Frankie about to get crushed in a rare moment of action

On Sunday we (me, Jayne, Chrystal and Charlie) went up to Essex to see an American football game. We are not mad sports fans, it is just that Frankie has started playing for Sussex Thunder, they were playing an away game in Billericay, and my family live up there so there were several birds to be killed with one stone.

Just to show that I would be the last person in the world to be offered a job writing for the sports pages of a US newspaper, here is my match report:

Sussex won and at no point did I have any clue what was going on.

These are all players waiting for their chance to get on the pitch. There are another bunch already on the pitch.

From the perspective of somebody who doesn’t know the first thing about the game, it is a strange sport. The teams are huge – at least 50 per side – but only a few are on the pitch at any time. Every few minutes everything stops and all the players change.

It is a bit like rugby, but play seems to be in spurts of about 2 minutes, if you are lucky, followed by several minutes of huddling, plotting and substituting everybody another few times.

My dad used to describe football as just about the only game which a visiting alien could watch and quickly work out the purpose and most of the rules. American football is very much not like that. I think the Americans like their sport complicated and capable of being turned into reams of statistics – which is why I am surprised they never went for cricket. I know it can’t be that difficult because in America 10-year-olds and Republicans can understand it, but the frequent interruptions to play didn’t really give me any great desire to learn more.

The half-time score

What I can say is that the Essex Spartans had a much cooler outfit. It was all black. The team looked more like some form of riot police from Robocop. Unfortunately that didn’t help them much because they got thrashed 28-0. Frankie says he ended up as MVP, which turns out not to be some sort of motorcar, but the equivalent of man of the match.

On that basis, we like the game because it turns out that Sussex Thunder are pretty good and Frankie is doing well, and so we don’t care that we have no idea at all what anything means or that supporters are outnumbered by players by a significant margin.

Also I got some nice photos, a few of which will be suitable for making soem new banners for the top of this site.

Not a bad trip at all.  All the queues for Lakeside were on the other side of the road and the M25 was not too jammed up.  Very foggy though.  I thought it was bad enough around here, but once we reached Essex the fog was really heavy which delighted the locals because they all love an excuse to put their foglamps on.

It was only when I was commenting on this that Jayne told me that our car has foglamps…  It was only last week she told me that we had a rear washer.  How long have we had that car?   Three years? More?  How come I only find out what features it has in the week I intend to replace it?  It shows how rarely it is my turn to drive it.

It was good to see everybody though.  This is the one time each year we are guaranteed to get all three siblings together with partners and an assortment of offspring.  I was a little worried over the past weeks that we might end up with snow preventing us getting there, or preventing Jane from getting down from Yorkshire but it all worked out in the end.

All back now, and with the “Big 4″ DVD to look forward to (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax in one 5-hour concert).  If that gets too much I also have a book which says it will teach me to play the Ukulele I got last christmas.  We’ll see.  I am remarkably resistant to instruction when it comes to musical instruments.

If we were a gang, he would be the leader, but I would be the one who did the killing

Surely Wilko has now reached national treasure status?

Annie enjoyed the party, but I’m not so sure she will enjoy the headache tomorrow morning quite as much,

As is often the case, I have returned home with even more books to add to the queue – just when I was on top of my reading list.  No complaints though: I can now look forward to the new Malcolm Gladwell book and the Atheist’s Guide to Christmas, which Rob got signed by Ariane Sherine while he was in London.

I can also look forward to playing with a remote release for my camera, thanks to the Essex-based sister.  A work colleague swears by these for totally avoiding camera-shake when doing night-time photography with long exposures but there is no way I am taking the camera out in all this rain so I will have to wait for that pleasure.  What it does mean is one more suspicious-looking gadget in the luggage when the camera bag goes through an x-ray machine.

Chhristmas is now officially over.  In our house we don’t consider that it has really happened until we have been back to Essex for the day.

The birthday girl

A few more photos from and thoughts about Tuesday’s big event – Auntie Ivy’s 100th birthday party.

In retrospect I wish I had taken the day off rather than going straight from work, hitting the rush hour traffic and getting there an hour late.  Since my own commute is a mere five miles I underestimate how bloody awful the traffic is.  I will remember that the next time somebody turns 100…It was, not surprisingly, quite a big do.  Joan, never one for understatement, really went to town on this one.  She hired the Old Rectory in its entirety, laying on a couple of ponies for the kids to ride around on outside.  There was a three-piece band (mostly jazz and old standards) and a fantastic buffet – salads, hot and cold meats, curry, chilli, whole salmon, and lots of pudding.   There was also a cake in three parts.  And a birthday card from the Queen, which Ivy was thrilled about, plus a telegram from Yvette Cooper which was nice but, I suspect, less of a thrill.

