I’m not outraged, I’m barely even surprised…

Over the last few months we’ve been joyfully re-viewing the whole boxset of The West Wing. In one episode, the White House Press Secretary C.J.Cregg was asked about Something Very Bad Happening in Saudi Arabia, and she replied

I’m not outraged, I’m barely even surprised

This almost exactly sums up my detached, unimpressed, resigned state of mind regarding Lance Armstrong.

I was going to wait until after his full interview with Oprah Winfrey, but it’s become clear to me this morning that there’s not a whole lot my words can add to the discussions. I’d recommend you look to excellent writers and journalists like CNN’s Bonnie Ford, The Sunday Times’ David Walsh, or the BBC’s Matt Slater. Nevertheless, for the record, this is What I Reckon…

The Look of Someone Who Knows Something…

I worshipped Armstrong during his career. I discovered the TDF in the 1980s as Greg Lemond rose to the top, Miguel Indurain then dominated, and Lance was the next hero. His story and his performances were amazing. That look he gave Ullrich, the improvised ride across the field, everything. I kind of resented L’Equipe and those who constantly sniped and sought to knock him, just because he was better than all the French riders. Except he wasn’t. He was a cheat, and more than that, a (now self-confessed) bully. He perjured himself under oath on countless occasions, won damages in courts by lying, earned millions in sponsorship and inspired a generation. Except he lied, over and over again.

I read “It’s not about the bike” last summer under the cloud of accusations and imminent publication of USADA evidence. Almost immediately afterwards I read David Millar’s autobiography, and the differences between the two books and men couldn’t be more clear.

When I read Armstrong’s book I was immediately struck throughout that it was a very partial version of his story, told on his terms, to create the memory and legacy he wanted. So many people he mentioned were described as “very good friends”. It’s as though the only people he ever met were very good friends. Anyone else simply isn’t important, or even worthy of comment. You’re either with him, or you’re nobody. This has been reiterated in the Oprah interview, in which she named all the names and he responded. Pretty much only George Hincapie emerged as a “good friend”. I wonder how George feels about that.

In complete contrast, David Millar lays everything out, from the doping to disagreements with Bradley Wiggins, from his own hero worship of Lance, to being ignored later. Millar talks openly about how his long journey to the dark side started, with vitamins and iron tablets, then injections, then everything else. He talks about the shame he brought on everyone who supported him, including Dave Brailsford, who was in the restaurant when he was arrested. Even now on Twitter he talks about what he has lost (his gorgeous house in Biarritz), and acknowledges that’s all his own fault. He describes his duty as an ex-doper to educate the sport and its leaders as well as new riders.

Armstrong doesn’t seem to accept, understand or even seem like he’s lost anything. He seems proud of his life, of his achievements. His tweets immediately following the publication of the USADA dossiers said he’s “unaffected” and merely linked to more news about his charity raising pots of cash for cancer. A few weeks later he came over all American Psycho and posted this stunningly arrogant picture:

It feels to me that he has felt his legacy isn’t about the bike. It’s all about the cancer. Because he can control that story. In that story he’s a hero.

But now, in a twist that even a hack Hollywood script couldn’t begin to justify, he now seems to blame the cancer for his behaviour; it was the cancer that made him a bully, that made him destroy fellow riders in the peloton who dared speak out against doping, that made him call his own soigneuse a whore and trash her name through the courts.

I don’t even begin to know what he hopes will happen now. He seemed to throw a line to the cycling authorities about testifying in the context of ‘truth and reconciliation’. He’s barely said sorry, merely admitted that he has done things wrong. But in his own mind that doesn’t actually mean cheating, merely doing what he had to, to achieve a “level playing field”. In that moral universe, does that mean I could steal money to put me on a level playing field with the very rich?

I was given Bradley Wiggins’ book My Time for Christmas, and while it’s certainly not the greatest work on the subject ever published, it again highlights the ‘unusual’ psyche of Lance Armstrong. Wiggins, like Millar and others before him, and the tremendous documentary Chasing Legends, recognises throughout everything he says how cycling is a team sport. Dirty or clean, no man can get through the Tour de France without a lot of people to help; team-mates prepared to sacrifice themselves for the team, support cars, coaches, drivers, mechanics, soigneurs, doctors, physios, management and sponsors.

Now on the one hand, that entourage that surrounded Armstrong during the years he was systematically doping must include people who knew what was going on, and haven’t come clean. More to the point, the sport of cycling then was so riddled with doping on every level, it seems impossible that the authorities were completely ignorant. I’m hoping some of this might even come out in the second part of the the Lance/Oprah broadcast…

…but on the other hand, I’m not holding my breath. From the very start, from the first words of his first book Lance Armstrong has told his side of the story, and it’s a story that focuses entirely on himself. With near psychopathic clarity he seems oblivious to ‘normal’ morality, and utterly lacking in empathy. He is a liar and a cheat on a massive, almost sociopathic scale. He was my hero, but I hope this is my last word on him. He doesn’t deserve any more of my time. I’ll point my daughters to newer role models.

Bonnie Ford’s piece for ESPN at the time of the USADA dossier is a brilliantly detached, but very sad summary. Case closed.

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Bicycle races are coming your way…

It was only by complete chance that we even knew the Critérium was happening in Quillan that weekend. We’d driven virtually 1,000 miles from our home in Gloucestershire to the far South West of France, and were sitting in a local neighbourhood restaurant in Esperaza, quite excited to learn that Friday night in La Frite Normande is“Moules Marinières Frites – A Volonté” (all you can eat Mussels & Chips). As I nipped inside to use the facilities, I saw a poster advertising an event for the next Sunday, in the next town just a few km away. And I got even more excited.

Quillan is about the same size as Cirencester; not very big, with a population of no more than 5-10,000. Imagine Bradley Wiggins coming to take part in a cycling race around and through the town centre. That’s what was going on in the Critérium, except the French version of Wiggo is Thomas Voeckler, cycling pro extraordinaire and recently-crowned King of The Mountains in the 2012 Tour de France. And as France wasn’t experiencing the same glorious Olympic Summer as the UK, he’s as big a name as they have right now.

Having been avid followers of the Tour de France, “Little Tommy Voeckler” (as some of the ITV commentators jokingly called him) was already a bit of a legend in our household. For our daughters, he was only a small step behind the likes of Wiggo and Mark Cavendish.

