Three seater

Caroline looked after the grandchildren again today (they were generally in high spirits), while Agnes and I were once more at Medicine Unboxed.

I found myself flagging by mid-afternoon, after a heavily political hour dominated by discussion of the "Semtex suppository inserted in the NHS by the Coalition." Ray Tallis, author of NHS SOS, came up with this and several other pithy phrases to sum up his view that the Health Service wasn't broke when the Tories took over, "and they tried to fix it by blowing it up."

He was supported by Professor Allyson Pollock, laying in to the BBC for its failure to alert the public to what was going on, and the vocal majority of the audience.

Earlier, Jocelyn Pook had talked about her strange compositions, inspired by ansafone messages. I could just about take these on board, but not the pieces consisting of voices running backwards: as with Eduardo Miranda's robotic music (he was on yesterday's programme), I kept thinking of those who use Photoshop to rob representational photographs of all meaning: you may as well set chimpanzees loose in the artist's studio.

This was the session when we came nearest to a consideration of the role God plays in people's lives: ecstatic singing was compared to prayer - without anyone "confessing" that it could indeed be prayer. I hid my light under a bushel. Shame.

I found myself surprisingly comfortable with psychoanalyst (and author of The Examined Life) Stephen Grosz talking to Sam Guglani: Grosz's conclusion about a bore was simply that "he didn't let the present matter." And the question put to him by his own (distinguished) analyst was, "When are you going to come in here by yourself?"

The other star of today's sessions was for me Eleanor Longden, reprising her TED talk about the voices in her head. "Don't ask what's wrong with you: ask what's happened to you," she urged.

What's happened to the England cricket team? One could certainly ask that.

100 up

Agnes completed her 100th poem at home in Bristol between lunch and tea on the first day's play at Brisbane. More than satisfactory in both quarters: with Gift Aid, the 24-hour poetry slam will have raised the best part of £2,000 for the typhoon victims, whereas, in the cricket, Australia look to be pushed to reach the statutory 400 they might be said to need as a platform for a win in the First Test.

Everybody following our daughter's 24 hour burst of creativity has expressed amazement at the richness of her imagination. Let's hope the experience, as well as helping the needy, opens some doors for her!

Meanwhile, in London today, we managed a visit to Prue Cooper's show at Abbott and Holder. We have long admired her press-moulded earthenware pots, as quirky as they are useful. Her blurb says she likes to make "things that communicate through being used... the lettering being integral to the design in the same way that the words are integral to a song... We're bound together by stories."

My favourite in the present exhibition is this one photographed: I shall never now be able to listen with proper seriousness to Marcellus' questioning of Barnardo in the opening scene of Hamlet.

Earlier, at a cousins' lunch, I overheard part of a discussion about houses in the country, and the husband of one cousin asking another (female), never before encountered, "Is your seat large?"

Currant state of play

We forgot the excitement of the Lions' rugby triumph and Murray's Wimbledon, a week ago, in the fever surrounding the England win in the first Ashes test yesterday - a fever more concentrated because of the game's intense fluctuations over its five days. 11 o'clock came and went this morning with a distinct feeling of anti-climax, and still we have three days to wait before another round of cricketing battle with the old enemy commences.

Meanwhile, our blackbird has relocated her old nest: we moved it from by the back door into the store in our sunless area, and she is once more sitting on eggs. And Caroline is battling with the the currant glut, trusting to her painting stool, with its canvas much in need of replacing. "Do you suffer from the tyranny of fruit?" Tamara Talbot Rice was wont to ask.

Birdlip

I joined the Wednesday walkers once more today, after something of a gap. We met in the hotel car park at Birdlip, and walked out of the village past the cricket pavillion. The initials on its weathervane no doubt belong to one of the Birdlip Partridge family: some of them built the bungalow at the bottom of our garden, and once members of the family made up an entire cricket Eleven (so I read somewhere). Another possibility of course is that they refer to the celebrated wally Alan Gordon Partridge...

The walk criss-crossed a number of roads, but gave us a nice variety of scenery - a view over the Severn Vale to the Malvern Hills; a path through the majestic beeches of Witcombe Wood, before the flat bit at the end near Blacklains Farm. All new to me, I rather think.

