The Last Day

Winter drawers on.

autumn

Tumbleweed Connection, Howling Wind, Desolation Row, The End (obvs), By The Time I Get To Phoenix the New Season Will Have Started, Help Me Make It Through The Winter, Admiral From The North Country, Stuck Inside Of Glamorgan (With The Glorious Blues Again), Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside Especially In Colwyn Bay, The Season Thou Gavest Lord Has Ended Lanky Fall At Thy Behest and so on.

Just a little reminder that Paul Collingwood and Jonathan Trott are not dead, and neither are any of the other great county cricketers who have retired in recent days. Maybe they’ll end up like Chris Old, working at a supermarket check-out (not a self-nonservice one) but I doubt it. I wish all the retiring cricketers the very very best.

This page is basically for everyone to share their melancholy (and euphoria, if they have any and also insist) and to offer an opportunity for mutual self-help to keep us going into the dark days.

920 thoughts on “The Last Day”

  3. 90 minutes of amateur chorals in modern arrangement to sit through, The Cry:A Requiem for the Lost Child.
    (8-yr-old is in her school’s detachment to sing, so presence unavoidable).
    Wish me luck.

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      1. Well, no chance of hearing her sing given the numbers of chorists and the youth orchestra, not to mention the soloists. But it was all surprisingly impressive and – given its basis as a memorial to children killed in conflict and war, lost children and childhood – not as incredibly depressing as I feared. Actually very moving.
        But I will spare you video uploads, anyway.

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  5. I mean if the future is white ball cricket then I look at Brownie’s record in 20/20 and shake my head until it falls off. Only Livingstone, Buttler and Al D can match him.

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  6. Time to take people’s minds off events with a little light Friday night music. Let’s spin the juke box and see what comes up…

    oops

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    1. Must be a coincidence. Let me try…

      Hmm.

      BTW this is still my favourite of all things Blackmore, despite so much competition. Two solos, no I have no idea why prog got labelled self-indulgent.

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      1. Just discovered this one. And this one really is coincidence.

        Trying TS’s grown-up embedding, but I’m guessing really, and I may have accidentally typed something in the middle of the embed code. Oh well, here goes.

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    1. In looking for some amusement since the season ended it came from an unlikely source. Venzuelan military have been massing on the Colombian border, with an announcement two from Venezuela that they were in alliance with Cuba, Russia and China. A nephew of my wife’s, Emmanuel, who has been working for a year in Bogota, but now decided to return to Venezuela is currently with us to pass some time before his journey. I have been convincing him that he should try and learn something vaguely chinese just in case he gets a visit, it has been quite humerous trying to teach a Colombian how to sing this………………………….

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      1. Not humerous at all, according to the International Weather Forecast that I follow, Crete is likely to suffer a very nasty storm tomorrow. Here’s hoping most sincerely that you and yours keep safe, Romeo. Please let us know you are OK from time to time tomorrow.

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        1. No storm as yet. It’s quite sunny just now.

          Forecasts here are very often wrong, and you hardly ever find two which coincide, except in the middle of summer, and even then the temperatures they predict vary widely.

          I wrote the above half an hour ago and failed to click send. It’s now closing in a bit and I’ve brought all lightish stuff, including dogs, in.

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            1. I think it’s basically gone past here already, but it’s causing problems on the mainland now, particularly the south/south east.
              It’ll have missed Malta, or at least not caused any problems, from the weather history map I’ve seen (a bit like here), so Juan Pablo should be fine, as am I.

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              1. Good, probably going to skirt up off the coast of sicily . The worry with these sorts of storms is that if they spend any time over the sea they actually pick up more force, as we all saw in the Caribbean last year.

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  9. I’m a bit late to Brownie’s leaving do, but in the hope that his T20 record will get him gigs around the globe and bring him deserved fame and fortune, here’s a song that I absolutely loved when I was about 7 years old (though this is a later recording)

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    1. They’ve long since made a mess of flickr, so I hope this links to the right picture. I think it’s either our building site in the background or a retro-futuristic high-speed train coming in from the right.

