Ashes drama...

The test match in the women’s Ashes has come and gone, providing more sweaty-palmed drama than the men managed in their hopelessly one-sided five-test series. The women aren’t ‘schooled’ in the long form of the game, so when the match came down to a nervy run-chase, nobody seemed to know what to do: send the fielders out to the boundary to save runs, or crowd the batters to take wickets. The lower-order batters could have reached the total easily - 45 runs off 60 balls - by running ones and twos, but they panicked and got themselves out with daft shots. Intriguingly, everyone seemed to be ‘learning on the job’.

As we came to the very last over, all four results - win, lose, draw, tie - were still possible. In the end it was a draw, with England’s last pair blocking out the last six balls. People talk about a “tame” draw… but the match was anything but tame. It was a great advert for women’s cricket (and for women playing test cricket, not just the one-day jamborees). The draw keeps England (just) alive in the quest for the Ashes, needing to win all three one-day games to claim the trophy.

Licenced today: Yew Tree Farm near Coniston, onced owned by Beatrix Potter…

Caistor...

Out today, taking a few pix. This is Caistor, a small town in North Lincolnshire...

Trapped by priests...

More from Krishnamurti this morning. The email arrived with a video of a talk he gave in 1983, which includes this excerpt.

“What is religion? Man has sought something that is not of this world. From the most ancient of people till now man has sought something that time, thought, has nothing to do with that. He has sought it. And in his search, he has been trapped by the priests. Priests of the world who become the interpreters of that – we know, you don’t, we will tell you all about it. And the established religions are just nonsense, as far as – please don’t accept this. For the speaker, they are just entertainment, excitement, the thing to do for a while. If you are young you avoid all that nonsense. As you grow older you get frightened, you become this or that. And all the things that are in the churches, temples, and mosques are put together by thought.

"God is an invention of thought. So if we can scrap all that from our brain, from our belief, from our hope, then we are free to enquire what is religion. Etymologically that word has not an exact beginning, it is not ‘to bind’ as was originally thought. So we are enquiring into what is the religious mind. Not the believing mind, that is very simple, very easy to explain. But the religious mind, because the religious mind alone can create a new culture; not the believing mind, not the mind that has faith”.

A weekend licence: the nave of Bradford Cathedral...

The blessings of this life...

It is almost two thousand years since Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius gave grateful thanks for the blessings of this life. “Observe how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of ashes. So spend these fleeting moments on earth as Nature would have you spend them, and then go to your rest with good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth that bore it and a thanksgiving to the tree that gave it life.”

Licenced yesterday for a good sum: the marina in Kilrush, County Clare, Ireland…

Kirkby Lonsdale...

Krishnamurti ‘spoke’ to me this morning… “Do look at something: a tree, a child, a man, a woman, the sky, a flower, without naming, and you will see much more. There is no screen of words between you and the tree, therefore there is immediate contact with the fact. Not to condemn, not to judge, not to evaluate, not to put into categories is extraordinarily difficult because our training for centuries has been to categorise. To be aware of the process of the brain, which puts everything into a category, is the beginning of seeing the fact”.

Licenced today: Kirkby Lonsdale at twilight…

The women's Ashes...

Male players who have a long career in international cricket - ten years or more - are likely to play about 100 test matches (with Alastair Cook topping the table with 156). Female players who have an equally long career may play only one or two test matches per year, and so get very little practice in the longer form of the game. England Women and Australia women have just completed the first day of their one-off test match, with the Aussies having racked up a rather daunting 327 for 7. England players bowled too many ‘hit me’ balls (and the Aussie batters obliged). They misfielded, dropped a lot of catches and, by the close of play, looked rather demoralised. But tomorrow is another day: a chance to bat all day under sunny Australian skies. Having kept my BT Sport subscription for another month, I’ll open up my laptop at 11pm to watch day two unfold. C’mon England! 

Licenced today: alfresco eating in Oakham, the county town of Rutland…

Comlongon Castle...

