Look at the Clown …

Look at the Clown
Tumbling his balls
You don’t see his heart
How loudly it calls

He smiles cos’ he’s happy
And a little bit vain
It keeps him from going
Entirely insane

And his Heart?
Well its given
And given to you
Now isn’t that interesting,
Crazy mad thing to do?


image from a portion of an 1878 drawing by C. M. Newton in Sporting and Dramatic News, of a performance of The Forty Thieves

More Cricket and Limericks plus a touch of the Weather

Some more Cricketing Limericks for fans of them (both Cricket and Limericks ;) )

Cricket is a byword for Weather conversations. Its all about water from the sky, wind from the west, and how the tide affects the pitch when the moon is full. In fact, I'm sure that the reason why English conversation is so skewed towards the weather is because it has such a deep effect on their cricketing psyche. And I'm equally sure that when they go out on tour they carry their damned weather with them. If only we could harness that!

So. All frivolities aside, please.
Serious Question time: How to beak the drought, please?
Answer: Schedule a 5 day test match.
(Of course, since cricket tours are agreed years in advance, you have to know where the droughts are likely to be at that time, natch.) Having said which ...

There's a heat wave thats baking my brain

My body's burned red & my skin is in pain

But there's nothing to fear!

Cos the Cricket is here!

It'll be bucketing down once again

Which satisfies the farmers and the Ducks.
But what about the spectators?
What about the spectators indeed ...

the rain's keeping us all in the shelter

Its cats and its dogs and its helter and skelter

no matter my son

when the cricketing's done

the sun will come out as a belter

All this talking of Rain reminds me, there's one person who makes bowlers and fielders pray for it.
Lots of it. Especially in India.
Especially in, Well, actually ... everywhere ...

the bowlers are praying for rain

Tendulkars at wicket again

a six through the covers

at the end of the overs

sees their averages flush down the drain

But there's always at least one bowler who doesn't seem to mind whose at the crease :)

a fast bowler (we'll call him Dale Steyn)

sends his balls down again and again

if its not past the nose:

its down by the toes

you want runs? there's no gain without pain

Limericks, Cricket, the Weather ... who needs a girlfriend?

I thought I was here for the cricket

drinking beer and pondering the wicket

but the girls in their shorts

cause ungentlemanly thoughts

and most of them perfectly wicked!

yes I could ... yes I could yes I could yes I could ;)

Images (c) the author

The Past is an Old Man's country

The Past is an Old Man's country
landscaped by memories and dreams
hopes and fears now bordered
by children's laughter and screams

The Past is an Old Man's country
memories and dreams entwined
hopes and fears portraited
left hanging in memory's mind

The Past is an Old Man's country
the highways clear in sight
the byways weave through fog and mist
dimly distant through fading light

The Past is an Old Man's Country
but it won’t be visited by me:
Release me at the turnpike!
release me and set me free

Image: from The Persistence of Memory (Salvador Dali)

Thoughts at my Son's wedding

the present is in our children's hands
their race is well begun
the future is their children's lands
uncertain, unspoken, undone.


the baton has been handed
the transformation complete
spectators now and relaters,
our Glory days are done.


the karma bequeathed to the future
awaits our children's children's hands
we shape their thoughts, (and so hope, restore)
our broken landscape our damaged shore


As I stood watching and taking part at my son's wedding I couldn't help but reflect on the courage youth always has in it's future. When we set out ~ when? 1972! the world had just stepped back from the Cuban missile crisis, France was recovering from student riots, the iron curtain more firmly divided the world than ever before, China seemingly ready to collapse from it's cultural revolution, and Capitalism stood poised to smash the unions and separate the rich few from the many poor. And here in South Africa, an increasingly recalcitrant and truculent apartheid Government was deepening its hold and its propaganda on its citizens, poisoning the few and disenfranchising the many. The collapse of our society seemed at hand.

Such a morass the world was in!~ who would raise a family in that?
Who would tackle this mess before us?
Yet we lived our moment and waited for our time when we would have the means and the ideas and the courage to give the future generations ~ our children ~ the world we would have liked to have had.

So many things are so very much better now: yet so many more seem irreparably damaged: Climate, Economy, and the deepening divide between the haves and the have-nots, new things seems so threatening once again.

Yet when I looked at them, and the wedding guests, it seemed to me that they had that same courage and hope, and these new challenges would find their generations ready to deal with them. And the question of division is addressed at the personal level, and it seemed to me that there was still a role for us, the fading generation: one of bringing together communities, of breaking down cultural and ideological barriers ~ who better to show how to live than those who have survived life?

And I can't say that this thinking was a sequential process, but it tumbled around in my head, and the words above took shape and have been sitting with me: now they have their own space. They seem to pull together all those thoughts.

All images Copyright (c) the author

Lazy Sundays composing Limericks at the Cricket

 

Last Sunday Niranjan and his family persuaded me at last to spend another day watching the cricket at the Wanderers.
Of course, there are always moments of silence and daydreaming at cricket matches. That's a whole big part of their charm! (Goes without saying ...Five-day matches, not those frantic short games!)
The commentators, also having time on their hands, (in those long stretches of deep concentration and dot balls) decided to call for Limericks. Which gave me all the time of the world to come up with this lot:

Commentary on commentators:
Have you heard of ze Commentator's curse?
Please send us your limericks diverse!
  Just mail us some rubbish
  Mit your name ve vill publish
Vitch is verse? Ze curse or ze Verse?

The referral system:
The umpire's scratching his head
"Is he in? Is he out? Is he dead?"
  With this newfangled referal
  I can do some deferal
"Third Umpire, Its your problem!" he said.

Billy Bowden and his crooked finger:
Billy Bowden still thinks of the girl
made his finger go up in a curl
  the this that and the other
  that he got from her mother
was worth all her giggles and twirls!

Fancy a bit of spot fixing?
I'm hoping that you'll play the game
I'm hoping that you'll think the same
  Leather Jackets, plane tickets
  are better than wickets ~
You're the Cops?! No No! It's a frame!

Clark's first test lament:
An Australian captain called Clarke
Thought this cricketing thing's just a lark
  forty-seven runs later
  he needed a 'gator
to get his team back on the park ...

Legspinner's tactic:
Oh I know of a spinner or two
who make cracks on the pitch with their shoe
  See, it isn't enough
  to talk about stuff
If you're quick, you can find "What to do"

Shane's a pain
Mr Warne's on his way back again
He longs to call out this refrain:
  (when it's pitched in the rough,
  and it's turned just enough),
"Howzat! you're on the next plane"!

She's had it with the cricket!
She picked up his bat in mid-winter
and "Whack!" she caused it to splinter
  Now when nature calls
  his old cricket balls
keep apart his suppurating sphincter

Five-day tests in a nutshell:
I know what you mean my old friend
5-day cricket seems never to end
  the interesting bits
  the wickets and hits
only happen when you're round the bend

All Images (c) the Author

My Love affair with Music: Grace Slick, Jefferson Airplane & the White Rabbit

Grace Slick was the original Acid Lady, and she paid dearly for it. She took something over an hour or so to write White Rabbit, so they say ~ and this is her singing it at Woodstock. Prescient, maybe: But that was the 60's, and we never knew what was to come, or where all that tripping was leading to. Jefferson Airplane may have taken the Credit: But this was Grace's song, in every way, it was also her. And you can see it here in this performance, at (where else?) Woodstock.