatient by nature and do wish they'd rebuild the trail more fully than it was before/is right now. Progress is great but to me painfully slow. Looks like volunteers only at the moment. I wish it were a higher priority.

5. Beaches...

I was really trying not to do beaches again this year but really couldn't avoid it. Truly they are lovely. This year however there were a number of storms out to sea and these storms brought in mounds of brown sargassum weed which is piled high on most beachfronts from Horseshoe Bay to Coopers Island. Still the best I've ever seen.

***

Looking forward to returning again soon.

Is IPL the Future of Cricket?

I truly hope not but I am absolutely riveted by IPL 2019. It is on TV at ungodly hours of the night so I slavishly stay up all night and feel wretched the following morning/day but do it again that same night. Again and again.

It is wonderful!

The format seems simple: 8 teams play one another home and away. Top 4 play semi-final and final. Pretty easy. Actually it sounds like they took the same format as the Bermuda Evening Cricket League, the oldest T20 competition in the world.

Imagine some of the best players in the world, batters and bowlers, hammering away full bore over a very much shortened period to say a 5 day test match (my preferred format for cricket). Colorful outfits for the cricketers (even we played in colours in latter years), same for the huge screaming, howling crowds and 1,000 decibel Indian hip hop music played continuously and you have total bedlam. It is absolutely wonderful!

As I type I am watching a re-run of a game from a couple of nights ago, only in my own defense because Johnny Bairstow and David Warner are batting together. Again. As a batter myself I just love watching great batsmen batting well. And these guys batted really well in this game. Really well. Again. Ironically neither will be available for the latter stages of the tournament as they have cricket commitments elsewhere so their team will have to do without them. This will be tough as they together have scored over two-thirds of the total runs scored by their side so far in the 8 matches played. Absent them, I wouldn't say the team is rubbish but well they don't score many runs. So maybe yeah, their team is rubbish.

Both got hundreds in this game.... which of course I watched!

The format allows for up to 4 non-Indian players per team and these days there are many cricketers who only play this type of cricket: fast, hard going, every ball hit hard. A new breed of cricket mercenary. The likes of Chris Gayle spring to mind in this category. No longer play test matches or for the home nation, just T20 all over the world. The money attracted to this event is huge so attracts the top, top players .... like Bairstow and Warner and of course the terrific Indians too, remembering they are the #1 Test nation at the moment. Still. And with a population of 1.4  billion all of whom are insane about cricket. Little wonder that this event is a success.

So all those ingredients: money, 1.4 billion cricket mad Indians, great event well supported the world over, ever more proliferating short format cricket events... this means that the organisation has to be tight too. And it is... but of course with a twist. Or rather conditions.

India has the money and the population. England and Australia are the only cricket playing nations anyone wants to watch playing tests. Nobody wants to play in terrorist dogged Pakistan. So given this, it is very unsurprising that these three nations have cricket solidly stitched up, money wise, TV wise, pretty much everything wise.

This reflects reality, so OK I suppose. But then again I just watched a documentary on control of cricket and it is just like the cronyism at FIFA and UEFA in football, and I presume every other sport that generates money. Oh hold on wait, it is pretty much only football and certain cricket events and the rugby World Cup that generates money in sport. And of course the Olympic Games. Whoops, nearly forgot tennis. This is starting to make sense.

Now, first job with anyone looking to take control is first take control. Next job is to keep it. So having taken control of the International Cricket Council (ICC) that's what they did. Top jobs for the boys (and I do know one such from Bermuda in this category -- alright Neil?). Everyone else gets favors aka scraps. But do not, and I do repeat, do not allow anyone to come in who may ultimately challenge you. So the ICC has so far not granted sanction to China to become an ICC affiliate country. According to this documentary, something like 300 million Chinese play cricket! I may have got the decimal point misplaced but what if I haven't?

It is really difficult to not get cynical when a game gets hijacked by business interests and money as many sports have. Trouble is that when the sport is so good and the event so wonderful, you just forget about 'that other stuff' and just enjoy the spectacle.

And what a spectacle IPL 2019 is!

Another Road Trip

It has been a while since we went on another road trip from Penang ultimately down to Singapore via the orang utan reserve at Bukit Merah, Taiping, the Cameron Highlands and Malacca accompanied by our Bermuda friends Charmaine and Dave. I did the Track My Tour thing here but wanted to add some other bits as an afterthought.