Licenced today: Comlongon Castle Hotel and Wedding Venue - incorporating a 16th century tower house - in Clarencefield, Dumfries & Galloway…

Respecting bad ideas...

Right on schedule a new report concludes that 25% of middle- and upper-class Britons are “biased” or “prejudiced” against Muslims, citing “racism” and “Islamophobia”. Yes, there is racism in this country: a mind-numbing repertoire of bigotry and stupidity which, despite all the efforts to stamp it out, is thriving in all areas and across all social classes. Racism isn’t hard to find; I only need to walk across the road for a pint.

But… it is in no sense pedantic to point out that Islam is not a race. My misgivings about Islam are focused, specifically, on what Muslims believe, and the contents of their holy book, the Quran - every line of which they insist was written by the finger of God himself. Islam borrows liberally from the Judaic and Christian traditions, which makes Muslim claims to uniqueness rather dubious, and their antipathy to Jews and Christians bizarre.

The indoctrination of children into the faith, the treatment of women and gay people, and the forbidding, on pain of death, for anyone to subsequently leave the faith: any one of these intolerant ideas should be enough to disqualify believers from the conversation about how to create a just and pluralist society. I’m not “prejudiced” in finding some of the tenets of Islam unacceptable. “Prejudging” is reaching a conclusion before we’ve heard the evidence, and I had no strong opinions - either positive or negative - about Islam before I read the Quran and the Hadith (the sayings of Mohammed and his companions). Discovering what Muslims really believe was simultaneously eye-opening and jaw-dropping.            

Think back to when you last saw a talking head from the Muslim community on TV admitting that his religious beliefs and practices might benefit from review and revision. Keep thinking… This is the practical result of Muslims insisting that their beliefs, their holy book and their prophet are “perfect” in every respect… and it’s hard to improve on perfection.

In a durable taboo, we deem it impolite to criticise another man’s religion. There’s a conversation that needs to be had, but we are too fearful - and too respectful of bad ideas - to initiate it… 

Apostasy...

There are calls today for an enquiry into ‘Islamophobia’ within the Tory party. Though there is no excuse for describing Muslims in derogatory terms, many misgivings about Islam are both reasonable and rational. For example, the penalty for apostasy - leaving the faith - in any Muslim majority country, is death. Death is not inevitable, of course. However, since the death penalty for apostasy is enshrined in the terms and conditions of the Islamic enterprise, it remains a possibility, which may be enough to convince Muslim apostates to keep their doubts and unbelief to themselves. If we're going to have an enquiry about 'Islamophobia', then maybe we should hold the tenets of Islam up to the light as well.

Licenced today: the George Hotel in Huddersfield…

Bolton Abbey...

Men are never more imaginative than when dreaming up punishments for others to suffer. That’s why accounts of heaven in religious literature are so anodyne, and why accounts of hell are so vividly descriptive. A German term, mitfreude, is the opposite of schadenfreude: sharing in - and being happy for - someone else’s success. It’s a little-known word (I hadn’t heard of it until today), which suggests that we don’t have much need for either the word… or the concept. As Gore Vidal noted, "Every time a friend succeeds, something inside me dies”.

A weekend licence: a snowy lane in the village of Bolton Abbey in the Yorkshire Dales...

Indecent words...

After some repairs the Romahome is back on the road. I could have gone anywhere today, so, naturally, I drove into Goole. With new factories and houses going up on a huge site between the town and the M62, Goole’s renaissance surely can’t be far away. In the meantime, the main shopping street looks as dismal as any of the ‘left behind’ communities I saw on my travels.

I bought a couple of CDs in a charity shop, and a huge thesaurus published by the Oxford University Press. As a cornucopia (accumulation, aggregation, assemblage, collection, compendium, compilation, selection) of weird and wonderful words, it reminds me of a story related by Christopher Hitchens…

Dr Samuel Johnson was the author of the first great dictionary of English language. When it was complete he was visited by a delegation of respectable ladies. “Dr Johnson”, they said, “we congratulate you on your decision to exclude all indecent words from your dictionary.” “Ladies”, said Dr Johnson, “I congratulate you on your persistence in looking them up.”