View over Quillan from (most of the way up) the Col du Portel

We arrived in Quillan not knowing what to expect. The town is nestled between some impressive mountains, and indeed a climb in the Tour de France started there earlier in the summer. Our anticipation rose even more driving into town, as we passed Thomas Voeckler himself riding out on a warm-up. The town centre was effectively closed, but once we’d paid our entry fee (£20 for the family), we wandered around the town in a bit of a daze until we got the hang of how it all worked…

It seemed quite amateurish, really. Grass-roots cycling but with added celebrities. About 40 riders took part, with slightly more than half selected from local and regional amateur cycling groups, riding alongside members of the major professional teams, with a few star names dropped in to attract the crowds (and no doubt some useful appearance money). All the riders seemed to be operating for the day out of the back of an estate car, getting changed in the main square’s car park and fixing equipment. The riders were completely accessible; we just wandered up to several to get autographs, and they were all really willing to chat.

The course went down the main high street, over a bridge, back around a very tight corner over another very old and narrow bridge, down a back street/straight and around to the start. The race ran for 75 laps of just over 1.1km each, which meant if you missed the peloton flying around 1 lap, you barely had to wait 90 seconds for them to come around again. It was like seeing the Olympic Torch, but without all the sponsors’ vehicles, and with the torch going around and around and around.

From a fairly quiet start, the atmosphere in the town built pretty quickly. The roadside bars were all packed, the pavements quickly became crowded around the finish line and the key corners getting on and off the medieval bridge.

I’m sure the riders use events like these for sprinting practice or interval training. Every few laps a different group would break away from the peloton, only to fall back a few laps later. With the main street barely 300m long, there’s no chance anyone could genuinely escape.

By the finish the streets were genuinely packed. We’d seen Thomas Voeckler change his own wheel. We cheered like mad for a local rider who was eventually dropped by the gradual acceleration in the race. We marvelled at the riders’ skills in negotiating the incredibly tight corners, and remarked at the amazing roll-call of previous winners (Jacques Anquetil, Charly Mottet, Richard Virenque). We enjoyed the sophisticated lap-counter…

This was one of the highlights of my year, let alone just our (excellent) holiday. Grass-roots cycling with genuine professional stars. Watching this sort of sport right up close and personal (just about) made up for not seeing any of the Olympics. It wasn’t a surprise that M. Voeckler took the prize, but it was a delight to see him spend so long being interviewed on the podium afterwards, showing genuine thanks and respect for the fans who came to spectate and his fellow riders.

I’ve put more photos of the event on my Facebook page

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The Olympic Games are for the world and all nations must be admitted to them…

Important Notice

Just in case you were confused, while this blog post refers extensively to the journey of the Olympic Torch around the UK, to the 2012 Olympic Games and to previous games, I am in no way associated with those games. I am NOT an official sponsor, nor do I hope to profit in any way from the Olympic Games, except to be thrilled, uplifted and inspired by my fellow humans running faster, jumping higher, being stronger.

Back in May, when the Olympic torch started its journey around the UK, I was fairly cynical. I was looking forward to the games being hosted here in the UK. I am very proud for our country. But  there were lots of things that didn’t feel right, and in some ways, when I went to see the torch come through Cirencester, I was right.

1. The presence of sponsors was significant and distracting: flags and buses, brightly-dressed staff handing out stuff and whooping the crowds up. It seemed as though it was more about them and how brilliant they were than anything to do with the Olympics, and definitely felt a bit uncomfortable to me, but on the other hand, noone else seemed that bothered. At the start of this there was a great deal of press attention about torch-carriers being asked to pay for their torch, then selling them on eBay. At the time my reaction was “whatever”, and it appears I was not alone.

2. There have been some very odd commercial decisions about ‘celebrity’ torch-bearers. I applaud the use of athletes alongside local celebrities and especially ‘ordinary’ people nominated by their communities. But in Taunton, will.i.am carried the torch. Forgive me, but (a) he’s not from round here, (b) he’s got nothing to do with sport, (c) he’s only in this country because he’s paid to be a TV show host…
My reaction to this is unchanged 2 months on: how would you feel if you’d nominated your mum who’s been a lollipop lady for 50 years and she missed out to will.i.am (with all due respect to Mr .am)? I know why these decisions were made, I just don’t like them much.

3. For all the slick commercialism, the communications on the afternoon were pretty ramshackle. It was a gorgeous hot day (perhaps the last one until this week!), but noone seemed to know what was going on. The torch was apparently running late, but the buzz in the crowd ranged from 20 minutes to 45 minutes. The elderly ladies next to me were getting tired standing for so long in the heat. Noone seemed to know exactly why it was late. Some said it was Didier Drogba in Swindon who delayed things, others just shrugged. Either way, despite the hoards of staff, noone told the crowds anything.

4. Money definitely talks. The restrictions on official sponsors and logos has been astonishing. This exclusivity seems utterly in conflict with the inclusive, universal ambitions of Pierre de Coubertin in this post’s title.

Again, I can understand the aims of these sponsors who have supported the Games with millions of pounds, but the more recent guidelines about the use of language, serving of chips within the Olympic Park and so on are all pretty laughable/unnerving. Luckily, Oddbins are trying to see the funny side.

HOWEVER, the afternoon I spent in Cirencester was enormously uplifting, and reinvigorated my faith in the Olympic Games, held deep from childhood, and why I am twitching like an excited boy waiting for Christmas and the promise of a new bike.

1. The community spirit on display was immense. Apparently 8,000 turned out in Cirencester, roughly equivalent to 50% of the town’s population, or at least a quarter of the local catchment area. The (Grand)Mothers’ Union were set up in the Church porch, distributing free tea and cold drinks to anyone who wanted them on that scorching hot afternoon.

2. The kids were all given the afternoon off school. I feel certain they will remember that day in a way they’ll never remember the final of X-Factor or Britain’s Got Talent. This mattered, and will live on as An Important Event.

3. Cirencester’s not the most diverse community in the UK, but there were all generations and all classes out on that afternoon, and not just because they had been given the afternoon off and it was sunny.

4. When the torch finally arrived, there was genuine excitement right through the crowd, which had nothing to do with the sponsors’ promotional staff clapping their hands or playing upbeat music over a tannoy from their mega-bus. In Cirencester marketplace we saw a paralympic athlete in a wheelchair, who had been preceded by a teenager. It did feel like everyone mattered and that, for today at least, we weren’t cheering reality TV stars. When the sponsors’ “caravan” arrived, it did remind me of the Tour de France (which, despite my deep love, is also pretty much all about the sponsors) with a big lift for the crowds, then a genuine buzz as it flies past for a few brief seconds.

Some of the most iconic moments from my life have been about the Olympics..