      1 38 Karl Brown

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      1. I’m very pleased to hear that, romeo. I prefer the Peter, Paul and Mary version to John Denver’s original, although I think his version works very well at the end of The Guard to nicely round off a film I like a great deal. Brendan Gleason is, as ever, outstanding.

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  10. Having been abandoned* in Skipton this morning, I had to cycle back to Lancashire on roads I haven’t been on for about 16 years. And what do I find? Those dastardly Yorkists have been making the climbs steeper* and longer* in my absence.

    Have we Lancastrians not suffered enough this week? (And boy, did I suffer.)

    *These points may or may not be entirely true.

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        1. Almost haiku (not that I know much about that). The first line has five syllables, and with a bit of judicious moving and editing, I think you could get seven and five syllables in the next two.

          If wisdom really did come with age, I wouldn’t have been hammering myself into a headwind (did I say there was a headwind?) for 55 miles for ‘fun’. First rule of going for a linear ride – make sure you’ve got a tailwind.

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      2. No, Peter, it was definitely* that the roads were steeper. The climb out of Kirkby Malham had been resurfaced all the way to Settle. Obviously* because they’d ramped up the gradient and the had to put down a new layer of tarmac. The devils..

        You’d think the North Yorkshire highways engineers would have better things to do.

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                  3. I know what they could fill them with. About thirty years ago I made a cross-pennine journey, starting in Mansfield (chopperland), skirting Chesterfield, cutting up north then near Hathersage, so A6/61 country and then over the top and down into Macclesfield and on to Cheadle where I was working the following day. It was summer time, but a very windy day which pulled on my steering for the whole journey. I had made matters worse by fitting my metal roof rack, and although there was nothing on it, it was in preparation for a motoring holiday in France starting that weekend and this was my last business journey.

                    As I approached the top, after two hours of having to fight this steering pull, I felt the need for a break and a cup of tea, more to have a rest than anything else. I knew of a climbers snack bar/cafe near the top so I turned off the route and into a sidelane then into the cafe car park. I got inside and there was nobody but me and the lady I knew to be the owner. ‘What can I get you, lad?’ she asked. ‘I could fair go a cup of tea, lass’ I replied. She poured the tea and then looked at me hopefully, ‘would you like something to go with that tea?’ ‘What would you recommend?’ I asked. ‘How about a slice of my home-made chocolate fudge cake, lad? She said pulling an immense object out from under the counter, which I noted had not been cut. ‘How much with that be with the tea, luv? I asked. ‘£1’ (note pound sign), she said. ‘Ok’, I said cheerfully, ‘sold to the fellow with the cup of tea’. Suddenly there was a dull thud as she cut this thing and half dropped onto the plate she had taken out for me. ‘All that for £1′, I protested weakly’. ‘Look lad’, she said ‘won’t be anyone else in here today, you might as well eat it while it’s fresh’. ‘I suppose with that weight in my stomach it will help me keep the car on the road’ , I rejoined. I skipped my evening meal that night.

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  11. Never really been a fan of ND, and if I am honest with myself about this song it is the melody rather than the song that I love. On the other hand with the mention of ‘September’ it does generate the thoughts in my head that each year is like a large wheel going through one rotation, a rotation which seems to get faster the older you get.

    It ends/starts with Xmas and the the New Year, and through the year you get all the family events such as birthdays, then in April the new season starts. After it ends in September then there are more events such as Halloween, and my wife’s birthday at the end of October, and so eventually back to Xmas and the New Year.