Licenced today: another illustration of rural broadband...

Golden Rule...

So fairwell, then, Meat Loaf. I never really got into your music - it was too histrionic for me - though I remain intrigued by your enigmatic song lyrics. "I would do anything for love, but I won't do that" (what, coprophilia?). I wouldn’t even have known how to address you, if we'd bumped into each other at an 'all you can eat' buffet or an outsize mens’ outfitters. ‘Mr Loaf’ sounded too formal, and ‘Meat’ too familiar.

This pub, licenced today, is the Golden Rule, probably the best little boozer in Ambleside...

Women in sport...

According to an article in today’s Guardian, based on a survey of almost 2,000 male football supporters, more than two-thirds of them harbour hostile, sexist or misogynistic attitudes towards women’s sport. Hmmm… that’s not telling me anything I don’t already know. The guys in the public bar of the Black Swan - a smaller sample, admittedly - would be unlikely to interrupt their witless banter to watch women playing any sport on the TV in the corner… unless the women were naked or using power tools. To sum up their attitude in a single sentence: “If all those women are running around that field, who’s going to cook my tea?”

Licenced today: for a price that would barely buy a 'bag for life' in Aldi...

"Mistakes were made"...

I’ve just been watching Prime Minister’s Questions, having forgotten what a bear pit the House of Commons can be when MPs smell blood. Boris offered another apology - of the “mistakes were made” variety - for parties at number 10, at times when the rest of us were obeying the instructions not to socialise. Though Boris took “full responsibility” for these breaches, I don’t really know what “taking responsibility” actually means… unless it's just another way of saying “Can we please change the subject”. 

Licenced today: a learner driver during rush hour in rural East Yorkshire...

Partygate...

Maybe I should take more interest in what the press insists on calling ‘partygate’ (as it’s fully fifty years since the Watergate scandal, isn’t it time we retired the ‘-gate’ suffix?). But learning that members of the ruling class were clinking wine glasses, while the rest of us were languishing in lockdown, is so unsurprising that I can’t summon up the requisite degree of righteous indignation. Boris Johnson has so many other, more important cases to answer. Maybe his demise will be like Al Capone’s, who, after a career of bootlegging, racketeering and murdering his gangster rivals, was finally put behind bars for the rather mundane crime of tax evasion.

Licenced this pic today: a patient gets a combined colonoscopy and oil change…

Ashes 2.0...

Fresh from their Ashes drubbing, the England cricket team are flying back to Blighty, though there won’t be any cheering crowds at Heathrow to welcome them home. With their international careers having come to an inglorious end, some members of the touring party may be polishing up their CVs, as they seek employment as coaches or media pundits.

The women’s Ashes begin this week, with three Twenty20 games (two points at stake for each match), one four-day test match (worth four points) and three one-day internationals (two points each). With the series ending on February 8, the first team to reach nine points will claim the Ashes. I’ve opted for another month’s viewing with BT Sport, and hope that England women will give a better account of themselves than the men.

Women's international match at Bristol, 2017… 

Childhood indoctrination...

Without the indoctrination of children, would Christianity or Islam have survived into the 21st century? Children should be told about religions, in much the same way that they are taught about glacial moraines, the novels of Thomas Hardy or the six wives of Henry the Eighth. Religious indoctrination is very different: the recruiting of conscripts into a faith tradition at an age when they cannot offer informed consent. Children are not just required to learn; they are coerced into belief.  

According to an article on the Guardian website, using research data from Germany, the gradual reduction in religious education “significantly reduced religiousness, both in private (less praying) and public (church attendance), with the effect biggest in Catholic areas”. So far, so predictable. But there was also “no impact on moral or ethical views, life satisfaction or political leaning. That may be because religious education was replaced with non-denominational ethical teaching, rather than more maths”.  

