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The Calcutta Cup goes north

The beginning of the Six Nations tournament is one of my annual sporting milestones because, as an oldie, it instantly re-connects me with both my youth and the golden years of rugby union in the British Isles which – with a broad brush approach – I would cite as being roughly between 1965 [...]

February 7, 2021 // 0 Comments

Stark food for thought on the radio

Shortly before I rose from my bed overnight I was listening to the Stephen Nolan Show (2200 hours to 0100 hours) on Radio Five Live leading up to 1.00am. He was interviewing a gentleman whose name I did not catch and may (or may not) have been a Kiwi but – as far as I could tell from the [...]

February 6, 2021 // 0 Comments

The human presumption

All species live life “in the moment” – in basic terms, each morning they awake, seek out food and sustenance, “do their thing” and eventually go back to sleep again, all against the background of what the specific conditions are on any given day. It is one of the crosses to bear of the [...]

February 5, 2021 // 0 Comments

If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes …

Yesterday out of the blue – simply because it was there – I opted to watch yesterday’s Premiership rugby match between Wasps and the Harlequins at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry which was being broadcast ‘live’ by BT Sport. Wasps and Quins have a long ‘London derby’ rivalry that began in [...]

February 1, 2021 // 0 Comments

Fending off the inevitable

When you’re a Ruster of a certain age – which arguably we all are – you sometimes have to take shelter behind the slightest suggestion you unearth that you may not be “slipping off the pace” and/or otherwise becoming generally redundant and therefore in need of being placed in the [...]

January 31, 2021 // 0 Comments

Coming home to roost?

Overnight – in my terms at least, given my standard waking schedule involves me going to bed at 8.00pm and getting up for my day shift somewhere between midnight and 1.30am – the big “breaking” news has been centred around the massive row developing between the EU and Britain over the [...]

January 30, 2021 // 0 Comments

A sense of achievement

Like no doubt many Rusters from time to time I have been prey to different moods during the course of the UK’s version of the Covid-19 crisis. My “go to” quip for many months from March 2020 onwards was that, for me, the restrictions imposed upon us during Lockdown 1 amounted to little more [...]

January 29, 2021 // 0 Comments

Reflections upon an unwelcome milestone

Yesterday the UK had to come to terms with the sobering news that our total number of deaths so far due to the Covid-19 virus has just passed 100,000. From memory I can recall that one of our boffin masters – almost certainly either Professor Chris Witty (chief medical officer) or Sir Patrick [...]

January 27, 2021 // 0 Comments

Back – and in the groove again

One of Frankie Howard’s signature catch-phrase lines was often deployed where – in a stand-up routine and/or a television sit-com – he “stepped out of character” to address his audience directly, made arch fun of someone and then, as his live (or television) audience burst into [...]

January 26, 2021 // 0 Comments

Sweet memories

The other night I could not get to sleep. Rather than count sheep I tried to recall the great Warwickshire side of the late sixties. Most of the team came back to me this side of consciousness: Bob Barber, Billy Ibadulla, John Jameson, the two Smiths (A.C. and M.J.K.), Tom Cartwright, David Brown, [...]

January 24, 2021 // 0 Comments

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