Orang Utans

Everyone has seen these hairy but gentle apes on TV programs like the BBC's Earth or something like that and to my surprise we discovered that there's a refuge just over an hour away in Bukit Merah. I thought it was great as the apes are housed on an island but visitors are within a caged tunnel so you can view but the apes are free to roam. It is home to the early stage apes saved from death in the wild. There is another 2nd stage which gets the apes more used to fending for themselves and then its vroom, out into the big wide world.

The island at Bukit Merry

Except if you're a full grown male that is. The really big ones get to 200 kgs (that is huge!) and they don't much like moving around in the trees as that's a heck of a lot to swing from branch to branch. They also don't like the rain largely because they are massively hairy and if wet, that adds another ton of weight for them too. So all those pictures you see of those cuties swinging and playing are the tiddlers, before they are grown.

Growing up is tough too... and this isn't a comment aimed at the orang utans alone. It applies across the spectrum. They live in single grown male family groups and the only way for an adult male to live past a certain age is to kill the alpha male and take his place otherwise it is curtains for you! The one on the island comes in at a growing 145 kgs and he made it to number 1 by killing the former alpha male who was the 200 kg guy.

Talk about survival of the fittest. There must be an analogy to all grown males there somewhere.

Tea in the Highlands

One of the many things the British did during colonial times was to create hill stations. The Cameron Highlands is an example in Malaysia. Actually so is The Hill in Penang. At sea level it is hot and sticky and in past years, colonials may have ranked at the top of the social tree but they also ranked at the top of the diet for a multitude of bugs, bacteria and various viruses. You can see it anywhere there's an old church and cemetery. In Bermuda the big killer was typhoid and it seemed that almost everyone in the graveyard was less than 23. My doctor once told me during a physical that if I didn't die of a particularly nasty disease before I hit 70 that I should be OK for another 30 or 40 years. Not sure about that but I suppose that means if you have good resistance to fell diseases, you'll survive. At least from fell diseases.

The hill stations are particularly nice. Including Penang, I've now been to three (Penang, Cameron Highlands, Sri Lanka... the oldest) and I can certainly see why they would be popular. So much cooler, fewer bugs and great views. Also tea. Now of course tea isn't indigenous but introduced and even now it forms a massive part of the local economies. More in Sri Lanka than Malaysia but when we visited the Cameron Highlands, what is apparent is the massive scale of development. I should have thought about this before as every time you buy veggies in the supermarket here, all the local ones come from some Cameron Highlands farm or other.

Tea harvesting in action. No technology here

Sadly they are really, really ugly.

Endless greenhouses. They are everywhere

Tacky Stuff

I know that we are all sophisticated and would normally look down our noses at tacky stuff. I mean who needs another fake handbag or pair of Gucci shoes? We wouldn't go there, would we? Also who would want to ride around a Unesco World Heritage city that was one of the oldest European settlements in the Far East riding around in a floral pink trishaw decorated with little ponies also pink and a soundtrack of Asian rap?

Nyonya Cuisine

The term nyonya refers to Chinese immigrants who came to Malaysia during the 19th century mainly to work in the mainland tin mines or to escape one of the endless wars or famines prevalent in China. They settled and in many cases married locally and generally found they couldn't get the same ingredients for their cuisine as back home so they adapted to what was available locally... hence nyonya cuisine. The nyonyas are also known as Perankans and other names too, but this one seems to to be the one used mostly for cooking.

Some well known dishes have a nyonya twist. I am thinking of curries here and of course beef rendang is a nyonya curry varietal. So when I saw the chance of having a day of cooking classes, yes please!

Heavy coconut cream? Yup. Thanks Kathy, nyonya chef supreme

One thing we'd omitted to pay attention to was the fact that much nyonya cooking is really heavy so it was a little rash to expect to want to do anything energetic after eating as we'd originally planned. If you have the chance to try nyonya cooking, try it!! You do like chillies though, don't you?

Markets in particular Night Markets

One thing I have discovered here is that whenever guide books say such and such Night Market is a blast and shouldn't be missed, you should take that with a distinct pinch of salt. For sure markets and in particular night markets are busy places with hordes of probably mostly tourists scouring through endless stalls of vendors selling... well junk really. You may want a fake handbag for example or yet another little zip bag with elephants embroidered onto it, or some such like that. But you can go to daytime markets for that too. If you're expecting an authentic cultural experience, forget it. This is all about selling stuff to you.