I was disappointed not to say any orchids, even though we were on limestone grassland for some of the time. And come to think of it, not a single animal either.

Montpellier

Having complained about the state of the Gardens at Montpellier a month ago, it's only fair to say that the newly-laid turf seems OK - at least to the eye. Whether or not those who kick balls around there will be satisfied, I rather doubt, but at least the rain seems to have gone away, for the moment anyway. I found myself biking down to St Gregory's, bathed in Winter sunshine!

Whilst at the Presbytery, Canon Bosco shared with me this little gem of surrealism: "What playing cricket looks like to Americans." A Dutch version of Mornington Crescent.

One of the greats

Another week, another festival. I was a guest of Savills at the Cheltenham College ground for the cricket yesterday. A sunny day for once, and a very good lunch! Some enjoyable cricket too, though when they play in pyjamas I really can't think it's the same game as I used to adore. 50+ years ago I could tell you about most things going on in the first class game, and so my memory clock was set ticking when a familiar face appeared, on his way into the other half of our tent. Notwithstanding he's now 85, I recognised at once that it belonged to Tom Graveney.

Three stumps

More cricket to wake up to from tomorrow! I wonder if our quicks will be as succesful in removing stumps as Martin Pemberton was this afternoon. In our garden we have recently lost three trees, the roots however stubbornly resisting my attacks upon their stumps. This Martin, though, clawed them out in a jiffy.

In quiet times, he says he's tempted to take his intelligent elephant equivalent along to the nearest supermarket car park: like the Pied Piper, all the children would inevitably cluster round, and at so much a go, he'd be soon rich.

Old pals, Old Palace

When Fr. Felix Stephens and I were in the same house at school, we scrambled to get the county cricket scores, he supporting Gloucestershire and I Warwickshire. Bumping into him in Oxford on Sunday morning after a long gap, neither of us had anything to say about the dismal performance by England's batsmen in Abu Dhabi.

It was chance that took Caroline and me to the Catholic Chaplaincy for Mass, and chance also that Felix happened to be preaching: the desert and the marketplace was his theme - expounded at rather greater length than I'm currently used to sitting through, but probably not so fully as in the discourses we were subjected to when I was an undergraduate (and Fr. Michael Hollings the Chaplain).

Felix, evidently not at present able to live up to his name, hinted that, not just he but all of Oxford was seething at the decision to withdraw him from his post as Master of St Benet's at the end of the current academic year.

Disconcertment

Guardian readers are in turmoil. Nothing is where you expect to find it any longer. Alan Rushbridger's quite inadequate letter has satisfied no one. At least in this household.

What's more, we've been thrashed in the cricket.

"Happy Time!"

This is the title of a book designed for pupils learning English in French primary schools. One of its editors, Pascale Spitz from Paris, is staying with us this fortnight, for one-to-one English tuition by Caroline. In between lessons, I have been trading the rules of cricket for new-to-me words and phrases such as le lait du coin; les locavores; les bobos; moi, ma vie, mon oeuvre, and n'importe quoi.

As the photograph indicates, cookery comes as part of the package. The cake was to honour another visitor, Leo's Godmother, also a teacher (in an inner-city school). And yet another teacher, now resident in Zimbabwe, came for lunch yesterday. So, over a sunny weekend there was plenty of time in the garden to reflect upon the hot topic of education as both a cause and remedy for our present troubles, not to mention the long-term problems facing us all on account of the suffering of African peoples.

"Winchcombe welcomes walkers"

This afternoon I travelled back on the bus from Winchcombe with Georgi, a tour guide from Sofia. He had spent the day exploring Sudeley Castle - "But that's not a proper castle!" we all exclaimed. He said he was off to Warwick next: "Now you're talking!"

I had been walking the dusty field footpaths around Alderton with a group from St Nicholas' Parish in Winchcombe: it included the parish priest, who sported a cap with the above WWW slogan emblazed on it. You needed a hat for today's sunshine.

Returning home, I did a double take when I heard that Cook and Strauss were at the crease, both on 0. Can it have been raining most of the day, a mere 40 miles North in Birmingham? No, we'd bowled them all out cheaply again, it transpired. Michael Vaughan was purring, having had that Shane Warne and (Winchcombe's) Liz Hurley in the box - osculating what's more. ("Too much information," tutted Aggers, who, 20 years on from letting slip the words "leg over", knows about these things.)

