1966...

I listened to a celebration yesterday, on Radio 5, about England’s World Cup win. It was a bit overblown (“the greatest day in England’s sporting history”, the event was unblushingly proclaimed), and padded out with songs from 1966, reinterpreted by the singers and bands of today. Danny Baker went off-script, pointing out that if Germany decided to celebrate their World Cup wins, they’d be putting up the bunting about every eight years…

The pond at Nun Monkton, near York...

Fifty years of hurt...

Today, July 30th, is, gulp, the 50th anniversary of England winning the World Cup at Wembley (the only international tournament we’ve ever won). Aged fifteen in 1966, I was in the lakes with my dad, and we didn’t have a TV. So we walked up Ghyll Head Road and called in on elderly neighbours to watch the match. He was diabetic and, halfway through the game, complained of double vision (he could see 22 players on either side). His wife reacted quickly, gave him a couple of sugar lumps and he was soon back to normal. I can’t remember anything at all about the game itself: the hat-trick by Geoff Hurst, the famous commentary by Kenneth Wolstenholme, the toothless grin of Nobby Stiles, or the post-match celebrations. Good anecdote, eh?…

The high-maintenance gardens at Levens Hall..

More Olympic nonsense...

According to an article in the Guardian, athletes competing in Rio must “break ties with sponsors who are not official partners of the Olympics from today until three days after Rio 2016 - or face sanctions”. This is to avoid ‘ambush marketing’ and to ensure that official sponsors - such as McDonald’s and Coca Cola - get their money’s-worth. Nobody, apparently, is allowed to mention “Olympic-related terms” on social media: these include words such as 2016, Rio, gold, silver, bronze, medal, effort, performance, challenge, summer, games, sponsors, victory and, of course, Olympics. This has just taken my interest in the games down another notch. The IOC should spend more time trying to stop competitors cheating rather than trying to control the language. And ‘medal’ is a noun… not a verb…

Levens Hall...

Spent a few hours photographing Levens Hall, inside and out. The interior isn't very interesting - like a Harvester restaurant decorated with suits of armour - but the topiary gardens, laid out in 1690, are spectacular...

Floral and Hardy...

Shop names featuring puns don't often make me laugh... but this one does. It's in the Market Place, Ulverston, the birthplace of Stan Laurel...

Solar flight...

What a fantastic achievement! Having touched down in Abu Dhabi, Solar Impulse 2 has completed the first round-the-world flight by a solar-powered aeroplane. It’s a strange-looking craft, with a wingspan greater than a Boeing 747, and 17,000 solar cells mounted on the wings. A quarter of the plane’s weight is taken up with batteries, which store the solar energy during the daytime, and provide the motive power to turn the propellers at night. The plane could, in theory, stay airbourne almost indefinitely, but the pilot needs to recuperate after each leg of the flight. In the unheated and unpressurised cabin there’s only a single seat, which, I read, doubles up as a toilet.

The plane may be impractical in its present form, but year-on-year the technology will improve. Batteries, in particular, will get smaller and smaller. I’m cheered whenever I see power being generated by wind and wave and sunlight. It means we’re heading in the right direction…

Astley Hall...

Olympics...

So there’ll be no blanket ban on Russian athletes competing in Rio; the baton has been passed instead to individual federations to make decisions about their own sports. They’ll have to be quick, since the games start in just a few days.

My faith in the integrity of Olympic sports has been ebbing away for years. If you can’t take the results at face value, then it’s hard to maintain an interest in even the high-profile events. Years ago I wrote about splitting the games into two: ‘drugs-free’ and ‘drugs-enabled’. In the latter category the athletes would be able to take all the drugs they wanted... but to claim their medals they would have to be alive, well and able to climb the podium unaided. No posthumous medals would be awarded. My idea was only a joke, but I’ve heard something similar being suggested quite recently.

The Olympic Games are insanely expensive to stage, and all for less than three weeks of competition. Get it wrong - like Montreal in 1976 or Athens in 2004 - and the city may be paying off the debt for generations to come. And the talk of “legacy” is so much hot air. All over the world there are empty stadia, surplus to sporting requirements and rotting away. What a waste!

If I was king of the world I’d stop awarding the games to a different city every four years. It’s time for the Olympic caravan to come to a halt. I know the perfect venue for a scaled-down sporting festival. Olympia, in Greece (the clue’s in the name). We could get back to simple events: running, jumping and throwing things (so no golf or dressage or synchronised swimming), with the victors being crowned with a wreath of laurel leaves. Competing in the nude? I don’t know; I haven’t thought it through yet…