    Each day is like a cog moving within that year, and at the end of the day, where I live a mantle of darkness and tranquility descends like no other place where I have ever lived before. It is like a cloak which somehow warms the chill of the cool mountain air at night. The darkness is only interrupted by the sight of the twinkling lights of houses on the other side of Zipaquira nestling up the foothills of the mountains opposite; the silence is only punctuated by the occasional crow of our cockerell in the far corner of our property, and the infrequent shrill call of a nocturnal bird. Then to cap the day the lovely melody of music like this………………..

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVLonpBtkH0

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  12. Just spotted the miserable git who replied to me on the Tanya article from yesterday about The Admiral et al.

    Cheers Grif for your reply to him/her, much appreciated.

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        1. I’ve just been back to read – I’m not going to tell him/her (though it just *has* to be a bloke) what I think – “don’t feed to troll” etc. And it’s a Yorkshire Troll at that (with apologies to pj, notably)

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    1. That’s the issue with Morrissey now. Every time he opens his stupid cakehole he diminishes the Smiths’ and his own superb back catalogue a little bit more.

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  16. Two excellent pieces of news.

    Everyone’s favourite second sport is underway – the conker season is here. And, perhaps slightly more parochially, 4 months later kitten Marmaduke is finally weaned. Litter training can only be a few more short weeks away.

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      2. Good morning/afternoon, whatever, depending on the time zone. Saw an absolute beauty (kietten that is) Mes, in the animal part of central chia. A small long-haired ginger kitten which was pulling the people to a pet-shop window there. I am slow to get going this morning, I am up dressed, shaved, washed etc, but we are talking about going out for a breakfast in the village to a place called ‘rico mas pan’, which is sort of a large bakery that does breakfasts and then coffees and cake etc through the day. Daresay the Mrs will have a soup with fish or meat in it, or perhaps even Tamal which is more the traditional Colombian breakfast. Me, I like simple food for breakfast so happy with a hot chocolate, a wedge of cheese and a couple of croissants.

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  17. Thanks Ping for those lovely photos of cats, or was it Ping with a Romeo ‘assist’. So back from my cheese and croissants, and brain has snapped more into gear. My mind was wandering this morning over the pictures I had seen of the ‘mop-up’ operations in and around Athen from the storm that by-passed Romeo yesterday. But even more so, with the scenes of devastation from the Tsunami in Indonesia. Looking at the geography of this last night, the second place, which they haven’t got to is on an inlet, which would have acted liked a Severn-bore’ on a massive scale. People would have only had minutes/seconds even to get to higher ground we are looking at a disaster on a massive scale I am afraid.

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    1. Another subject that has been playing on my mind was an article I saw earlier this week, can’t remember where which I think was from Audrey Hepburn’s daughter saying that her Mum never thought she was beautiful. From my young days I recall some Audrey Hepburn Films which were mainly in the area of romance/light comedy, and certainly, no not a stunning beauty but an Elfin face that was full of expression and which made her such a fine actress, and with going out for a breakfast, just for a change of scene I recalled how much I enjoyed ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’. That doesn’t mean I am about to post ‘Moon River’, although I also love that song, I am not in the mood. But got me thinking about somebody else who wrote fine film music from that era – John Barry. Among others he wrote the score for ‘Beat Girl’, the second film after Lady Chatterley, to show nudity in Britain, but I also recall his music ‘Firefly’. Havent a clue what is on the internet for John Barry, I have never looked but bear with me a mo……………….

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  18. Evening all. Will be catching up on what I’ve missed tomorrow but just a quick note to say I’m back from visiting Ex-Mrs Gal. Her and Jake are doing as well as can be hoped, and mostly importantly they’ve now found the right treatment for Jake so while the prognosis is still not good (12 to 18 months left), he’s much more like his old self and enjoyed a walk down the prom yesterday and a bit of people watching while me and Ex-Mrs Gal sank a few beers in the sun.