Ah, the really important things of life...

Cricket memorabilia

Sorting through some old photographs a few days ago, I came across one of my grandfather's cricket team, Sutton Coldfield. I Googled the club, which is still flourishing, and, having just bought a new scanner, I was able to send a copy to them. Now they say they are interested in anything else from that era, so I have put together an on-line collection. It includes this rather blurred image of C.O. Gray and my grandfather (then 27) going out to open the batting for Sutton Coldfield v. Walsall, at the 1910 August Bank Holiday, a century ago. I particularly like the thatched pavilion in the background, which reminds me of J.M. Barrie's design of the same vintage which still graces the Stanway ground.

paper white

Caroline was out early this morning, sweeping our drive after our first really serious fall of snow this Winter: we have got off lightly up till now. I was quite surprised that the newspapers had got through, as the roads are treacherous. Gritters don't seem to work on a Sunday, I concluded as I slithered by foot to mass this evening. I sneaked in a prayer for a better performance by our batsmen after the Perth debacle.

Cricket and carols

Good friends invited us to their carol party this evening, which put us well into the mood for Christmas. Not many are privileged to sing together in an upstairs drawing-room accompanied by a chamber organ. We began with my favourite Advent hymn, O come, O come, Emmanuel, with five carols following on - just the right number, and played at a good lick. There's nothing worse than a dirgy pace where carols are concerned.

The snow is coming back, we are told, but at least we shall hear about warmer doings overnight, tuning in from Perth. (I have a hunch that all is not going to go according to - English - plan.) Meanwhile, the British Council have added an amazing historic film about cricket in post-War London to their website.

Patsy Hendren

Half a century ago, I used to travel into Birmingham on the top deck of the Midland Red bus, to watch Warwickshire play cricket. I sat at the front alongside Mr. Austin, the Warwickshire scorer: he, his wife and daughter Joan lived near us in Alcester. I regarded him and indeed all the cricket establishment with awe.

After lunch, Chico, as people less in awe called him, would let me come and sit at the front of the score box - but only upon the arduous condition that I resisted the urge to clap. Chico knew of my propensity for collecting autographs, and one day when Middlesex were our visitors, suggested I might like to ask his fellow-scorer to sign my book. Who was this white-haired veteran, I wondered? The name in the book was clear: "E.H. Hendren". But it meant little to me, hardly surprising since he had made his Middlesex first team debut in 1907.

Today, we sleep-deprived cricket addicts are rejoicing in a famous victory at Adelaide, brought about through England scoring 620 for 5, their second-highest total in a test match in Australia. Even when rain threatens, the temperature there is up in the 30s: here, by contrast, we walk out into a white wonderland, where even the traffic lights are decorated with hoar-frost. Retreating to the fireside, I read of the occasion in 1928 when Jardine's men reached 636, with 251 from Hammond. The second highest scorer? E.H. Hendren.

Clinging on

A fine day in Capetown seems and is a far cry from frozen Leckhampton. It appearing improbable that England's last seven wickets would last out for a draw in the Third Test, I was particularly delighted that Ian Bell was the lynchpin of our successful rearguard action, a player I've followed since his teenage debut with "my" team, Warwickshire. (Odd how these loyalties never die: I was glad to find out recently that not only my mother's father, but also my father's grandfather were staunch Aston Villa supporters, a tradition I've clearly inherited.)

Between listening to the fluctuations in the cricket, we had a great walk in the snow, coming back through the big meadow with its ancient oaks. Developers, keep your hands off!

Requiescat

The family feline has died - yesterday aged 13. He is interred under the ceanothus by the beech hedge.

Willum (not to be confused with grandson "William") was not, I am sad to say, blessed with a personality that endeared itself to me. He graduated from captivating kitten - here photographed at his Hampshire birthplace on the day some of us fell for him - to curmudgeonly cat, a dominant presence, but not a particularly loving one, at least until his final transformation to pathetic pussy. Perhaps he found Gloucestershire rather infra dig, as might a cricket enthusiast forced to move to a county captained by Tom Graveney having been used to A.C.D. Ingleby-Mackenzie.

Having said this, Willum is missed.