The Jonker Street Night Market in Malacca was like that although the upside to all of these places is that the street food is fun, very creative and often very tasty. And at the end of the day, yes it is still pretty fun too. Remember that decorated pink trishaw I wrote about before? Well they also have fairy lights on them for nighttime so in addition to all the other stuff, they are a cascade of lights too!

First take wooden satay sticks about 8 inches long. Lay them in what looks like a waffle press like this but in the specially crafted grooves. In the little holes that are under these grooves, crack small quail eggs and wait for a second or two et voila you now have a yummy snack of 5 cooked quail eggs on a stick that you can drench in your favorite chilli...

Cricket

There's a guy at the Penang Sports Club, John, who is a long time ex-Singapore hand and at some point was the President of the Singapore Cricket Club. Now I've been playing cricket for over 50 years and know quite a few club presidents. Most are nice guys but have had a history of presiding over, say, Leigh on Sea CC whose pitch is one of the two connecting pitches on the big field at Chalkwell Park in Southend on Sea. My home town. It has a nice elevated view of the Thames Estuary too but can in no way compete for the location of the Singapore club. My goodness. It reminds of the story of the rollers at Centre Court Wimbledon. The lovingly maintained grass courts depend on this big, heavy roller to keep the surface so pristine and one year someone asked to borrow the roller for Court One. The groundsmen said OK, hasn't been asked for before and then tried to move it over discovering in the process that the roller was too big for the exits. It simply could not be moved from Centre Court. This caused much head scratching until the early records were consulted and it was discovered that because in the old days there was no lifting mechanism capable of moving the thing far away from Centre Court, they simply built the stadium around it. Yes folks, the roller came first.

It strikes me that Singapore CC is very much the same. It occupies an unbelievable location on the Esplanade and if you know Singapore and can visualize the sky scrapers and development in the city, you'd be amazed that such an anachronism could still exist. But exist it does and it is, yes, right there in the middle of the most expensive, most exclusive, most desirable, most demanded part of town. I guess they simply built the new city around it.

IP Theft

My school in Southend was called Eton House and was for some years after I left school the cause of much confusion. At one interview when I was I think 21 or 22, the first thing I was asked was "who do I know from my school days?" Well of course I know loads of people: Pete, Kev, Gary, Ronnie. It took a little while for me to realize that the interviewer was looking for something else. As in which member of the royal family, nobility or political class was I at school with? It made me laugh sort of (I didn't get the job as after I explained and we all dutifully laughed, they lost interest completely) as I knew that our Headmaster (and owner of the school) chose the name in 1926 specifically for this reason. He felt that Southend School for Boys may not have had the same cachet and PR hook as a vague and unexplained Eton connection.

In Singapore! Bloody cheek!!

He was an interesting character all by himself. His nickname was Bubble as that was what his bald head looked like in later years but his name was SHT (before the acronym became tarred by another similar word made by inserting the letter 'I'). His twin died in WW1 and he took part in the Los Angeles Olympic Games as a 400 meter runner ("too upright, see, so no good, flagged at the end due to me gassing at Loos in 1917"). He was an unforgettable character!

Management on Steroids

I think you either love or hate Singapore. Maybe not, but its just a gut feel that I have for what they have done to transform a tiny island swamp into this sparkling megalopolis is just stunning. And to think that most of it happened after independence and the rather embarrassing split with the rest of Malaysia. I have heard it described as 'Asia Light' and the more I think on that, the more apt I think is that description. We have friends that spent a couple of years working there that seems to have given them a bedrock in life and while they visited Angkor Wat and some of the other cultural high points, I'm pretty sure they never visited a hawker centre, or Little India, or some of the more Asian bits. Certainly Singapore is in the midst of Asia, but at times it doesn't feel it.

I loved it and going back to the tacky comments from earlier, who wouldn't love to stand on a balcony 57 stories up in a 3 tower hotel that reminds you of Las Vegas? The view is stunning.

Talk about planning. I simply cannot imagine the meetings they all had. I worked in a quango for a time in Bermuda and the meetings we had barely rose above the mundane. There must have been some powerful thinkers, strategists and personalities to get this done.

