The batsman's Holding, the bowler's Willey

Trips to London are less frequent than they used to be these days, but no less enjoyable. On Friday I had the opportunity to attend a lunch at Lord's cricket ground to celebrate the start of the 150th anniversary season of Middlesex county cricket club.

The room was littered with players from past years, many of whom I grew up watching from the stands as an impressionable schoolboy, and more recent players who are trying to emulate those true legends.

The afternoon was compere'd by Bob 'the cat' Bevan, an after dinner speaker of some note. He was joined on stage by Geoff Miller, a recent England selector, who told tales of Derbyshire cricket in his own inimitable style.

It was a very good way to welcome in the cricket season, even if the weather is still more suited to football.  The World T20 competition does continue in Bangladesh but England have no further interest in that after the usual last few overs they bowled flew all over the field. Quite why England persist with Dernbach in those situations, I have no idea. He also dropped a 'dolly' in the match against Sri Lanka, using the new catching technique adopted by the modern players where the palms face away from the body.

We were always taught to have the fingers facing skywards and the palms towards the body. I did ask Angus Fraser at the dinner why the catching art had been tampered with, but he was a bit grumpy so did not give me any plausible explanation save that apparently the players can watch the ball straight into their hands, or in Dernbach's case onto the grass.

A little something for the weekend....

It's been a long time since I have had to pay for my car to be serviced, and it was not the shock I was expecting it to be, that is, until they inspected the tyres. One off-side tyre  had a bulging inner wall and the other had a split which showed the steel wiring. At £200 each, that did blow the service budget a bit. I am sure rubbers were cheaper than that the last time I brought some.

Oh well, it had to be done, you can't mess with 'elf and safety or the possibility of 6 points on yer license.

While the car was in the garage, I took the opportunity to go and explore the new Liverpool central library which has recently undergone an expansion and face-lift. I have to say the place is fabulous.

The old parts of the library incorporating the Picton reading room, the Hornby library and the Oak room have been fully restored, and a whole new section has been built to house local history reference, a kid's discovery area and a gaming pod all within the infrastructure of the traditional lending library concept.

The is a café, at least 50 public internet stations and a roof top viewing gallery and terrace. It really is a magnificent building.

The older rooms referred to above house displays and exhibits from the Liverpool archives, which change every few months. The current displays include the original Henry II seal of office, the oldest surviving Liverpool city seal, letters from Charles Dickens and a photographic history of the Adelphi hotel.

Many old manuscripts and illustrated volumes were also exhibited so anyone wandering around could view them.

It's definitely worth another visit, and next time I will be investigating the archives in more detail to see if I can find more information about the early occupants of Hill House. 

Tally Ho!

The rugby six nations competition came to a dramatic end on Saturday, as a forward pass in Paris denied England the Championship, and handed it to an Ireland side who England beat a few weeks ago. C'est la vie.

England needed to beat Italy in Rome by a massive score, to put pressure on Irelands superior 'goal difference'. They scored seven tries but unfortunately gave a soft one away and consequently fell ten points short. A series of second half  substitutions disrupted the flow of the England game, as had been the case in Paris on the opening day, and coach Lancaster really needs to look long and hard at himself and decide whether they really do add value.

Everybody knows what Tuilagi can add to the side, but his introduction for Burrell served no purpose other than to irritate Burrell and disrupt the England mid-field. Far better to try him on the wing in place of Johnny May who has still to show he has the game for international rugby.

I can't help feeling that if New Zealand had needed to beat Argentina by 50 points to win the Southern Hemisphere equivalent tournament, that they would have done it and kept most of their starting XV on the pitch for the majority of the game. England still have a few steps to climb to be at their level.

I watched the Saturday games unfold with a few mates in the Lake District. The day began with a visit to the local hunt, where we watch the pack of hounds follow a pre-laid scent trail up down and over the fells. It was all conducted on foot, and it found out my lack of fitness very quickly.

There was a hunt within the hunt too, as the locals kept an eye on the hunt saboteurs as they tried to disrupt proceedings. The police seemed disinterested and certainly sided with the local farmers, who were out to ensure minimum damage to their flock during the lambing season. Hunting is a country ritual which the city dwellers would do well to leave well alone.

We saw one fox, but the hounds were high up near the snow line and failed to pick up its trail, so it lived to fight another day.

All in all a fascinating insight into fellsmanship and life in a farming community.

Ashes to Ashes

English cricket is in a bit of disarray at the moment. Jonathan Trott is suffering from a stress related illness which forced him home from the Ashes tour, Graham Swann found the tour too tough and bailed out, England got thumped, and Kevin Pietersen was informed that his services were no longer required by the national side.

Last things first. The Pietersen business is taking up far too many column inches ( including these). Like a lot of South Africans he is first and foremost interested in himself. Yes he has played some magnificent innings for England, but very few have been played with his back to the wall, when the need to bat for 4 sessions or more was paramount. In the Ashes series just gone, he time and again gave away his wicket easily. Rule number one for all school boys is keep your wicket intact....I would have said keep your end up, but the pc police would have had a go at me.....Geoff Boycott would have batted all day for 6 runs if need be. So Paul Downton and his England selectors have done right by me and waved him goodbye. he can go off to India now and earn himself some money.

It is interesting that Eoin Morgan has decided to forego the riches on offer in the sub-continent to try to win a place in the England side. Interestingly Morgan has played more games in the IPL than any other English player.

What to make of Graham Swann though?  As news filters out that Jimmy Anderson played most of the tour with an injury, Swann's decision to bail out was a really soft choice. The fact he has been offered a contract on Test Match Special by the BBC has also ruffled a few feathers amongst the traditionalist, and rightly so.