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        1. Gal, Jake? A son? I’ve missed something while I was away. As you know we are talking about a trip to the UK next year and staying a few months, so if we can help in anyway just ask, even if it is just to relieve the pressure on ex Mrs Gal for a few days. From what I recall you live in Cambridgeshire and she is in Brighton. We are aiming for the Richmond area but should we find acccommodation hard to get then perhaps we will look further afield in places like Ripon, Thirsk etc. Our travel arrangements are not yet finalised and we will look to travel in March/april depending on what complications we get into in closing down our lives here for a while. But within this period in the UK we are for instance, talking about a few days in Hampstead, London exploring Kenwood House, Golders Park and other areas of the Heath, plus bars such as the Spaniards, Holly Bush and bookshops in Flask Walk so then not so distant from Brighton. So don’t hesitate if we can help in anyway, would be glad to do so.

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    1. Well, anything like a pull or a hook is really not going to work, although clearing the hill ought to get 12 rather than 6.
      But no doubt the ramp, Dilscoop and old-fashioned leg glance have been replaced by new and cunning shots to take advantage…

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  20. Hope everyone’s having a good evening. Just a bit disappointed that Alejandro Valverde’s dog has had a hand in the world championships this evening.
    (sarky mode off, this is a reference to the famous Operacion Puerto, in which Valverde’s blood bags were apparently identified by the use of his dog’s name)
    Despite Britain’s excellent year in cycling, I really hope big Tommy Dumoulin gets some more first places next season. Surprised how many people at the G are happy about the result. For me, sometimes age alone doesn’t make it a fairy story.

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    1. Indeed. He was always going to win from that group, and Dumoulin didn’t have much left after busting a gut to get across to the leading three. Surprised that Alaphillippe was dropped on the final climb, that seemed made for him. But all the softening up on the other climb x7 told in the end.

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  21. It would appear that the Tory Gavillans are already hovering over the still warm corpse of Theresa May, won’t be as exciting as the CC but could provide some entertainment. Why I could be tempted to vote for them for the first time in my life if they could put on a party politcal conference like this………………………….

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        2. It’s this chap/chapess Joeredeye from what I can see reading down the column – interesting, his first post crictises Tanya and favours Marks as a writer, but then he seems to get more and more hot under the collar/offensive as people come to the defence of Tanya. Bit of a wierdo?

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      2. It’s an attention seeking prick. Short posts laughing at him are the necessary remedy. If you come across as upset he’ll feel validated. Just make it clear he’s an irrelevant loser.

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  23. Can I ask the computer-knowledgable around why, when I send an email written in eg. Spanish, it comes back in the reply with all the accented characters replaced by a series of strange symbols etc?

    For example, “Muy señores míos” came back in the reply as “Muy se�ores m�os,”. The same kind of thing sometimes happens with an apostrophe when I write in English.

    I use Thunderbird.

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      1. English is the default, I suppose, but I change language between Eng Sp Cat and Greek.

        As I mentioned, it happens in English as well, particularly with apostrophes. “(it´s not very good…).” came back as “(it�s not very good…).”, for example.

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        2. It can occasionally be caused by programs switching between character sets, or programs that don’t implement all of a character set. Word and Outlook’s “smart quotes” auto-format feature are usually strong candidates for doing this to people’s email.

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          1. So the issue may well be with my correspondents’ email programs rather than mine? I’m using Thunderbird. Is there a way I can check it’s not switching or only part-implementing character sets?

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        3. Almost certainly it’s the recipient’s mail server or client not understanding the accented characters.
          Extended ASCII characters are usually encoded in a particular way by the sending mail system, depending on what mail client you use, but unless the recipient knows how to read them the same way, they risk being “translated” into escape sequences along the way, and these then don’t get converted back.
          This page lists the standard sequences and what each string means to a PC with that character set.
          So what happens is something receives the original mail which has one representation for ì, say, and translates that, and then something else tries to turn the resultant string into a character…

          All that said, it can be painful to fix because it’s so hard to pin down what’s going wrong. Check what character set your PC is using. 8859-1 is quite standard. Make sure this is the same on your mail client, if it has such settings (i.e. is it “translating” your emails into a different standard set of characters?). See if you can send mails in HTML format if you aren’t already, these should use the standard internet encoding which might be understood.