Great trip though with my favorite traveling companion!!

The Honorable Lanka

Living in Penang you see the word 'Sri' all the time in front of a group of other words and for the longest time I had no thought really about what it meant, if it meant something, or it was something else. It took our visit to Lanka in October to settle things. The word 'Sri' is an honorific which I take to mean something like 'the honorable' or something like that. As the pre-Colonial name for the country was Lanka, that is what they first named the country after 'Ceylon' was ditched after independence adding the 'Sri' only a little later. Claro?

I used Chris' wonderful app Track My Tour for the day to day stuff and if you want to follow that you can do so here but wanted to add some other bits that I didn't write about or thought about after.

First up, great country. Lovely people. Hopeless infrastructure. My goodness, does it rain. Animals everywhere.

OK that's it all done.... well not quite. Any people that do read my posts know that I probably drone on at too much length so a post this short and sweet just isn't going to happen. So here it is, the memories that will stay with me in no particular order.

1. Elephants

Nothing more to add, just that it was fabulous to see them in the wild

2. History

In a later post I will refer to Malacca in Malaysia as part of a recent road trip that Viv and I did with some friends from Bermuda. It bears striking similarities to Sri Lanka as it was the Portuguese who were the first colonial settlers and it was they who were summarily kicked out by the next settlers, namely the Dutch, who in turn were removed by the British who then never left and generally fixed the things that the others hadn't.

The Portuguese settlements were very much at the fringes, seaside settlements in the south with just the one in the pointy bit at the top, which is Jaffna. So easy meat for the Dutch who came in force over 100 years later and kicked them out. They tried to take over the entire island but couldn't manage the middle section (which was where Buddha's tooth ended up, Kandy) and made a big mistake by not preventing the British from settling Trincomalee (sort of top right, below Jaffna but above the middle fat bits on the right hand side) and creating a naval base there opposing the French in Madras. The British liked the place so when the French marched into Holland in 1792, the Dutch presumably much against their will and definitely their better judgement asked the British to care of things for a while. Until the French left. No problem, thanks. Trouble was when in 1815 they asked for it back (as they did in Malacca and other places further east) the British said no thanks, we like it here. Oh yes and if you want to try and take it back, let me introduce you to the Duke of Wellington who just thrashed Boney up and down Europe... and some of his friends in red jackets.

Well that wasn't going to work so getting the best deal out of a pretty poor situation was all they had left so the Dutch said OK you can have Ceylon (they called it Ce-lun apparently, a corruption of a misheard Portuguese word) and Malacca and if you must Singapore, but we wouldn't mind having back Java and Sumatra. Probably don't fit in with your imperial plans. The Brits had no imperial strategy of course, only the East India Company, a bunch of penny pinching capitalists and absolutely no desire to take on anything else after that ruinously expensive 30 year war against the French so said thanks and generally history moved on.

Having acquired the new territories though meant actually doing things with them and in general the British did fairly well by Ceylon, as it was now called. Or so it seems to me. Certainly when we visited the big historical and archaeological sites, it was the British who 'discovered' them. Apparently even the locals had forgotten about these places as they were abandoned centuries beforehand and the previous colonizers being typically inefficient and generally useless had walked right past them.

3. Tea

I suppose if you don't much care for tea, then this bit will be irrelevant for you, but as a tea lover I was totally taken with the tea plantations. Even today, the tea industry is the single largest industry in Sri Lanka. 

This picture tells you all you need to know about when, where and how tea came to be in Sri Lanka. Apparently the original plants were not from the already entrenched Indian plantations but came straight from original Chinese plants which is what gives Ceylon Tea its distinct flavor. We bought loads!

4. Infrastructure

The subtext to the above note on tea is actually a very sad one as reliance on a tea industry as the number one component of the economy means that that economy is not very developed. It isn't. One of the key reasons why stems from the 30-year civil war between the majority Sinhalese (mostly in the south) and the minority Tamils (in the north). Add religion into the mix too: Buddhist vs Hindu, and the mix was very toxic indeed.

I read a little about it from my first point of contact for most things these days, Wikipedia, and what was written was sad enough but you just know the reality was worse.