• The epic rivalry between Seb Coe & Steve Ovett in the 1980s
• Watching Daley Thompson rule the world
• Hearing the commentators run out of words, let alone superlatives, to describe Usain Bolt’s 100m world record in Beijing
• Hearing Alan Green at midnight commenting on Steve Redgrave’s 5th Olympic Gold at Sydney in 2000

I can’t wait for the 2012 Olympic Games to start.

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Shut up, legs!

I have been more than mildly obsessed with the Tour de France in the past three weeks. Now that Bradley Wiggins has become the first Briton to win this epic sporting marathon, especially devastating his rivals in the time-trials, and Mark Cavendish proven himself to (still) be (probably) the fastest sprinter in the world, and both Chris Froome and David Millar also won stages, apparently the whole of the UK has taken the sport to its heart. I can genuinely hardly wait for the Olympic Road Race this coming Saturday and Time Trial next Wednesday.

Life is so busy at the moment that I’ve barely had time to gather my thoughts or compile anything more coherent. But with the Olympic Games ready to start on Friday, please accept this slightly haphazard but honest collection of reasons why I still think the Tour de France is the greatest sporting spectacle of them all.

Team SKY… much as it pains me to shower adulation on anything sponsored by Rupert Murdoch’s money, I have nothing but admiration for everything Dave Brailsford and his teams, and especially the awesome riders of Team Sky have achieved.

The spirit, teamwork & discipline they all demonstrated during three gruelling weeks of this last Grand Tour is astonishing. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, from Chris Froome waiting for his team leader when he quite clearly was the strongest man on the mountain to Mark Cavendish, the reigning world champion and TdF Green Jersey (remember?!), taking turns to collect drinks and food for his team-mates, and accepting there would be no lead-out train for his sprint finish.

The collective ability and execution of a plan was breathtaking. Team Sky utterly dominated the race at virtually every stage, dictating how stages might be won, and usually by whom. They were the Chuck Norris of this year’s race. Maybe it got predictable, but it was truly awesome.

Bradley Wiggins is a champion. Having made his mark with Olympic medals on the track, it has taken him 4 years to become the leading force on the road. Fastest in the time trials by a country mile, he has also become a fearsome climber. He doesn’t have the explosive change of pace, but he does have the ability and confidence in his ability to stay with almost anyone, and more importantly, to pace himself at such a rate that he can outlast anyone. And then on the final two days of the tour, when previous champions would be staying out of trouble, he led out the sprint train for Mark Cavendish.

The final stage finishes with a helter-skelter series of 8 circuits around the Champs-Elysées in Paris, and it’s always a bun-fight of teams fighting to get their sprinters to the front for the last frantic charge for the line. TV coverage showed the Team Sky instructions from the car: get Bradley on the front from 1km… And so, at 1,100m from the finish, Wiggins took charge, leaving the other teams for dead, taking Cavendish and his team-mate Edvald Boassen-Hagen in his wake. EB-H (the Norwegian national champion and a mean sprinter in his own right) negotiated the two final corners, slipstreaming Cavendish into a clear lead before he even started his final sprint.

I will never tire of watching this.

Cycling is an team sport focused on individuals. Wiggins is the Team Sky ‘leader’, and the team is entirely geared to his success; getting him in the right place, protecting him from peloton crashes, pacing other teams and their leaders out of the race, helping up the difficult climbs. In what other sport do world-class athletes recognise themselves as “domestiques”, whose job is to follow orders, ‘bury themselves’ for their team and do a job that goes against all their natural self-instincts. Froome could have won the final mountain stage, but stayed to ride with Wiggins. Mark Cavendish stoically remarked “it’s like playing Wayne Rooney in defence…” of his team role. I doubt Mr Rooney would accept that role with such good grace, commitment and sacrifice.

Jens Voight. I’ve waxed lyrical about his attitude representing everything I love about pro cyclists. Nearly 41, he’s the oldest man in the peloton, but towards the end of the 3 weeks, and indeed in the final few laps of the Champs-Elysées, he was leading a break. He knew there was little chance of success, but he did it anyway. Time and again he stretched men 10 years younger with lung-busting, leg-crippling power. More than these physical exploits, I love his searing honesty. Halfway through the Tour, he gave a brilliant interview. Barely 48 hours later, his team leader, Frank Schleck tested positive for a prohibited substance. The spectre of doping leaves a heavy, heavy shadow over the Tour. Effectively door-stepped outside his bus, Jens said the only thing he could say. In this 90 seconds you can hear all his personal conflicts as a long-time friend is under suspicion. As Ned Boulting says “there’s never a bad time to talk to Jens Voight”.

ITV’s coverage is simply brilliant. With decades of experience, commentators like Phil Ligett, Ned Boulting, Chris Boardman and Matt Rendell provide a fantastic, on-the-ground view of the event. Interviews with riders moments after finishing, in-depth access to the more arcane arts of road racing which never talks down to the novice viewer but is constantly interesting enough for the experts.

The Tour de France has the best arena in all sport. Forget the Birds’ Nest Stadium, Monaco Grand Prix or London Marathon. France is an astonishingly dramatic country, and the organisers of the Tour know they have a job to promote its regions. Everywhere the regions turn out for the Tour and pay large sums to be a prestigious host town for a stage finish. Most impressively, I love all the efforts made by farmers…

Seriously, I think my perfect summer job might be to be a cameraman inside the Tour de France helicopter. That would be a great way to spend July…

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Who’s winning…?

It still doesn’t seem that long since last summer when I exalted in England becoming the No.1 ranked Test Cricket nation in the world. We had just demolished a bedraggled Indian team – the previous No.1 – in a series of tests held in England. India have subsequently been humbled again in Australia, while the England team seemed to take an extended holiday, well-deserved after their amazing progress in the last few years. By the end of the summer of 2011, England had several of the top-ranked batsmen and bowlers in the world and the team was on an irrepressible run of form. They had won 16 out their last 25 tests, losing just 3.

It’s a well-worn cliché among test cricket aficionados that those less familiar with the intricacies of this 5-day spectacle often ask…

Who’s winning?

to which there is no easy answer. It just doesn’t work like that. It really is more complicated than that.

…until the recent series between England and Pakistan, held in the United Arab Emirates. Pakistan came into this having suffered an extended pounding over the atrocious match-fixing scandals, several years of controversy over captains, disputes in the dressing-room, and poor (or at least inconsistent) results – most notably in England in 2010, when they lost 3 test matches heavily and were bowled out for under 100 on three occasions.

