Raw Power

Tags

music, rock, writing

It was through Lee and Rob that I met Pete. Lee was my cousin and Rob was Pete’s brother, but despite being in the same year as me at Moorside High, I only knew Pete from a distance.

During lessons, my head would be kept low, obscured by textbooks and the arms of kids who’d the answers to everything. Whereas Pete’s place in the classroom was generally outside of it. Exiled to the inhospitable wastes of the corridor. Cast out for some minor atrocity against the curriculum. An errant swear word or precisely targeted paper missile.

At break times, he’d stalk the periphery paying the rest of us little attention, except to shake his head at our games of football, smirking as we charged about in a cloud of gravel. It would be outside school where we finally met, two fifteen-year-olds far beyond the gates and the bell, and not a teacher or stripy tie in sight.

Neil Wagner – The End of an Aria

As I sat at home watching Australia play New Zealand on day one, the player the TV cameras showed the most of was Neil Wagner. As enjoyable as the left-armer is to watch, he was picked up doing nothing more than sitting at the side of the grass, signing autographs for fans, and fielding as 12th man. Sadly, he has this week retired from international cricket.

Not Even My Short Pants (Northern Mailman)

If I never dreamed of one day being invited onto a late-night stateside chat show, I could never dream of being manhandled off one either, but an unexpected rise in social status can lead you down the strangest of roads.

I was sitting before a mirror while the young woman styled my hair, and Whitney, a production assistant, ran me through the finer points of appearing on TV. This would be my first time in front of the cameras.

‘Try not to fidget,’ she said. ‘Try not to curse.’ Bring no attention to the host’s rubbery face and obvious toupee. Not that this was how Whitney phrased it, she was a professional. Her exact words were, ‘don’t stare at his head.’

Later, there would be claims I provoked the man, that I was ‘trouble’ and ‘not a team player’. I, however, maintain my innocence of all crimes above showing up on national television wearing short pants. And they were not even my short pants. I’d been in New York less than a week.

Thunderstruck – Lancashire v Middlesex, 10th September 2023

It’s September and cricket is winding down. Ashes quarrels are now scarce despite the efforts of some with word counts to fill in wringing every last drop from rogue runouts, ball changes and low-level nighttime impoliteness. And let’s not mention the Manchester rain. Online sporting fury has moved on to the football and weekly VAR-guments. The County Championship, however, still has three weeks to go and Lancashire, after a spell of only a single four-day game here at Old Trafford in almost a third of a year, are back.

The pushing of the Championship to the margins is now extreme. When this season ends Lancs will have played half their fourteen games in April and September, with the other seven sprinkled about the four months in between. Quite how much action I’ll see is debatable. The recent heatwave is due to end at some point today with a thunderstorm of yellow warning proportions.

Oh Manchester, So Much To Answer For – England v Australia, 19th-23rd July, 2023

The late Anthony H. Wilson may or may not have said: “This is Manchester, we do things differently here.” Regardless of the truth, when Central Library, the city’s own version of Rome’s Pantheon, was built in the 1930s it was done so with a certain improvement over the original. The ancient Italian capital structure has an oculus in the ceiling allowing natural light to enter; the one in St. Peter’s Square was constructed without such a hole, because this is Manchester and it bleeding rains.

A Man in Ten Short Tales

Paul Saunders Brown (1947-2015). Man of many job titles. Layer of woodblock flooring, plumber’s mate, soldier, lorry driver, car leasing agent, medical rep, man on the dole, car salesman, man back on the dole, security guard, retiree.

1. As a youth he was an altar boy, though not for long. His taste for the sacramental wine brought his time in a cassock to an early end.

2. After joining the army in ’68 he had a tattoo done while in Germany, but back home on leave didn’t want my Nan to see it so wrapped a bandage round his arm and told her it was some injury suffered on manoeuvres. All was going well until he forgot to put the bandage back on after having a bath.

3. At some point, about 1970, he got fed up with the army and went AWOL, somehow getting a plane back to Manchester without his passport. He hid in the airport toilets until the coast was clear, but was eventually tracked down by the MP to my Nan’s house.

The Triumph of Weather – Lancashire v Somerset, 11th May 2023

He speaks in your voice, Lancastrian, and there’s a pie in his hand bought half-price from the Co-op.

It’s a work day, sure, but he’s nowhere near the mail centre. He wants to be here instead, at Old Trafford Cricket Ground, and sat for the next four days in the shadow of what some call giant letterboxes but which for him are angry robot mouths with bloody lips and glistening teeth bared in android fury. He wonders how much sci-fi and psilocybin the architects had ingested prior to submission. Equally, he wonders how wise was that second morning coffee.

Mallender on My (Mate’s) Mind

Tags

cricket, sport

With five weeks between scheduled fixtures at Old Trafford I’m going back to Good Friday, and a good Friday it was. The weather was perfect and being a bank holiday I was joined by a friend, Jeff, for the day. In the morning, we watched Surrey add 102 runs for their final three wickets and then Lancs reach 28/0 by lunch, at which point we were treated to a star studded cast of international players past, present and in the case of Surrey youngster, Tom Lawes, perhaps future. There were the Lancs trio of James Anderson, Saqib Mahmood and Liam Livingstone getting in bowling practice, Glen Chapple in place of wicket keeper and Graham Onions and Azhar Mahmood stood watching. The sizeable crowd gathered on the outfield to witness this spectacle included a boy aged barely in double figures who was given a moment to long cherish, that of being asked politely to move back a bit by the third most prolific wicket taker in Test history.

The Long-form – Lancashire v Surrey, 6th-9th April 2023

Tags

cricket, long covid, sport

The first day of the 2023 County Championship season. A time for a fresh start, for hope and excitement, for improvement, and, fingers crossed, a full four days of cricket. My walk to Old Trafford is twenty-five minutes at a leisurely pace, twenty at a scuttle. Today, I take it slow. The sky is clear blue though there’s a definite breeze about. Pavements are drying after overnight rain, the concrete dotted with fallen blossom and magnolia petals, also a stray carrot. I take my usual route: Oswald Road, Kensington and Great Stone, pass the roundabout, the Quadrant pub, and then the still disused former B&Q and onetime Stretford Hardrock. Bar the details of the game – opposition, minor rule tweaks and a change in overseas personnel – much about the day will be as it was twelve months earlier.

The Ball

Tags

cricket, sport

Over the last few years I’ve spent a good deal of time at Old Trafford watching cricket. Mornings, afternoons and evenings. Weekdays and weekends. All in pursuit of the summer game. In the August of 2016, however, I was there for a quite different reason.