So to dates. Independence finally in 1972, add 30 years and a few before and after the civil war and you come to now. The war itself ended within the last 5 years so there simply has been no time to repair or even build any infrastructure. Also factor in the unforeseen catastrophe that was the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 which absolutely devastated the southern part of the island particularly around Galle, and this is the situation Sri Lanka finds itself in. You can see it or rather the lack of it everywhere however all the people we met were some of the nicest, friendly, most optimistic people I have ever met. 

The tuk tuk is the solution!

5. The Weather

People in England talk about the weather all the time, particularly the rain and the deadly grayness of the country between November and March. That is true of course and I personally think it is the greyness that is the worst thing. After weeks of it, things are so depressing. My birthday is in February and it always rained.  Ugh. But not like Sri Lanka.

My goodness does it rain. I had to chuckle that the England cricket team were touring Sri Lanka just about at the same time as us and I really wondered if anyone that did the schedule actually bothered to ask what the weather would be like around then because it is in one of the many rainy seasons here and when they say rainy, they do mean rainy.

Facing a broadly similar issue in Penang about determining exactly when the seasons start and end I asked Fernando, our guide, and he told me that now was the rainy season. He may have said it was the North West monsoon but could also easily have said the South East one for apparently there are many rainy seasons here. Our time until December for one, then becomes dry for the month of January. After that comes the different direction (maybe SW) monsoon season for Feb-March and then another month of comparative dry before the NE monsoon season kicks in during May and which lasts to the end of July. August is most likely relatively dry but then you get the slow drag that is the beginning of the NW monsoon season that really gets going in October again and ....

So the island is very green and you often see scenes like this where only the day before was dry land.

Love the water buffaloes though!

Loved it. Ready to return at any time! And I didn't even get to talk about the dogs and cows ...

Danubia

There's a brilliant book written by Simon Winder that provides a marvellous history of the countries, cities and people that inhabit the regions around the Danube in central Europe and at the same time provides a historical perspective of the old Holy Roman Empire and the Hapsburg family that ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the cataclysm of WWI brought everything crashing down.

I read it voraciously and couldn't wait to visit the area now that the Iron Curtain is no more so when Viv and a friend said they wanted to visit the Christmas Markets in the area, of course I wanted to be a part of it. Particularly so when Viv said the itinerary would be Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg and then Prague.

At its peak, the Empire had over 60 million inhabitants and covered a vast area of central and eastern Europe. The economic powerhouse was Hungary... when it had Transylvania. The manufacturing powerhouse was Bohemia.

I have written a detailed blog tracked on the marvelous Track My Tour app which you can read here but plenty didn't make it to that blog hence this ramble.

Budapest is only 2 1/2 hours from Heathrow but courtesy of 50 years of the Soviet yoke it seems light years behind, except that isn't the right word. Western Europe has had 50 years of Marshall Plan stimulus followed by growth whilst the nations behind the Iron Curtain simply stopped dead. The catastrophe of WWII when the Nazis turned the city into a Fortress City (Festung Budapest) condemned it to almost total destruction. Our tour guide said that 70% of the city was destroyed in the process of 'liberation'. The Germans used the castle on the Buda side of the city as a base and consequently great aiming point for the terrible Soviet artillery.

Nearly half a million people died in this final battle. This is the Royal Palace. It still hasn't been restored.

One of the things I love about Wikipedia is that it provides massive amounts of insights nobody ever teaches you at school. My history taught me nothing about Hungary, Czechoslovakia or any other of the Iron Curtain countries other than the fact that the 'liberating' Red Army took them over and the Iron Curtain was created. Sort of makes you wonder if there was a specific desire to re-write history and gloss over the fact that the Soviet era was just as bad if not worse and regrettably much, much longer than the Nazis in Germany. The Yalta Conference was all about the Soviets getting what they wanted from a sick and ailing FDR and a marginalised Winston Churchill who could realistically do nothing to thwart Soviet intentions. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet era, much new information has been learned and more importantly disseminated so that nobody can gloss over the unpleasant facts any more. Or rather shouldn't.

Historians agree that it was the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 that essentially paved the way for the rise of the Nazis in Germany, but it was also the catalyst for the right wing, ultra-nationalist regimes that spread across the new nations created by the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after WWI.

Hungary lost all the green parts, some 75% of its previous size.