On 17th January 2012, England won the toss and decided to bat on what seemed a good pitch. By lunch they were 52-5, and by the end of Day 3 they had lost by 10 wickets. A week later and England seemed to bounce back. They were largely in control of the 2nd test, and just before the end of Day 3 needed 145 to win. By the end of that day they had struggled to 39-4, and capitulated to 72 all out. Another week later, and the bowlers again performed, skittling Pakistan for just 99, but again Pakistan were victorious for a 3-0 series whitewash.

Who’s winning? Well, whenever England were bowling, we looked pretty good, except for one day in the final match when Azhar Ali and Younis Khan played with exemplary skill and patience to blunt our attack and sap our will. When England were batting, there was only ever one side in it. The Pakistani spinners made us look very ordinary, and especially the middle order of Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell and Eoin Morgan.

Apparently a good player doesn’t become a bad player overnight. These three batsmen have made a case to be acclaimed as exceptions to the rule in recent weeks.

• In the 2010/2011 Ashes series, Pietersen and Bell scored 689 runs in 5 tests at an average of 63
• In 2011 against Sri Lanka, Pietersen, Bell & Morgan scored 661 runs in 3 tests, averaging 83
• In 2011 against India, the threesome scored 1,231 runs in 4 tests, averaging 77 (Bell & Pietersen both hit a double-hundred; Morgan also scored a century)
• In this last series against Pakistan, they combined for just 200 runs in 18 innings during the 3 tests at an average of just 11. Their highest score was 32, they only managed double figures 8 times in those 18 ‘efforts’, they only achieved one partnership of more than 15 runs in the series. They were outscored by bowlers Graeme Swann and Stuart Broad, who scored 210 runs in 12 innings and also managed to take 26 wickets during the series.

By almost any reckoning this is a pretty catastrophic performance and more than reflects the difference between the teams. Effectively only one of the three turned up for these matches. Compared to recent series, England might as well have played with only 9 batsmen. They seemed clueless against the spin of Ajmal and Rehman. Bell has subsequently been ‘rested/dropped’ for the upcoming One-Day Internationals, while KP has been given a chance to regain his mojo by opening the batting. Morgan must be going through his contacts looking for spinners he can get some practice against.

They’ve not become bad players, but they’ll never be thought of as great players if they can’t (re)learn how to bat against all bowlers on all surfaces.

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England are best in the world at a team sport: this is not a misprint…

England don’t often top the world at team sports, despite producing individual sportsmen and women of awesome talent. Since the Glory Days of 1966, England’s football team has occasionally flattered to deceive, but mostly stuttered and disappointed. England won the Rugby World Cup in 2003, and have flirted with the top since then, but never quite sustained those performances. Even a year ago, England’s cricket team was only ranked 5th in the rankings.

Back in January I was overjoyed when England retained The Ashes in Australia for the first time in 25 years. That five-match series ended 3-1 to England, which by no means told the whole story of a gripping 6 weeks of sport. Today England completed a 4-0 whitewash of India (until a few weeks ago the top-ranked cricket test team in the world). England have replaced them as the best team in the world.

Unlike the Ashes, the 4-0 scoreline does pretty much tell the story of this series. England outplayed India in every respect, and barring a few sessions of play, this was the most one-sided series I can remember since England were humiliated in Australia in 2007. It has tested all my English reserve in not revelling ‘too much’ in this victory, but, well…

…there are plenty of reasons why England have become the best test cricket team in the world.

England’s bowling attack made great batsmen look ordinary, and has strength in depth more than any other team. To win test matches you have to take 20 wickets. England have taken 8o Indian wickets in 4 matches, while India took just 47 English wickets. Broad and Bresnan have taken 41 wickets by themselves at barely 15 runs apiece. Let’s not forget that Tim Bresnan came in as a replacement for the injured Chris Tremlett. Until this afternoon, Graeme Swann (apparently the 3rd best bowler in the world according to the latest ICC rankings) was a bit-player in the series. England now have 3 of the Top 5 and 5 of the Top 11 bowlers.

England have spirit and self-belief that means they can rescue a bad situation. Perhaps dating back to Cardiff in 2009, when Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar held out for 11 overs to rescue a draw against Australia, England have cultivated this tremendous quality. Test cricket is played over 5 days, eventually every team has a bad session. But the ability to persevere and believe you can change the situation is invaluable.

I was at the 4th day at Lords in the first test, and watched Ishant Sharma bowl a terrific spell to reduce England from 50-1 to 65-5. This wasn’t in the plan at all. But then Matt Prior and Stuart Broad scored 160 runs and took the game away from India in just a couple of hours. At Trent Bridge India led by 40 runs with plenty of 1st innings wickets in hand, but ended up losing by 319 runs overall. This was because of

(a) Stuart Broad… Named man of the series for taking 25 wickets at under 14 runs apiece, and scoring 182 runs in 4 innings at virtually a run a ball. Remember that before the series started, it had taken him 10 tests to take 25 wickets, and had scored only a handful of runs. At Lords he and Matt Prior took the game away when India threatened a recovery. At Trent Bridge he and Graeme Swann took England from 124-8 to over 200, then he took a hat-trick to restrict India’s lead. He dismissed Sachin Tendulkar three times. An amazing rebirth for a cricketer of undoubted talent…

(b) Tim Bresnan… A replacement for Tremlett, he ‘came off the bench’ to score 154 runs in 3 knocks and take 16 wickets.

(c) Ian Bell… who has come of age as a genuine world-class talent. In this series he switched to No.3 when Jonathon Trott was injured, and scored over 450 runs. Since the Boxing Day test in South Africa in 2009, he’s scored over 1,800 runs, averaging over 85, including 7 centuries.

(d) Kevin Pietersen… Before The Ashes series last winter, he was being written off as a busted flush. He top scored in this series, taking over as a run machine if Alastair Cook occasionally failed. He has mixed hard graft with extravagant technique, which makes him hard to bowl at…

(e) er, all of the above and more. It is true that the current England team is more than the sum of its considerable parts. We may have to start thinking of this as a team of true superstars, but they don’t behave like the Galacticos of Real Madrid. 3 players hit a double century in this series, 4 bowlers had a ‘five-for’ innings. I’ve not even mentioned how good Matt Prior has been both behind and in front of the stumps. Nobody averaged under 18 with the bat. Everyone has contributed, and often in significant ways.

The key challenge for England will be to maintain and prove their position. India were pretty woeful throughout this series, with only Raoul Dravid performing to his wonderful career heritage. Zaheer Khan was injured, but his replacements weren’t up to it. Sehwag was injured, then rushed back before he was fully fit. Others who had starred in recent series were tired, deflated or out of form, simply taken apart by England.