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    2. Was hoping he’d go to Derbyshire but there was never any danger he wouldn’t get signed. Far too good to be out of contract.

      Yorks have signed Will Fraine as well. He’s from Huddersfield so it’s allowed by the Transfers Panel.

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            1. I think he’ll be writing a letter to Santa in thanks for still having a job himself if the murmurings among the faithful are to be believed.

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        1. I was relieved to find some ‘beaujolais’ in Huddersfield’, from what I recall I was with a great friend and colleague called Graham Robson and his wife, and the three of us had an evening to remember full of laughter and wine, which seemed to taste better and better as the evening progressed. A year later I was to do a ‘beaujolaise’ crawl in West Bromwich which tested my ability to encounter booze in the most unlikely places to the full.

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  25. This poem is a bit long to post in its entirety, but it’s most suitable for the day that’s in it, so here’s an extract and a link:

    The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
    The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
    Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
    Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
    Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
    Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
    And seeing that it was a soft October night,
    Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

    https://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html/

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  26. A cheering thought for anyone north of the border.

    Mexico’s next coming talent is Jamie Smith. He’s a keeper and well even if Pope gives up the gloves then in a year or so someone’s likely to be inheriting a pretty decent long stop. Definitely time to put a compensation scheme in place for out of contract players.

    (The odds on Alec Stewart changing his mind on the best keeper in the land are likewise very short – I’m fairly sure it always used to be Steven Davies).

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    2. I don’t know the song, I just found it on Youtube, but this one has the lyrics superimposed. If there are others here who remember some of the French they learned, it might be enjoyable and possibly helpful to see and hear at the same time how he sings.

      If anyone has favourite songs, and can find videos with lyrics, I’d love them to stick ’em on here. I feel like having a Charles Aznavour fest.

      Another figure from my youth leaves me. “She” was a huge hit in its day in the UK, before most people here were born or aware of anything, and the amount of disparaging shit some people came out with was typical of a certain kind of British person.

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      1. Just as an aside, lots of people would be amazed how many songs they think of as UK/US classics were actually originally in French. ‘My Way’ is just the prime example.

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        1. I just read that “She” was not a big hit at all in France. The article I read said it was down to the tranlsation of the lyrics. If anyone finds a French version of the song, stick it up.

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            1. The French lyrics:

              Toi, parée de mille et un attraits
              Je ne sais jamais qui tu es
              Tu changes si souvent de visage et d’aspect
              Toi, quel que soit ton âge et ton nom
              Tu es un ange ou le démon
              Quand pour moi tu prends tour à tour
              Tous les visages de l’amour

              Toi, si Dieu ne t’avait modeler
              Il m’aurait fallut te créer
              Pour donner à ma vie sa raison d’exister
              Toi qui est ma joie et mon tourment
              Tantôt femme et tantôt enfant
              Tu offres à mon coeur chaque jour
              Tous les visages de l’amour

              Moi je suis le feu qui grandit ou qui meurt
              Je suis le vent qui rugis ou qui pleure
              Je suis la force ou la faiblesse
              Moi je pourrais défier le ciel et l’enfer
              Je pourrais dompter la terre et la mer
              Et réinventer la jeunesse

              Toi, viens fais de moi ce que tu veux
              Un homme heureux ou malheureux
              Un mot de toi, je suis poussière ou je suis Dieu
              Toi sois mon espoir sois mon destin
              J’ai si peur de mes lendemains
              Montre à mon âme sans secours
              Tous les visages de l’amour
              Toi, tous les visages de l’amour

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        1. In France, whenever there is a wedding reception (including my own wedding to Dr Mrs Mes), you often have a singing session. I’ve sat in more than one wedding reception singing ‘Emmenez-moi’. Luckily, they normally provide you with the lyrics. I’ll admit I don’t know this one by heart!