Children should be able to decide for themselves, about religious affiliation - and much else - when they are emotionally and intellectually ready. Of course, they may eventually decide to reject the faith of their forefathers… and successful and long-lasting religions don’t want to take that risk.

Raking over the coals...

The Ashes have come and gone, though the pundits will be raking over the coals for weeks to come… debating why England are currently so crap at test cricket. Heads will roll and careers will end; the next time England play a test match the team may look very different. In the meantime the women’s Ashes start on Thusday. I’m treating myself to another month of BT Sport: another month of watching international cricket from under a duvet. C’mon England!  

Licenced today: the village of Cawood, North Yorkshire. Not reported by Alamy, as yet, but found via a Google alert for ‘John Morrison/Alamy’…

Avebury...

 Licenced yesterday: one of the standing stones at Avebury, Wiltshire…

Prince Andrew...

Prince Andrew is being stripped of his titles, one by one, with calls being made in York today for him to relinquish his title of Duke of York as well. I’m no fan of Prince Andrew; for those who wish to dismantle the monarchy, the Queen’s work-shy second son is Exhibit A. However, I wonder about the timing of these very public humiliations, given that his court case won’t take place until the autumn. The assumption of innocence is such a vital component of our legal system; couldn’t we have waited until the jury delivered their verdict? If he’s found guilty, that might be a more appriopriate moment to strip Andy Windsor of his unearned and unmerited privileges and get him on one of the government’s retraining schemes. There must be a job he could do: a shoe salesman, perhaps, or the manager of a branch of PC World.

Licenced today: the standing stone in the churchyard of All Saints Church, Rudston, East Yorkshire…

Ronnie Spector...

I remember watching the Ronettes, in black & white, on our tiny Bush TV (a set so basic that to adjust the contrast or ‘vertical hold’ required a screwdriver). The sight of three gorgeous girls, with hair swept up into towering beehives, sashaying across the stage and singing “Baby, I love you”, was enough to propel me into early-onset puberty. Ronnie Spector, who handled lead vocals on all their spectacular "wall of sound" hits, died yesterday…

Repetition...

Some wise words from Krishnamurti, which arrived in my email in-tray this morning.

“Self-knowledge is the beginning of meditation. Without knowing yourself, repeating words from the sacred books has no meaning at all. They pacify, quieten your mind, but you can do that with a pill. By repeating a phrase over and over and over again, your brain naturally becomes quiet, sleepy and dull. In that dullness and insensitivity, you might have experiences, get certain results, but you are still ambitious, envious, greedy and creating enmity”.

Licenced today: shoppers at the Wilko store in Selby...

Seatoller...

Licenced today, in what is a slow start to 2022: slate cottages in the village of Seatoller, Borrowdale…

Wordle...

I have never completed the cryptic crossword in the Guardian, a fact which threatens my cherished illusion that I’m actually quite bright. Rather than recalibrating my over-inflated opinions about myself, I’ve taken the easier option and stopped doing crosswords.

Instead I’ve found Wordle, a simple and elegantly designed game, in which you have six opportunities to guess the target word. Start by entering a five-letter word into the grid and pressing ‘return’. Correct letters in the right position are shown in green. Correct letters in the wrong position are yellow. Letters which don’t appear in the target word are grey. You carry on… until you either guess the word, or run out of grid. There’s no chance of becoming addicted, or frittering away too much time, because you can only play once per day. This is today’s game; I got ‘gorge’ in three. Hooray!

Prospect Cottage...

In a disastrous Ashes series Jonny Bairstow is the only England batsman to have scored a century. Apparently an Aussie spectator spoiled his celebrations by shouting “Take your jumper off Bairstow, lose some weight Bairstow, you’re fat”. The spectator was ejected from the ground.