Hungary, for example, lost 75% of its territory including the ultra important province of Transylvania which provides practically all the natural resources of the country. Yes, that one. The same as the one popularised by that guy in a cloak with funny teeth, violent habits and curious taste for blood. Its intra-war government was right wing, just as annoyed with the Treaty of Versailles and favoured the Nazis to the point of formally allying with them and joining their armies with the Wehrmacht in Russia, Yugoslavia and elsewhere.

The very brief rewards of being allies with the Nazis.

The Soviets therefore in their advance during 1944 showed little mercy. Over 900,000 Hungarians died in WWII, two-thirds civilians, and in the immediate aftermath over 100,000 ethnic Germans were deported to Siberian labour camps (few returned) and an additional 600,000 were 'transported' to the Soviet Union for what was termed 'little projects' -- massive rebuilding projects to repair war damage. Only half survived to return to Hungary with the final 'volunteer workers' only returning after Stalin's death in 1953. This is a staggering event in the history of a country of fewer than 10 million inhabitants.

All of this is dealt with by the House of Terror Museum just up the road from our hotel on Andrassy Ut, the main street of Budapest, equivalent to the Champs Elysee, Oxford Street or 5th Avenue. The building is eerie and fobidding as is the subject matter covered by the museum -- far more of the Soviet era than the Nazi era which was comparatively short as the countries were in fact allies for much of the time. I had the same feeling as when Viv and I visited Dachau which is in a lovely, very green suburb of Munich right next to people's back gardens. But for me (and I do reiterate that this blog is my story, not a history book) all that took place in WWII was before I was born and is therefore history to me, albeit very recent history. What transpired behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet era took place when I was growing up listening to the Beatles and the Grateful Dead thinking of nothing more than love, peace and happiness and making the world a better place. For the people there it was all about survival each and every day. They couldn't even begin to hope to plan as I could and as for the occupying forces, well the Soviets had zero need to build up these puppet nations. All they ever were were buffer states between the motherland and the west for the impending WWIII, so therefore completely expendable. This can be seen particularly in Budapest where war damage was never repaired, new building rarely if ever took place and on any street downtown, there could easily be a gap between row homes which had never been rebuilt or which had been turned into the now famous ruin bars.

The really interesting thing about visiting new places if you take a local guide is that they provide you with anecdotal snippets that don't make it to the history books or guide books but are those normal, day to day things that impact people. A particularly good guide can be a revelation. Our guides were terrific. Whether they are historically accurate or not, I don't know but they were certainly entertaining and if you're like me and like trying to piece together the why's and how's of places, even the smallest thing can be eye opening.

In Budapest for example, we talked about what Hungary actually does -- answer it doesn't other than agriculture really. Part of the reason for this is that they no longer control Transylvania, Romania does. And Romania was neutral at the start of the war and allied with the Soviets at the end. So no surprise that in the post WWII division of the world they got what they wanted. What Hungary does is agriculture and my visit to the Terror Museum was largely about the post war persecution of the farmers by the Soviets. Farmers were the closest thing to bourgeoisie in Hungary and the Soviets really focused their nastiest attention on the middle classes everywhere they were. As a result average earnings are around USD 400 per month today. That said, our guide and driver (Attilla, really) were very upbeat and well educated and spoke 4-5 languages.

We loved the place and cannot wait to return.

The difference between Hungary and Austria is enormous. Pre WWI, Austria even though it is the ancestral home of the Hapsburgs did essentially nothing. The economy of the empire was driven by Bohemia (maunfacturing) and Hungary (agriculture and whatever came out of Transylvania). According to our very humourous guide who kept on calling us "my dears" the Austrians were really bad at choosing allies for much of their history and were very much in favour of union with the Nazis despite whatever recidivist post WWII history may say. However they were still 'the West' and so in the post WWII division of Europe were lucky enough to come up on this side of the line... and so they thrived.

We really enjoyed Vienna. The Hofburg is a wondrous place and clearly the entire empire depended on the wise choices of one very strong woman at a very key moment in history -- the Empress Maria Theresa. Her father realising he had no male heir tried to get ahead of things and got all the interested heads of state around Europe to recognise his daughter as empress, something they changed their minds about the minute he died and which came to be known as the War of the Austrian Succession (in my history books anyway).