Ron, all the way from Queensland for the party.

So the food was good, the music was good too – very impressed with the keyboard player doing the bass guitar parts on one keyboard and piano parts on another with such independence that I had to keep reminding myself there was not a bass player there.   So far, so good, that sort of thing can be planned, but you have to take your chances with the weather and that turned out to be perfect.

The turnout was good too.  One of the first people I saw when we arrived was Jim.  Jim used to live next door to Ivy 40+ years ago.  We were frequent visitors and more or less grew up with Jim’s so Ronald.   As we got to the Old Rectory I saw Jim’s younger son, Andrew who had made the journey all the way down fro Bradford where he now lives.  What I didn’t really expect was to then see Ron himself, because Ron has lived in Australia for the last twenty or so years.  It really shows just what a big deal it is: that is not a trivial journey, nor a cheap one!

Both my sisters were there too – Mary from up the road in Southend and Jane from Bradford – and Mum and Roy.  There were lots of Ivy’s ‘real’ family there (we are only sort of adopted family) who I mostly don’t know, and a sizeable contingent from the sheltered housing where Ivy lived until quite recently.  They all turned up in a minibus and I just bet that bus was rowdy on the way back at the end of the evening because the thing is, these are not old people: just young people that have been around for a long time!

The four kids together

The remarkable thing about the evening was the atmosphere, full of genuine affection for Ivy, who is quite remarkable herself.  OK, she is not as agile as she used to be but I really can’t see her as any different to how she has always been.  She is still in possession of all her marbles, and able to take and make a joke.

I really don’t know why it is, but just looking at the photos of the evening makes me well up.  It was an emotional evening.  Perhaps it is seeing Ivy so obviously happy, well, and well-looked after.   She now lives with her daughter and it is so obvious that Joan wants her there: this is not somebody putting up with an ageing parent out of duty and that is good to see.

I got to thinking about how much Ivy must have seen in her time.   It was a very different country 100 years ago.  Obviously there was no TV, but there wasn’t even radio when she was born – the technology was invented but there was no broadcasting – it would be thirteen years before the BBC would come along.  Telephones were invented but nobody had one, and the same for motor cars.  Movies were still silent, Edward VII was still on the throne and Australia was still using British pounds.  Louis Blériot’s historic crossing of the Channel was only a couple of weeks before Ivy was born!   It still amazes me to think of that.

Ivy with Mary

I remember looking round the ghost village of Tyneham in Dorset a couple of years ago, amazed by just how different life was in the 1940′s than now.  Life in 1940 was probably more similar to life in 1840 than to life in 1960, so just what was 1909 like?

How can you observe such a complete change in life and remain so unaffected.  We take plastics for granted but in 1090 even Bakelite was a brand-new invention!  Half the time I am in a daze to know that I can fit a Terabyte of data in my pocket, and could make a video telephone call from the middle of a field…  I have enough trouble with those culture shocks, let alone remembering how it was without electricity in the home, indoor plumbing, cars, newspapers with colour photos, zips, and just about everything else.  It makes reaching 100 with marbles intact even more of an achievement.

But I digress.  The point is that we all had a brilliant time, so thanks to Ivy for having a birthday and thanks to Joan for all the arrangements.  We are already looking forward to the 101st next year

Ivy at her 100th birthday party

Arrived home from Essex after 1pm, and want to be in work by 7:30 in the morning, so not really any time to write about Auntie Ivy’s 100th birthday party tonight, nor to go through the 111 photos taken.

Just this one photo for now, best wishes to Ivy and a curse on the M25 traffic going there and on whoever decided to close the A127 tonight and divert us through country lanes and via Upminster to get to the M25 on the way back.

Going to be like a zombie most of tomorrow, but it was worth it.

Mum’s bungalow starts to feel quite full when we all squeeze in with six children – most of them teenagers now.  It is always a good chance to catch up with things and just spend a bit of time together, with the highlight of this year seeing both sisters and mother trying to wipe away tears of hysterical laughter.