The scene is set, therefore, for the new cream of English cricket to rise to the top of the county game and force their way into captain Cook's side for the Sri Lankan tests to come. It should be straightforward as we play them in April and May when it will be bitterly cold and they will be forced to wear five or six sweaters!!

I wish Trott a speedy recovery, but sense his career may now be over. I also noticed Morgan's  Irish colleagues beat West Indies yesterday in a T20 warm-up game in Trinidad.  I do hope that does not inspire the Ireland rugger chaps when they play at Twickenham at the weekend.

Pretty Flamingo

So Valentine's Day has come and gone, and hopefully I got away with it again.

SWMBO and I visited Babylon, a  Sir Richard Branson owned restaurant in the Roof Gardens in Kensington. I have not visited the Roof Gardens for many years, the last time being a work Christmas party hosted by our marketing organisation. I went with Steve McMillan, an old mucker of mine from our time together at IBM. Steve now lives over the pond, and co-incidentally its his birthday today, so have a good one matey!

The roof gardens were built on top of  the Derry and Toms department store which  was opened in Kensington in 1933. The gardens were laid out between 1936 and 1938 by Ralph Hancock, a landscape architect  They cost £25,000 to create and visitors were charged 1 shilling to enter. Money raised was donated to local hospitals and £120,000 was raised during the next 30 years.

The building housed the department store Derry and Toms until 1973, and then Biba until 1975, they have been listed as a Grade II site by the English Heritage since  1978.
The Roof Gardens have been rented from their owners by Sir Richard Branson since 1981 and as well as the restaurant, there is a nightclub on the garden level which is  divided into three themed area's.

• a Spanish garden, in a Moorish style based upon the Alhambra in Spain, with fountains, vine-covered walkways and Chusan palms;
• a  Tudor style garden, characterised by its archways, secret corners and hanging  wisteria. Roses, lilies and lavender contribute the rich summer scent to the garden;
• an English woodland garden, with over 100 species of trees, a stream, and a  garden pond that is the home to pintail ducks and four  flamingos called Bill, Ben, Splosh and Pecks. There are over 30 different species of trees in the woodland garden, including trees from the original planting over sixty years ago, despite having only a metre of soil in which to grow. Although they are on a rooftop, the trees were made the subject of tree preservation orders in 1976.

Unfortunately the Flamingos were tucked up in bed for the night when we went, and only the terrace shown in the photo was open. London was being battered by high winds and I think a flying lady was the last thing Virgin and Sir Richard wanted that night.

Still its a wonderful hidden gem, which cannot be seen from the road, and it is available to the public to visit whenever there is no private function booked. I commend it to you all if you are in the area.

Training squad

Mon dieu, England hit the bar again in Paris as they lose, win and then lose again in an excellent game of rugby. I did turn to SWMBO when coach Lancaster took off Danny Care and Dylan Hartley, and said I thought it was a mistake to unsettle the side at this crucial stage.

That said,  England did make enough line breaks to have the game sewn up after 70 minutes but nobody got up with the breakaway player to take the scoring pass. A true openside flanker would maybe have made the difference. Fair to say though that the French try deserved to win any game and was a throw back to pre-professional days when the French could strike from anywhere on the pitch. Hopefully this will inspire them to try it more often.

Still we did not let an England defeat, or my bad back, ruin a jolly weekend in Paris. We had not been for about ten years, having favoured Rome more recently, but a change is as good as a rest, and Paris always comes up trumps. I dug out my old tourist maps and found six metro tickets amongst them, and after ten years they still worked, that saved us a few Euro's.

We went to a regular watering hole, Chez Paul, near Bastille, after the game and spent a merry few hours with some other Twickenhamites who had also made the trip South.

Sunday morning saw us stroll through the local market where a mixture of fruit, veg, fish and meat was available for the locals to buy for their Sunday lunch. Further down the street was a bit of a flea market but nothing caught the eye.

Our priority  had by this time been to search out one of the hidden gems of the Paris culinary circuit, Le Train Bleu, which is basically the station buffet in Gare du Lyon. Beryl Cook painted one of her pictures here, its certainly some buffet.

Our journey home consisted of a two hour Eurostar into St Pancras, a short stroll to Euston and then another two hour into Liverpool. All remarkably easy and something which the introduction of HS2 would be pushed to better .

So it's the sweaties next week in Edinburgh and then Ireland two weeks later in Twickenham, lets hope by then the team has learnt the lessons of Saturday and we are nicely set up for another title decider against the Welsh. More snails anyone?

..then you simmer for 20 minutes on a low gas

So just when you think the England cricket tour to Australia can't get any worse, you switch on Radio 5 Live Xtra for ball by ball commentary and you get a couple of 'Shiela's doing their best to make it interesting. One was clearly an England Ladies past or present player, the other was just a female commentator. I am sure they are well versed in the lovely game, but neither of them had a radio voice, their inflection and pitch were awful.

Now as an 'old git' I do think positive discrimination has been overplayed in recent times, three out of four Wirrilian MP's are women,  for example, with only one being gay. Frank Field would probably be replaced by another woman if he was not so high profile. Positions of power should be earned by right. Women priests, lady firefighters and linesmen being renamed assistant referee's to allow women to wave the flag at football matches are all manufactured positions aimed at appeasing the equal opportunities campaigners. The opportunities are there provided you are good enough not just for the job, but in the job.

So please BBC will you protect us from these lady commentators who have hugely irritating voices certainly not fit for radio, and who add nothing in the way they paint pictures of the game. Let's return to the traditional calm tones of an older statesman, able to add something to the listeners enjoyment of the  match whether it be a 20 over slog or a 6 hour rear guard action to save a test match.

Brian Johnston must be turning in his grave, probably a leg break!