“Message in a Bottle from a crazy world”
Down by the river side once more
“I much prefer the reality of real life” I proclaim as with perfect synchronicity the bells of nearby St Luke’s Church toll 12 mid-day on a rainy late Summer’s morning in my beautiful spiritual home of Ironbridge and I reach the end of a chapter in a self-published book of which I’m immensely proud. Under the sub-title of “Ashes Summer Musings”, this was the first of a number of additional chapters to supplement the main feast of the cricket action between England and Australia during last year’s Ashes battle and within a book first published on 5th August 2023. As I did so often after publication and armed with several other self-published books, I decamped to fishing peg number 13 on the banks of the River Severn and in the beautiful shadow of the oldest iron bridge in the known world to read chapters of my book(s) direct to camera. So here it all is, yet another message in a bottle wrapped tightly together within my original Youtube video, my original article, the resultant book and all manner of tempting bargains to be had via the rambling musings of my writing mind and the digital wonders and distribution network of Amazon:
"Message in a Bottle from a crazy world" - Youtube
"Message in a Bottle from a crazy world" - Original Article
"The Spirit of Cricket" - Available via Amazon
Thursday 22nd June 2023
The world of social media and those twin sisters of devilry Facebook and Twitter sure is a crazy old world and quite frankly I’m relieved to know it just isn’t true and can only be the creation of a master tactician and architect of a larger electrical internet encompassing this one, or an electrical and digital Matrix if you will. In the stub your big toe and you’ll hop around like a wounded, squealing animal real world, today I ventured to beautiful Ironbridge with my equally beautiful son for company, fussed over an English pug dog by the name of “Bear” and watched the world go by for an hour beside the River Severn. The sweet sound of the bells of St Luke’s Church signalled our departure for the cinema with pockets full of “Old Fashioned Sweets” from the tiniest shop in the tiniest of English towns, a perfect accompaniment to a musical based on the songs of Take That which rather pleased the not so secret admirer of those Mancunian maestros and what a sheer pleasure it was to watch and see my son singing along with songs some of which I’ve held dear to my heart for nearly a quarter of a century. Naturally my favourite song, “A Million Love Songs”, reduced this curmudgeonly cricket fan into tears and there’s a story behind the obvious question of why, but we don’t have time for such a maudlin dive into the matters of a lovelorn heart, not now anyway.
The remainder of our afternoon and evening was spent doing what we do best, hanging out together, my son in his gaming world, me sat cross legged at a small coffee table sucking on the end of my pencil and occasionally writing in between bouts of either annoying him or trying to make him laugh. Treasured times indeed. With my son safely back into the homely comforts of his incredible mother I treated myself to some late night highlights of the day’s cricket from the ladies Ashes before booking myself another treat and a return trip to the cinema tomorrow. Then I made the fatal mistake of plugging myself into The Matrix and for fear of repeating myself, I am so glad that the world presented to me via social media isn’t real and is just a flash of graphics, texts and images from a created world that simply can’t be true.
You could sit me down and painstakingly detail, in slow methodical baby steps, how the internet is and how it arrives, undersea cables, modems and routers, passwords and mega-bit speeds, and I’d still veer toward it all being the work of witchcraft. I’ve been lucky enough to yet again wander around a beautiful toytown beside the River Severn, go to the cinema and spend the rest of the day with the light of my life, and then I venture into the dark hole of wizardry and witchcraft and as usual, I don’t know if I should be bemused or bloody annoyed.
We have the coming spectacle (spectacle? Current Affairs Editor) of two of the world’s richest men clambering into a boxing ring for some personal, down and dirty fisticuffs and whilst Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg plan for their heavyweight versus bantamweight shenanigans, five more incredibly rich souls are feared lost at sea deep in search of The Titanic. The Titanic! The cost of greed crisis (cost of living crisis surely, Economics Editor) is spiralling to yet more scandalous levels of incredulity, the tabloid editors of the dinosaur media trot out the tired “Don’t Panic!” mantras of the BBC wartime sitcom of decades past “Dad’s Army” and sadly Shane Warne is back in the news and I wish it wasn’t for lurid accusations surrounding his death last year and rather that he was making headlines in the way only “The King” could. Boy do I miss his spirit and the sense of vitality and sporting life he brought to his television career after his record breaking, era defining cricket career had come to an end.