Just a shame we have to suffer the dreaded M25 to get there.  What was going on Saturday?  The M23 was bad and then the M25 was worse.  It took about an hour to get from the A20 junction round to the Dartford crossing and the revelation that the toll has now gone up from a pound to £1.50.

Trivial compared to Jane’s journey down from Bradford, but still not much fun, and Mum still can’t be persuaded to retire to the South coast…

I have to admit that I actually did laugh out loud when I reached the third paragraph.  The Guardian scoured the venerable new town to find locals who would speak up for the place, and the best they could find was a bloke called Terry, who said:

The nicest thing I can say about it is, its shit

The Basildon tourist board are considering adopting that as a slogan. Perhaps more depressing is the quote from the person behind the scheme, Vin Harrop, who is planning the details of the heritage trail, and whose attempt to make the town sound attractive to visitors rather errs on the side of damning with faint praise:

If you stand with your back to Toys’R'Us and look back along that straight line of shops towards the Town Square and Brooke House, that to me is the classic view of Basildon. I think it’s a magnificent sight. That’s Basildon, that’s ’60s architecture.

The thing is that he is not totally wrong.  Brooke House is quite impressive and a good example of its type of building.  I can remember Basildon town centre from the 60s and when it was all new it did work.  The problem with 60s architecture is that it really doesn’t blend well with anything more recent.  It may not be pretty by traditional standards, but when it was built it did have a kind of integrity and unity of design even down to the little details like the wooden slatted bench that ran around the foot of the stairs outside the Post Office.

Once the large Marks and Spencer was built at the end, forming a barrier between the main square and the church that unity was lost and, and then all the other changes like the escalators leading up to the multi-storey finished the job so that it ended up just like Terry describes it.  Once you you have introduced that sort of thing, the 60s stuff just looks wrong and it might be better to just replace it all or hide it under new facades.

I wasn’t around in Crawley when its town centre was first built but I imagine it was similar and that those 60s touches that now look so naff made a lot more sense in context.

Having slagged Basildon off a bit, I should mention that there is, of course, more to the place than the town centre.  Although successive developments have removed just about everything I remember as a child – the dairy and the old cinema on Laindon High Road for starters – there are some pretty nice spots in the wider new town.

I had to have a wry mile about the comments regarding Gloucester Park though.  Yes it is a nice bit of green and I remember it being well landscaped and it may well be that it is only there, as the paper says, because the land was too soggy to be built on, but there is more to it than that.   What some of the newer residents of Basildon might not be aware of is that the hills of Gloucester Park are the result of an ingenious solution to the problem of what to do with all the waste involved in building the new town…  I can remember when the hills were still being built and there were great big lumps of reinforced concrete sticking out of mud.  We used to have little camps made in hollows dug out from under sheets of concrete.  Its a wonder we survived to adulthood and did not all get buried alive.

Its not even worth cherry-picking examples of of idiocy from this site to hold up to ridicule because there is no challenge at all – it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Right at the top it says:

I beleive Vangewillbe best represented by Conervative Candidate. If elected I promise to be help with any issue thats within my power to deal with, no matter hoiw big or small that issue is.

The rest is no better written, looking like its been  put together by someone with English as a third language.  Worryingly, he says he is studying economics with politics at university…

More worrying is the content itself: there really is no need to vote BNP in Basildon if so-called mainstream parties can find room for someone like this.  His election campaign trots out the old canard of council housing going to asylum seekers (a claim recently proved to be a myth) and his policies generally are old BNP favourites (limit immigration and put everyone else in jail) or look like they come from Arshad Khan’s Justice Party.

No mention of policies on education though.  It would be interesting to hear how someone who talks about things “making no sence” , “a action day”, and  “a inconvenience” and has a random approach to punctuation would propose to improve education – he obviously has first-hand experience of a failing system, and his presence at university could be held up as proof of falling standards.

But that is unfair.  It is Essex county council that is responsible for his illiteracy and not Mackenzie himself, however he should be held responsible for his extreme views and his party should look to itself for allowing him to represent them after he was accused last year of producing BNP-alike literature.  At the time Jon Cruddas said:

This dangerous exploitation of people’s fears is a gift to extremist organisations such as the BNP. Peddling myths about immigrants pouring into a town or about asylum seekers supposedly being given council housing ahead of other residents is incredibly unhelpful. If David Cameron is serious about fighting racism he should disown this candidate straight away.

Far from being disowned, he is back as a candidate this year and I have a little less affection for my old manor than I used to have.