Pretty much all I remember is that there was something to do with a Captain Jenkins' Ear, the Prussians marched into Silesia (the empire's coal district so really important), King George II actually led British troops into battle at a place called Dettingen (the last time this has ever happened incidentally) and overall the British lost so had to give up a few possessions in the West Indies and India that they recovered only a decade later. Austria also lost a few possessions but importantly the peace treaty did ensure Maria Theresa's succession, particularly so as she got married and fairly promptly had 16 children, 10 of whom survived, 6 males in the total so her succession woes would not be repeated.

There was still time to nearly lose everything when the Turks nearly reached Vienna again but they prevailed with Polish help. Ha! And what did they do to say thank you? They, Prussia and Russia promptly 'partitioned' Poland between them! Ever heard of that phrase put not your trust in princes?

So much for just leaving it at 'Thank You'.

In the mid 19th century as the Ottoman threat had gone away, the then emperor had the city walls demolished and built the inner ring road that we see today. The land left over was sold off (mainly to Jewish merchants) which financed the building of the Hofburg to its current size.

Brilliant city. We want to return and spend more time there.

Salzburg was nice but the final highlight was Prague which is simply a lovely, huge medieval city. For some reason it did not suffer the same fate as Budapest in WWII and survived pretty much unscathed even though the Nazis wrought terrible oppression on the non-German people.  We didn't have the chance to visit many of the contemporary museums as the Castle on top of the hill in the centre of the city was so large and demanded our time.

The lovely Charles Bridge over the Danube

Our guide again was great fun and provided plenty of interesting insights but as with many people there are clearly subjects that you do not talk about. I think I found one and its all about the Sudetenland. I think. Certainly Slovakia.

In the map of the Empire at the start of this blog, if you look at the part that says Bohemia, think Slovakia and the Czech Republic for today. Back then it was all Czechoslovakia. Slovakia is the closest part to Germany and those reddish parts show where the 'German' population lived. The term 'German' is not what it means today as if you remember your history, German unification only happened in the 1850's and 1860's under Bismarck. Before that 'Germany' was dozens, if not hundreds of mini-states which together comprised a decent chunk of the Holy Roman Empire which became defunct in 1809 courtesy of Napoleon Bonaparte. This is why if you travel down the Rhine there are so many castles in the middle of relatively nowhere and comparatively speaking close together. They could be dukedoms, princedoms, archbishoprics or a host of other structures. As I said hundreds of them. Germanic was the loose term that held them all together in the same way as Italian related to the people that live in that republic today, in the past they weren't the same nationality at all. And that was how they wanted it too. In Germany, it was the Prussians who were the driving force and even they couldn't call the now unified 'Empire' Prussia, it would be Germany. So Germanic relates to ethnicity not nationality. (Simon Winder's previous book called Germania focuses on just this).

Austria is the orange part, Prussia the blue part. The smorgasbord of other colours represent the mass of other states and statelets that were subsequently swallowed up by Prussia

Hitler didn't care about the niceties, he just used it as an excuse for expansion and would have continued to do so if not stopped. Why Sudeten? I don't know I'm afraid. Today it is Slovakia and even though there was a bit of opposition to the move, it wasn't that severe. Any opposition that there was came from the Czechs who realised that Hitler wouldn't stop at just the Sudetenland (he didn't).

A couple of days ago I was reading an article on the BBC about the current Ashes Test match and for some reason went off on a tangent to look at something about the Timeless Test of 1939 which only ended because England had to leave to catch their boat home from South Africa (there can't be too many games in history where the team batting last and chasing scored 654-5 and didn't win but if there's a cock up to make, England will).

Wonderful quote from a SA player that he hadn't played in two many games where he'd had to have two haircuts during the course of play.

At the end of the article there were some headlines from major events that were happening at that time elsewhere in the world one of which was about Slovakia's ruling party allying themselves with the Nazi party line and philosophy. I wish I could find it again as I hope I have this right for it may be central to my story in that when I asked our Prague guide why after 500+ years of Slovaks being joined at the hip to the Czechs, mostly under the Austrians, that when the Soviet era ended it took about one minute and a half to decide to go their own way.

Her answer was that the Slovak language is flippant as are they as a people whilst the Czechs are serious as is their language, so why on earth would they want to be joined up to one another?

I think I am missing something here.

Prague today is doing slightly better than Hungary due to its manufacturing prowess but still lags the west and remains outside of the European Monetary System so doesn't have the Euro. It is a great place too and one that we want to return to again at much greater length. So much to explore and find out. So much more to enjoy.

Can't wait!