More importantly, England’s ascent to the summit has been on the back of several series wins in England. They may have only lost 4 of their last 31 tests, but to truly lead the cricketing world, they need to win in India, and to beat South Africa, whom they haven’t played since 2009, and whom still boast the best batsman in Jacques Kallis and the fearsome bowling attack of Steyn and Morkel. But if they can maintain their focus, collective and individual performance and team spirit, these should be challenges to relish and feel confident about.

It has been a terrific year for following the England test team. I’m looking forward to the future, and loving the feeling of being World Number 1…

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Boing! Boing!

There’s nothing quite like an afternoon of sport where multiple games take place simultaneously, and yesterday’s ‘Survival Sunday’ was no exception. Five teams were in danger of being relegated from the English Football Premiership, but only two would actually go down. The drama across the country was amazing, and the BBC Radio 5 Live commentary, switching between the grounds, captured the tension, jubilation and despair brilliantly. With minutes remaining, goals were going in, fans, players and managers were discovering how their fate was being affected by others. Tremendous.

I’ve supported West Bromwich Albion since I was child in the mid-1970s. At that time Liverpool were dominant in England, winning the League Title 8 times in 11 years. Everyone supported Liverpool in my school. But for some reason, I liked West Brom. I’m not sure if I was just being contrary, but there was something about them that appealed. Perhaps it was the so-called Three Amigos – Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Brendan Batson – who were a rare sight in English football in the 1970s, three black top-flight players. They regularly suffered abuse from rival fans, but were legends for West Brom. Regis was a brilliant centre-forward, and Cunningham a truly gifted player with silky skills. Future England Captain Bryan Robson, and stalwarts like Ally Brown, John Wile and Derek Statham, not to mention their flamboyant manager Ron Atkinson, made The Baggies a force to be reckoned with.

It seemed for a brief moment in 1978/79 that they might even threaten to challenge the dominance of Liverpool. West Brom were second for most of the season, flirted with the top for a week, and only finished third by losing the last two games of the season. But it was mostly downhill for a long time from there.

West Brom’s supporters have traditionally celebrated goals with hilarious ‘boing boing’ bouncing, and this motif has seemingly been adopted by the club in recent years, by bouncing between the top two tiers of English football; getting promotion from The Championship into The Premiership, only to suffer relegation the following year.

In the era of The Premiership, West Brom have been in the top flight for 5 seasons and relegated 4 times, only surviving in 2005 with ‘the great escape’ on the last day. They were bottom midway through the season, at one point 8 points from safety. On the last day of the season they were still bottom. They won the final game, but still needed other results to help them out.

I remember that afternoon pretty clearly. I was in the garden with the radio on, it was bright, warm and sunny, and my mood swept from resignation to optimism to despair to exhiliration in about 30 minutes. I never want to experience that again.

Typically West Brom play lovely football, but leak goals like a sieve.  This season started in a familiar fashion, as we lost 6-0 to Chelsea on the opening day. However, only a few weeks later there was a glimmer of hope that this season would finally be different, as we beat Arsenal at The Emirates. For a few weeks were dizzy in the Top 5, but by February we were sliding into the Bottom 5, and we sacked our manager.

Roy Hodgson had achieved great things at Fulham, but nothing in a bitter spell at Liverpool. He was appointed with the sole task of Keeping West Brom Up. 13 games later, and we’re only goal difference away from finishing 10th. Hodgson’s record compared to what went before is terrific:

First 9 games: Won 4, Drawn 3, Lost 2. GF 13, GA 16 … a terrific start (15pts/27, 4th in the table)

Next 15 games: Won 3,  Drawn 2, Lost 10. GF 18, GA 31 …oh dear (11pts/45, slumped to 16th)

Hodgson (last 13 games): Won 5, Drawn 6, Lost 2. GF 25 / GA 23 … what a recovery (21pts/39, secure in 10th)

The difference this year has been (apart from The Hodgson Effect), in my mind, down to three  further things…

1. Scoring Goals: in previous seasons, we’ve never scored even a goal a game. This year we’ve scored 56, and only 3 teams have scored more than our 26 goals away from home . Peter Odemwingie scored 15 goals on his own, more than any player from Liverpool, Spurs or Chelsea. According to the Performance Stats, he has been the 7th best player in the entire league.
2. Resilience: we’ve continued to leak goals: indeed we’ve only kept 2 clean sheets in 38 games. But this season we’ve come behind from losing positions to draw 9 times and win 6 games, when in previous years we would have collapsed. Highlights have included winning from behind against Liverpool, and even on the last day of the season, with nothing but pride to play for, we came from 3-0 down against Newcastle with less than 30 minutes to go to draw 3-3.
3. Getting Results against the top teams: During our last Premiership season in 2008/9, we lost all 12 games against the top 6 teams, scoring just 4 goals while conceding 31. Ouch. This season wasn’t brilliant, but it was a big improvement. 2 wins and 4 draws included those great results against Arsenaland Liverpool, and coming from 2-0 against the eventual champions, Manchester United, to gain a 2-2 draw. West Brom were the only team all season to get a point at Old Trafford.

We’ve got work to do next season, but for now I’m basking in the glow of being ‘comfortably mid-table’ and able to enjoy the terrors of the Final Day of The Season in peace.

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…those blue eyes, like chips of ice…

Well, having diminished my political expectations compared to last year’s naive optimism, it was no surprise but still more than a little depressing to learn that the UK AV Referendum resulted in a strong ‘No’ vote against changing our unrepresentative ‘First Past The Post’ system. The margin was significant enough to mean that this opportunity may well not come again for many years. IMHO, this was doomed to failure from the start. AV is hardly a truly proportional voting system anyway. It was a half-arsed proposal, and this result benefits only David Cameron and the Conservative Party.

But enough of that morose talk… I watched something earlier this week that cheered my soul, bringing back vivid memories of my childhood, and of watching truly iconic moments of sport. Many of these moments, particularly in athletics and football, were voiced by the incomparable David Coleman.

David Coleman was the commentator who created modern sports commentary. He covered football at every level, including ‘that save’ by Gordon Banks in the Mexico World Cup in 1970. He covered athletics at every level, pretty much every sport at the Rome Olympics in 1960 up to Sydney in 2000. He interviewed Prime Ministers and Royalty about their love of sport, he interviewed The Beatles. He was the sole presenter of the BBC’s coverage of the Munich Olympics massacre, with just one camera and almost nothing else to support him. He  pretty much invented ‘Final Score’, hosting Grandstand for more than 10 years, and the videprinter over which he presided was the bringer of joy or despair at the end of a Saturday afternoon.