I loved “Warnie” more than an Englishman should readily admit to and he would have been in his element in the current and coming weeks of this Ashes Summer. Never backward in coming forward with an opinion, he would have been an excitable Aussie during the past five cricketing days at Edgbaston in Birmingham, delighting and crowing in their victory and no doubt with a strong voice as to whether England captain Ben Stokes was right or wrong in his decision to declare his team’s 1st innings on the opening day of The Ashes last Wednesday. Such strong opinions are expected in the swirling madness of social media and thus on Sunday evening and mere minutes after Australia’s thrilling, against the odds, two wicket victory, I saw a post on Facebook that I can only guess was genuine and whilst not abusive or full of coarse language, was the madhouse of the internet writ large.
Apparently, and according to this one brief post which, it should be cautioned and remembered could have been part of a far longer stream of short, punchy posts, exclaimed that England’s defeat on Sunday evening was down to the captaincy of Ben Stokes and his 1st innings declaration and “This defeat is on you Ben Stokes”. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is some accusation! It’s all the fault of a captain who, rightly, decided that a few extra runs was far outweighed by putting Australia into bat in a “no win situation” for them and they survived a tricky and trying twenty minutes. It was the right call, a brilliant call in fact, and I’d hazard a guess he’ll do the exact same given the same match circumstances. In a heartbeat. It was a progressive move aimed at winning a game of Test Match cricket and was full of intent and an attacking style that should be applauded. Opinions are like arseholes after all, and mine is strongly correct.
But to lay the blame of defeat on an attacking move that happened on day one of a five day Test Match is frankly ludicrous and here’s the kicker: Shane Warne would have had an opinion, as have I and as did our friend with his Facebook post, and so did millions of other cricket fans around the world together with the TV commentators who were, on day four, speculating as to how many runs England would score before they declared their 2nd innings! Australia are the World Test Champions yet every cricketing brain inside the TV commentary box were setting targets for a declaration from an England team chasing victory. Ben Stokes and his team of sporting revolutionaries have ripped up the recent scorebooks, scorecards and a welter of poor results to be seen as reckless for declaring their first “dig” with the bat before being cheered on to do the very same with their second one. Against the Test Match Champions of the World!
Opinions. Opinions.
All the world for an opinion.
Being the night owl watcher of Test Match cricket from the other side of the world (please see my book “Ashes to Ashes” for comprehensive evidence), I watched a fair chunk of the last ladies Ashes in Australia and so my guilty pleasure for the coming Summer weeks will be the nightly hour of highlights after each day’s play and today was a real cricketing cracker. Winning the toss and opting to bat on a green tinged wicket full of live grass, Australia scored over 100 runs in each of the day’s three rain shorted sessions of play scoring a mammoth 42 boundary 4’s and 1 boundary 6 in the process, with Ellyse Perry rasping 15 boundary 4’s before agonisingly falling 1 run short of a Test Match century. Aside from Alyssa Healy (and it always pleases me and startles me in equal measure to see yet another Healy with the wicket-keeping gloves for Australia after the years her uncle Ian and a certain Shane Warne terrorised England!), every Aussie batter from Beth Mooney to Tahlia McGrath, Ashleigh Gardner to Annabel Sutherland chipped in with vital 1st innings runs and at 328–7 overnight, the visitors must be targeting a total of 375 come mid-morning tomorrow and their first bowl at their English hosts.
Under the long term captaincy of Heather Knight, her England ladies continually grabbed wickets at vital times aside from the 100+ partnership between Perry and McGrath mid innings, with 24 year old spin bowler Sophie Ecclestone yet again the pick of the bowlers with the end of day figures of 3 wickets for 71 runs after having bowled over a third of her team’s overall 85 overs. The spinning deliveries that accounted for McGrath and Healy, with both players clean bowled, were absolute gems and I feel sure the “King of Spin” was watching from another universe with immense admiration.
My plan for the ladies Ashes and that guilty pleasure I’m allowing myself this Summer, is to avoid all scores throughout the day and watch the late night highlights “as live” and simply relax into some high quality action and a series that has the makings of being the perfect accompaniment to the men’s Ashes that resume shortly after the conclusion of this Test Match. Tomorrow’s plan is entitled “The 4 C’s”, those 4 important C’s accounting for a morning stroll along the canal at Wheaton Aston, a cinema trip in the afternoon to see the latest comedic masterpiece (hopefully) from director Wes Anderson, before a curry and the cricket highlights to round off an indulgent day and a guilty luxurious pleasure.
My plan also includes staying away from the internet and the hothouse of madness that is social media.
I much prefer the reality of real life.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering and the right way up in an upside down world.