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        1. 1974 was that year between the UK joining the EEC and the referendum overwhelmingly voting to stay in it, I believe.

          I did my ‘O’ levels but Cynicism wasn’t one of the options open to me. I did Greek instead. And failed.

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            1. Spring chicken I would have said, 1974, was the year I joined Sperry and it was probably the most significant change I ever made in terms of career path. I had come in from British Leyland.

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          2. Never forget: “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”, except where that is a bottle of the local wine, olive oil, cheese, bread or any other local produce. And well, anything else they might like to provide you with.

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            1. I know absolutely you don’t mean anything at all by this, but I have a thing about the expression. I don’t like it, and thus Virgil can sod off.

              Greeks are not deceitful, certainly no more than anyone else. They are/can be horrible to animals, don’t use their indicators and overtake close enough to take a wing mirror off, however.

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              1. Not sure anybody typically uses their indicators at this point. They certainly don’t where I live, and I was very surprised they taught me to use them in driving school.

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              2. To be fair, the Latin is not maligning the race. It’s said as a personal statement, “I fear the Greeks even bringing gifts”, not an instruction (“Fear the Greeks…” ; and after ~10 years of rigorous siege it’s neither surprising nor condemnatory, actually rather understated…
                Besides, although the Danaans weren’t deceitful, Odysseus certainly was. His adventures otherwise would have been remarkably short and painful.
                (My father’s a classicist. The prose Penguin translations of Odyssey, Aeneid and Iliad got “borrowed” from his study when I was about 6, and never quite returned…)

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        2. Ah but Billy you beat me to giving Angi above a ‘like’, because I was determined at least I would give the girl a ‘thumbs up’. ‘Pasiones de gavilanes’ was a soap here in 2004, I think put out by the TV channel ‘Caracol’, it wasn’t a bit like Coronation Street as the clip suggests, but it was an almighty hit here and was sold by Colombian TV to the whole Spanish speaking world and perhaps beyond? where it was also a very big hit. Angi was by no means the most important star, just one of a whole group who made a reputation from this series. Some great music went with the series.

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  29. Just to come back to ‘My Way’ – this is the original, with subtitles.

    I’m sorry Rooto, but I’m a bit of a quiet fan of Claude François…

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    1. The story I read was that Bowie wanted the job of writing the lyrics in English to ‘Comme d’Habitude’. He didn’t get the gig (that went to Paul Anka) but as a result of that, Bowie wrote ‘Life on Mars’.

      If anyone could back-up that story…

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      1. I just did a quick google and found (on Wikipedia) that Paul Anka bought the rights to the tune.

        “Paul Anka heard the original 1967 French pop song, Comme d’habitude (As Usual) performed by Claude François, while on holiday in the south of France. He flew to Paris to negotiate the rights to the song.[1] In a 2007 interview, he said, “I thought it was a shitty record, but there was something in it.”[2] He acquired adaptation, recording, and publishing rights for the mere nominal, but formal, consideration of one dollar,[3] subject to the provision that the melody’s composers would retain their original share of royalty rights with respect to whatever versions Anka or his designates created or produced.[4]”.

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    2. That article I mentioned reading about it all being about the translation of “She” which made it so successful rather misuses the word ‘translation’. It and Paul Anka’s “My Way” are both completely new lyrics to existing music, original creative works, not translations. There is so much crap written about translation in some quarters.

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  30. Well last night I posted Angela Forero and nobody liked her. What’s not to like about our Angela she’s a great type, perhaps not so stunning as the wife but you can’t have everything. Anyway according to ol’ ‘redeye matching your redscarf’ on the ‘G’ you all fancy Tanya – do any of us know what Tanya looks like – could be 75 and without teeth for all we know (and perhaps care – for that’s the way it should be).

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