His knowledge of sport seemed encyclopaedic, as he could cite form statistics, goalscorers, table positions, personal bests seemingly at will from memory. He had a genuine passion for sport. He made it immediate, exciting, and he was the forerunner for everyone who followed him. Steve Cram, a world champion athlete and eventual colleague in the BBC commentary box, has said that if David Coleman thought you ran well, that was better than your coach saying you ran well…

He was evidently quite demanding to work with, and not shy of offering his own opinions, as is evident in this tremendous clip from the 1962 World Cup match between Chile & Italy that Coleman dubbed ‘The Battle of Santiago’.

My clearest and most evocative memories were of his commentaries of the ‘Golden Age’ of British middle-distance running, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. For one amazing summer in 1981 it seemed as though every time they set foot on a track, world records were broken. Coe set 5 world bests that year, while he and Ovett exchanged the World Mile Record three times in 10 days.

One of my favourite sports photos of all time – the final of the 1500m at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Coe had lost the 800m to Ovett days before when he had been expected to win, but got his revenge here over a distance at which Ovett had seemed unbeatable.

This montage of clips features vintage Coleman…

While acknowledged as an inspiration to generations of athletes, viewers and commentators, David Coleman is also a legend for other reasons. His gaffes (perhaps cruelly) became known by Private Eye magazine as Colemanballs. He is at least partly the inspiration for this wonderful comic character of Alan Partridge, whose first incarnation was as a hapless and hopeless sports reporter (quite unlike Coleman’s excellent journalistic pedigree)…

David Coleman retired 10 years ago, but his commentary – passionate, informed, involved and immediate – stands the test of time.

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10 Reasons the Aussies won’t win for a while…

I’m an English sports fan, so I’m not naturally very good at schadenfreude. I don’t tend to get many opportunities to practise, but at 12.56am (GMT) on Friday 7th January 2011, England won the Sydney test match against Australia, concluding a dominant 3-1 series win to retain The Ashes.

’3-1′ doesn’t quite do justice to what actually happened. I’ve been thinking for a few days how I was going to write this piece, until I was alerted to an article written by Will Swanton before the series started, back in November 2010, entitled 10 Reasons the Poms won’t Win. Of course it’s hyperbole and overstated, but you might be able to guess from the title of my piece that I’m revelling in the glory of hindsight to take Mr Swanton’s brave assertions to task and review how England did win The Ashes for the 3rd time in the last 4 series.

1. Overrated

They [England] walked around The Oval after their dominant home summer like they were God’s gifts to Wisden. Here’s who they really beat. No one. Nuffies and cheats. England clean-swept the worst team on the planet, Bangladesh, and then won three out of four Tests against rotten Pakistan. Now they’re portrayed as superstars.

Er, not really. But we did recognise this was perhaps our best chance to win in Australia for a generation. Before the Ashes England were ranked 3rd in the ICC Test Rankings, with 112 points. Australia were 4th with 110. There has been a nice joke going around (among many, many others) in the last couple of days…

What do you call a world-class Australian cricketer? Retired.

2. Kevin Pietersen

He might be growing a moustache for a very good cause but he’s still getting around looking like Dirk Diggler out of Boogie Nights. His most recent Test efforts have been the biggest joke. John Buchanan was right with his assessment of Pietersen. Buchanan was panned because the truth hurt. There’s more than one ‘I’ in Kevin Pietersen and it hurts morale.

It was true that against South Africa and Pakistan in 2009/2010 Pietersen had averaged barely 25 and didn’t score a century during the 12 months before The Ashes, even including 4 tests against Bangladesh. BUT…

…he averaged 60 in The Ashes, scoring more runs in 6 innings than any Australian (except Watson and Hussey) managed in 9 innings. He hit a career-best 227 at Adelaide and was the only batsmen in either side’s top six with a strike rate over 60.

3. No top speedster

Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad and Steve Finn are respectable quicks. But they lack the fear factor. Every truly great attack has someone pushing 150km/h, like Mitchell Johnson does for Australia. None of the touring fast bowlers are frightening. Away from swing and seam-friendly England, that doesn’t leave them with much.

When Mitchell Johnson came out to bat on the last day of the series, The Barmy Army rose to welcome him with their tribute song…

He bowls to the left, he bowls to the right, that Mitchell Johnson – his bowling is shite

In Perth Johnson took 9/82 and blew England away in their first innings with a spell of almost unplayable hostility and venom. In the rest of the series he took 6/472 at nearly 4.5 runs per over. The worst economy rate from the England bowlers was Steve Finn at 4.3, but Anderson, Bresnan and Broad all average under 3 runs per over.

In Sydney England’s bowlers generated swing and movement where Australia could not. Everyone in the English attack took wickets and looked like taking wickets. Across the whole series, England took a wicket every 9 overs, while Australia took nearly 15 overs. The England attack as a whole has become more than the sum of its parts.

4 Passive captain

Andrew Strauss has to lead by example because his introverted demeanour doesn’t get the blood pumping too much. Only his scores do. He leads with quiet assurance when things are going well. But he comes across as introverted and submissive when things start going pear-shaped.

307 runs, 1 century and 3 fifties at 44 made Strauss only the 5th best English batsmen, but just for a moment let’s compare that to Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain. Even including 51* in the dead final innings at Brisbane he scored 113 runs from 8 innings at just 16.1, a worse performance than even the much-maligned Michael Clarke, newcomer Steven Smith and bowler Peter Siddle. After the first innings at Brisbane until Perth, his bowlers took 304 overs to take 6 wickets. His impotency and frustration ultimately led to an ugly on-field row with the umpire.

Just as England are only slowly getting used to winning, Ponting is a distinctly ungracious loser. But he is a loser (3 out of the last 4 Ashes series).

5 No superstars

Pietersen is as good as anyone when he’s in the mood, but he hasn’t been in the mood for a long time. He couldn’t make a hundred against Bangladesh – his 99 was close but no cigar – and Doug Bollinger, Ben Hilfenhaus and Johnson can smell blood. Graeme Swann is the only Englishman to make a world XI right now.England are successful because they know their limitations. Which means there are limitations.

I hope I’ve already dealt with KP… Looking at test performances over 2010 (which includes most of the Ashes), A World XI would be largely made up of Indians and South Africans – they are the best two teams after all. However, Jonathan Trott and Alistair Cook feature well in the top test batsmen, while Jimmy Anderson and Graeme Swann are in with a shout as bowlers from the England squad. No Australians get even close. In fact, only Mike Hussey would get into a Best Ashes XI, let alone anything grander.