‘Sledging’ is what bowlers do in an attempt to unsettle batsmen. It’s generally just a volley of abuse - until the umpires step in - and not worth repeating. But one story makes me laugh every time I think about it. Australian bowler, Glen McGrath, was being frustrated by a tubby Zimbabwean batsman called Eddo Brandes. McGrath: “Why are you so fat?” Brandes: “Because every time I shag your wife, she gives me a biscuit”... 

Licenced today: Prospect Cottage, once the home of film-maker Derek Jarman, Dungeness, Kent…

Epiphany kiss...

The Morrisons delivery van has been and gone, and my groceries are put away. Because one item was unavailable, something similar was substituted. Instead of the Crispy Cod Drumsticks I was planning to have for tea, I got two tickets to the opera. No complaints.

According to the caption for this pic, by Angelo Carconi, “Pope Francis kisses a statue of the Christ child as he celebrates the Epiphany mass in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome." Nothing creepy about that, right?… 

Home delivery...

A new experience for me: my first home delivery from Morrisons - who else? - will hopefully arrive tomorrow lunchtime. The pic is of the Morrisons in Goole: the only supermarket I know which incorporates an old windmill…

Original sin...

In a show of legal retrospection, aimed at “righting the wrongs of the past”, convictions for consensual homosexual activity, under now-abolished laws, are due to be pardoned by Priti Patel and “wiped from the records”. This might also be an appropriate moment to revisit the ‘cold case’ of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, whose ‘crime’ - of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge - looks very much like entrapment. The time is right, I reckon, to restore the first pair’s tarnished reputations. Let the records show that Adam and Eve were guilty of nothing more than ‘scrumping’… which means we can do without the vile construction of ‘original sin’ as well.

Exhibit A, for the defence, a tempting choice of delicious apples…

Islamophobia...

One problem with Islam - one problem out of many - is the Muslim insistence that they are entirely correct, in every particular of their religious beliefs, and that everybody else must therefore be entirely wrong. There is no tradition, in Islam, for subjecting the Quran to any kind of critical re-assessment. That would mean criticising the creator of the universe, who they insist wrote every word, and that isn’t going to happen. The figure of Mohammed, too, is considered to be impervious to criticism.

Literary ‘perfection’ for the Quran, moral ‘perfection’ for Mohammed: these two convictions, when juxtaposed, create a perfect barrier to constructive dialogue. In an article in today’s Guardian, Shada Islam argues against the “racism”, “Islamophobia” and “anti-Islamic political discourse” around Europe. She decries the “diatribes conflating Islam, extremism and terrorism”, while denying that this divisive and intolerant faith has any case to answer.

Licenced today: a Yodel delivery van… 

Unvaccinated by choice...

More than 90% of seriously ill people in hospital with covid are unvaccinated. And not merely unvaccinated, but unvaccinated by choice. In America, this means that Republicans are dying in greater numbers than Democrats, and that anti-vaxxers - and those who believe, and promote, the wilder conspiracy theories - are removing themselves from the gene pool by their own volition. They may view their vaccine refusal as 'freedom', but it’s a 'freedom' that’s leaving so many of them incapacitated or worse. And, of course, they aren’t considering the burden they’re placing on the doctors and nurses who have to treat them, intubate them, give them palliative care and, all too often, make that difficult phone-call to tell relatives that their loved one has died.

Licenced last week: the Land of Nod is ten minute's drive from Asselby...

Sales & revenue...

Pope Francis has used his new year’s message to call for an end to violence against women, saying it was an insult to God. “To hurt a woman”, he said, “is to insult God, who from a woman took on our humanity - not through an angel, not directly, but through a woman”. Whenever the pope speaks about any current issue - especially one as important as violence against women - I feel a bit queasy. The man who has presided over the clerical abuse of children, while attempting to keep the issue discreetly in-house, also speaks of children as “the little ones”. There’s something about his choice of words which makes my skin crawl… 

Leicester Market: my last licence of 2021 (sales increased by 16% on 2020, revenue by 11%: not too shabby)…