6 Over-analysis

They’ve faced bowling machines with footage of Australian speedsters running in at them – and still didn’t want to know about Mitchell Johnson. They’ve given themselves three weeks in Australia to acclimatise but haven’t played on pitches like the monster they’ll encounter at the Gabba. Every breath they take is a part of a suffocating plan. There’s no freedom, nothing instinctive or adventurous. Paralysis by over-analysis.

There’s a famous saying about American Football: ‘offense sells tickets, defence wins championships’. England’s plans are how to take 20 wickets, and prevent the other team from taking 20 wickets. England occupied the crease until the Aussie bowlers wilted and lost discipline (which didn’t take long) and bowled tremendously as a unit. The only paralysis was in the Australian team. Unable to overcome the suffocating English team, they tried to play adventurously and instinctively and they got themselves out, none more amusingly than Shane Watson…

7 No depth

In such a cramped schedule, injuries are bound to hit both camps. England are in serious strife if they lose any of their first XI. There’s a vast gulf between their top-tier players and those on the standby list. Australia can only hope and pray that off-spinner Monty Panesar is called in for Graeme Swann. Australia have eight Test-standard speedsters in the queue.

Rubbish. Tim Bresnan & Chris Tremlett came off the standby list to play 5 tests between them. They took 28 wickets at under 22 runs each, far better than (virtually) all the Australian bowlers, top-tier (sic) or not.

Phil Hughes came in to replace Simon Katich and batted 6 times for just 97 runs. Only 3 Australian bowlers managed an average of under 60, while every England bowler (except the injured Broad) averaged under 40…

8 Chokers

This is England we’re talking about. Losing is a tradition. Think soccer World Cups. Think Tim Henman at Wimbledon. Think every cricket tour of Australia since 1986-87. They always arrive talking themselves up, vowing they won’t wilt under the heat and pressure and scrutiny, then wilt under the heat and pressure and scrutiny. They’ve hired a self-described Yips Doctor – because they need one.

After England lost Captain Strauss for a 3rd ball-duck on the first morning in Brisbane, and conceded over 200 runs on 1st innings, I’m sure Will Swanton was enjoying these words. However, England’s next 2 innings  were worth 1,137/6. After being blitzed on the Gabba, England then bounced back with 1,157 in 2 innings at Melbourne and Sydney, bowling out Australia 4 times for just 917.

After the 1st test, Australia couldn’t manage more than 309 in an innings. Their top 4 wickets only twice made more than 134 in 8 innings. The bowlers were listless and ill-disciplined, lacking bite. There appeared to be no fight from Australia, perhaps the most shocking aspect of the last few weeks. And now they seem to be in denial about it.

9 Warm-ups

Everyone keeps rattling on about England’s perfect preparation. They must be having a laugh. A few of them made runs at Adelaide Oval. It’s like batting on the Hume Highway. Anyone seen the scorecards? Western Australia rolled England for 223. South Australia dismissed them for 288 on the Hume. And Australia A ripped through their top order in Hobart A yesterday. Perfectly prepared? Piffle.

He’s right (at last). The preparation only counts for so much. England won where it mattered.

10 Scars

Five of their top six batsmen are the same lot who stumbled and bumbled through the 5-0 loss on England’s last trip to Australia. The scarring is deep and real. Jimmy Anderson’s memories of Australia are all nightmarish. He averaged 45.16. Broad and Finn are yet to play a Test series in Australia. Hard surfaces jarring bones and muscles, oppressive heat – they won’t know what or who has hit them.

Broad got injured, but bowled 70 overs at less than 2.3 runs per over. Finn took more wickets in 3 tests than any Aussie bowler except Johnson, with a better average than Siddle or Hilfenhaus. Anderson bowled 56 more overs (35% more) than any Aussie pace bowler, taking 24 wickets at less than 26 runs each and 3 runs per over.

Alistair Cook scored almost as many runs as Australia’s No.1, 2 & 3 combined. He scored more centuries than their entire team. Despite 2-3 fewer innings each, England’s top 6 scored 2,290 runs compared to Australia’s 1,722. They achieved 2 double-hundreds, 6 centuries and 10 fifties, compared to just 2 centuries and 11 fifites. Four of the English Top 6 averaged over 60 for the series, against one Australian.

 

Picture from ecb.co.uk

I’ve barely mentioned Matt Prior or Ian Bell (nearly 600 runs at over 50), and only skimmed the surface of Cook’s amazing series. But in the big scheme of things, England are now clearly the 3rd best test team in the world. They must now prove themselves against South Africa and India. But Australia have fallen from 4th to 5th behind Sri Lanka, and it’s hard to see them coming back very quickly. Shame.

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End of a Century…it’s nothing special

It’s almost exactly 19 months since I opened this WordPress account and started blogging. Recently I suggested to another blogger that for his 100th post he should list 100 things he had learnt since starting his blog. He gamely accepted the challenge, so some similar list is the least I can do…

So, looking back so far, a ‘York Notes’ version of What I Reckon (May 2009 – December 2010)

1. Aiming to post 2-3 times a week is a noble aim, but not at 600 words a time.
2. It’s about people (not data segments or clusters or whatever).
3. Don’t try and surf if you can’t easily and smoothly stand up from lying prone on solid ground.
4. Fish are friends, not food.
5. Sometimes sitting down with an icecream is more fun than flying a kite.
6. I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
7. The smell of Birds’ Custard makes me think of Sunday lunch when I was a child.
8. Businesses should stop centralising and get closer to their local communities.
9. Dr John Mislow was a friend of mine a long time ago. His death at 39 is a tragedy.
10. Arthur Honnegger’s ‘Pacific 231’ is a brilliant evocation of the power of the steam train.
11. I really don’t want the BBC to tell me what other people reckon about the news. I want the BBC to tell me the news.
12. Advertising can sometimes produce very moving, powerful campaigns for good.
13. There’s skint, and there’s middle class skint. I know which I am, and I am grateful.
14. The Wire is the best TV series I’ve ever seen, even better than Mad Men.
15. The menu découvert at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons is expensive, but astonishingly good value.
16. I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.
17. Man on Wire is a fantastic biopic, documentary and heist movie all at once.
18. The Merlin Entertainments London Eye is a stunning way to see London, but it was also a soulless corporate experience for me.
19. Stuff takes longer when you’re camping, but in a good way.
20. Marketing is usually the application of common sense.
21. U2 are a brilliant band, and their live shows are tremendous.
22. One of the best things about my week is listening to Filmspotting.
23. Most products can be easily and almost instantly substituted for a functionally identical alternative. The difference is in design, experience and how it makes you feel.
24. Margaret Thatcher was wrong. There is such a thing as society, and it’s not David Cameron’s ‘Big’ version either.
25. This American Life, presented by the peerless Ira Glass, is a marvellous radio show.
26. Queen were a terrific band, and Freddie Mercury the greatest front man of all-time.
27. The mound above Tarn Hows is a wonderful spot to have lunch, looking across to the Langdale Pikes.
28. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is a masterpiece.
29. Social Media isn’t complicated. It’s a conversation. Be interesting, and listen to what other people are saying.
30. Revolutionary Road has much to praise, but ultimately I found it hollow, considerably less than the sum of its parts.
31. The problem with most brands is that they want to talk about themselves all the time.
32. Andy Goldsworthy is a tremendous ‘natural artist’.
33. Sometimes my iPod shuffle command seems to know what it’s doing, and creates playlists of real beauty.
34. The PCC  seems pretty toothless to me.
35. Watching a film on a train can be dangerous. It can leave you utterly unprepared for the real world at the end of the journey.
36. Orange seems to take me for granted. And yet I stay with them. What does that say about #23?
37. The end of The Graduate is the least triumphant happy ending in cinema.
38. A Gary Larson cartoon and a Jack Johnson quote have driven more traffic to my blog than any other post…
39. Real mail is at least as important as email.
40. I wish I was half as cool as Christopher Walken.
41. If you want me to care about you’re supposedly trying to sell, at least pretend like you care about me.
42. There’s something very empty about the same sort of people drinking the same drinks sat at the same tables listening to the same music in ‘chain bars’ all over the country.
43. Did I mention that The Wire is the best TV ever made? Ever.
44. The opening paragraph of Jim Crace’s Quarantine is as good as anything I’ve read in years. The rest of the book is pretty darn great too.
45. Bono learnt a lot of what he knows from Freddie Mercury, except the bit about not taking himself too seriously.
46. ‘Company Policy’ is usually the death-knell to allowing staff to treat customers decently
47. Men, as a rule, hate indiscriminate shopping.
48. Anyone who thinks It’s a Wonderful Life is schmaltzy sentimentality run riot hasn’t been paying attention.
49. In Rainbows is as close to a perfect album as pretty much anything I’ve heard.
50. Everyone wants to be where someone loves them best of all…
51. I got tired of writing about poor customer service, because it doesn’t seem to change anything.
52. Corporate car adverts need to be less boastful about how good their cars are, and pay attention to #41 above…
53. Let us all be Dinosaurs and Lovely Other Dinosaurs together. For the sun is warm. And the world is a beautiful place.
54. The Cluetrain Manifesto is as relevant now as when it was written 11 years ago.
55. I need to review my old posts more often – several video embeds are now defunct…
56. PT Anderson is a brilliant director, probably the best around.
57. I laugh more in an episode of Green Wing than in a whole series of most comedy shows.
58. John Hillcoat’s adaptation of The Road is a fine film, but not quite a masterpiece.
59. Keeping a written record of significant experiences is a lovely way to remind myself that my life is pretty darn fine, actually.
60. Many businesses swing wildly between a plan based on pie-in-the-sky assumptions with no foundation, and analysis-paralysis.
61. BBC 6Music packs in more variety in a day than most commercial stations do in a month.
62. I hoped the UK General Election in May 2010 would lead to positive change. I was half-right.
63. Devon and Cornwall have beaches to rival anywhere in Europe.
64. Many of my favourite songs are under 3 minutes long; perfectly-formed pieces of beautiful art.
65. I truly hoped the Conservative / Lib-Dem coalition would be a progressive force for change in UK politics. I was naive.
66. 2 of my Top 3 films of the last decade are not in English (City of God and The Lives of Others).
67. Sometimes traffic to my blog comes from the most unlikely sources (Lady Gaga?!).
68. Cate Blanchett is one of the most interesting actresses working today.
69. Companies need to care more about their agencies.
70. Uncovering decades-old diaries can be both uplifting and uncomfortable.
71. When you are dancing and laughing and finally living, hear my voice in your head and think of me kindly.
72. Usain Bolt is a greater role-model and champion than any English footballer.
73. The salaries of the 24 players in England’s dismal World Cup squad would pay for over 3,300 British Soldiers.
74. Martin Luther King never spoke in terms of SMART objectives.
75. Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows…
76. Volunteering for The National Trust enables me to meet great people and do some good. Nice.
77. (Despite the doping scandals) The Tour de France is a sporting spectacle like nothing else.
78. There is no political violence, only criminal violence. But this can be state-sanctioned too.
79. Natwest Bank’s ‘Helpful Banking’ campaign is depressingly cautious and underwhelming.
80. Gifford’s Circus is brilliant old-school entertainment.
81. I am incredibly proud of the way my 5-year-old daughter deals with her  nut allergy
82. Anvil! The story of Anvil is as wonderful a love story as you’ll ever see.
83. There is nothing worse in life than being blind in Granada…
84. Roald Dahl is my favourite author for children.
85. Does our ability to overcome nature make us immune to its danger and challenges?
86. It’s really important to believe in your own abilities: you can be better than you’re currently allowed to be.
87. The 24-hour-news cycle means we make mountains out of molehills and forget very quickly.
88. Easyjet are not as bad as they’re made out to be.
89. The Bugle is the perfect antidote to the 24-hour-news-cycle
90. The shared experience of the Twitterati watching Strictly Come Dancing or X-Factor proves that appointment TV viewing is not dead.
91. The Cove is a brilliant and shocking documentary that does for (part of) the Japanese fishing industry what Jamie Oliver has tried to do for battery chicken farming in the UK
92. There is such a thing as too much choice.
93. Long live Jesse Smith’s Butcher in Tetbury and all those like it.
94. Movember is a terrific charity, and it brought our team at work closer together. The power of the Mo is real…
95. Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen is another near-perfect album.
96. I grew a moustache and I liked it (for a month anyway)
97. I’m a French Horn player and proud of it.
98. I’m also proud of this blog. Thanks for reading.
99. Struggling now… as it’s nearly Christmas, can I point you in the direction of my recipe for a lovely festive season?
100. Trying to plan ahead with posts, especially when my blog is reasonably wide-ranging in scope, is important. I get distracted easily and lose focus. Outlining is important, and writer’s block is real.

I hope I can continue to feel proud of this for another 100 posts, and that you can continue to find it interesting. Thanks for reading and supporting my little blog.

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