A rumbling in the Garden of England

Having spent much time in Greece over the last three years I have grown used to the occasional earth tremor. Nothing too serious, but still surprisingly unsettling.

So imagine my surprise on my current trip to the UK to experience a 4.2 magnitude tremor while staying in my mother's home in Kent, the county also known as the Garden of England.

I knew straight away what it was, but that still doesn't stop you wondering if there's more to come. There wasn't but this relatively insignificant seismic event still made plenty of copy for the following day's TV and newspapers.

We are fortunate not to have suffered anything catastrophic such as was experienced recently in Nepal, but much was still made of the tremor. As any reporter knows, sometimes you just have to work with what you've got, even if the material is a bit thin.

I'm trying to blog when I can, but I shall be a bit peripatetic over the next few weeks so the service might be a little erratic. AND I've still got to sort out the name change, which will probably also entail a bit of a redesign of the blog. Not exactly a seismic shift for my blog, but still a time of change.

Anyway, I'm in Devon now - on the other side of the country - and the sun is shining, a walk beckons, I think.

For a musical finish, I thought a little bit of Dr Feelgood doing Rolling and Tumbling would be quite good.

S: It's the bard, innit?

I have chosen William Shakesepeare, the Bard of Avon and top notch playwright and poet, as my letter S reason to be cheerful, but I also offer him as a reason to be in awe of what another human being has done.

Shakespeare lived for just over half a century and by the time he died he'd written so many extraordinary plays that even if he'd only come up with one or two of them we would still probably be talking of him with some reverence.

I realise I might be making some cultural assumptions here that Shakespeare means as much to people around the world as he does to me. I am intensely proud that I come from the country of Shakespeare's birth, but, let's be honest, that's for no good reason. I didn't write the plays, that was done four centuries ago, and I'm not even that knowledgeable about his work. Even so, Shakespeare...what a guy.

A porcelain figure of Shakespeare which I
suspect doesn't look much like him.

Did Shakespeare just get a lucky break that meant his plays would continue to be performed down the centuries or did he somehow produce work that, even in this digital age, manages to make us think about something other than ourselves.

No guesses as to which side of the argument I go for, but even Shakespeare cynics must be a bit impressed that people still find enough in his work to make it worthwhile to stage his plays in so many weird and wonderful ways. And I haven't even mentioned the sonnets yet.

While there may be some debate over whether Shakespeare wrote everything that was attributed to him (I think he did, it's just easier that way) there is no doubt that our debt to the slightly mysterious man called William Shakespeare is one we are likely to keep on paying for centuries to come.

Shakespeare has inspired all sorts of music and songs down the years, but I like To Be Or Not To Be by BA Robertson which with some slightly wonky rhyming manages to pack in lots of references.

• Question: Shakespeare: perfect playwright or balding bore? What do you think? Tell me in the comments section below.

* Picture of Derby Porcelian figure of Shakespear from Walters Art Museum [Public domain, CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

F: It's a reason of two halves

Some of you may have worked out from the title of this post that the letter F reason to be cheerful is football. Let's be clear about this, I am talking about what is technically known as association football, in which the round ball is kicked. Americans are inclined to refer to this game as soccer.

Cue a collective groan from all those who can't stand football. Well, I'm sorry, but I like football and I happen to think that at its basic level it is a very democratic sport. I accept that its international administration does resemble the activities of the Medici family in 15th and 16th century Italy, but in some ways that is partly why I like the sport. The political manoeuvring can be fascinating.

Football can offer something for everyone - tears and laughter, pleasure and pain. It is a lesson in life: strive and you will succeed, except for when you don't and some feckless chancers come out on top causing you untold angst.

I have no doubt that there are fans of many other sports who are adamant that their chosen sports are superior to football. All I would observe is that football is one of the few sports where kids will just get on and play it in the street or wherever they happen to be. They may play it badly, following rules that they interpret in their own way, but give them a ball - any size will do - or even just a tin can and they'll get on with it.

Youth football in Cambodia. Most of the  players appear to be
barefoot apart from one who has just one flip-flop.

For sure, it is easy, and not unfair, to be critical of football for the way the top tiers of the game are dominated by money, but for those of us who follow more humble teams, money only becomes an issue because there's not enough of it. As long as our team survives to fight another day and maybe, just maybe, has a really good result which leads us to think that this will be the season they exceed expectations then we're happy.

So why the title for this post? Those of you familiar with football pundits, those people whose ability to talk seems to be in inverse proportion to being able to come up with any meaningful comments, are reputed to refer to football as "a game of two halves".  In football-watching circles this is known as stating the bleedin' obvious, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Lots of songs to go with football, some better than others. New Order's World in Motion was recorded to be the official England team song for the Italia 90 World Cup. Sadly, not even having a group such as New Order doing your team song was enough of a help although England did get through to the semi-finals. Ah, well, there's always Russia 2018....if we qualify.

• Question: Do you support a football team? If so, which one? If not, why not? Answers in the comments section beneath, please. For those of you who are wondering, I support Gillingham, pride of the middle reaches of English League One.

* Picture of Cambodian footballers used under General Product Licence.

In the land of ifs and buts

The late, great Bobby Moore. England fans
 will know of his significance, everyone else
will just have to accept he was a great man.
 Pic by Carlos Yo. Used under GNU Free
Documentation License

I know a lot of people are already fed up to the back teeth with the World Cup - yes, rugby fans, the football world cup, your turn is next year - even so I can't help following up yesterday's post.

Last night I went out to watch England who were beaten 2-1 by Uruguay, and Greece who achieved a no-score draw against Japan. This leaves England and Greece both needing a) to pull their fingers out and actually win a match, and b) other teams in their groups to have results that favour England and Greece.

Interestingly I noticed this morning that players on both teams have already invoked the Almighty as a possible means of getting through to the next round.

England captain Steven Gerrard, a man who rarely lets a carefree grin cross his face, admitted that England were now at the stage of "clutching at straws." In particular he said: "We need to be professional and pray for that scoreline to go for us."

Specifically, Stevie G needs to pray that Italy beat Costa Rica and Uruguay, something I am sure the Italians are more than capable of, and that England beat Costa Rica by a hatful of goals. Oh dear, can you see where that might go wrong?

Greece were dogged against Japan even after going down to ten men when Greek captain Konstantinos Katsouranis was sent off, something he seems to have a penchant for, having been so punished three times in his last 16 games for club and country.

Dogged or not, bottom of the group is bottom of the group. Defender Sokratis Papasthopoulos has taken a philosophical view, but then, of course, he is Greek and with that name, too. He said: "If things go well, let us get four points with a win in the next game - and if God decides that we are eliminated because of the other result, so be it." What was missed out, but I bet he said it anyway was that favourite Greek phrase "Τι να κάνουμε" - What can we do?

Decision day for both England and Greece is Tuesday, June 24. I can hardly wait, can you?

While writing this I was reminded of the desperation I feel nearly every time I watch the English football team play and "hanging on in quiet desperation" led me to this:

Question: Do you feel desperation while doing something that you really ought to be enjoying? Or is that only for England fans harking back to 1966 (and the late, great Bobby Moore)?

K is for the Kinks

This is a bit tricky because there's no specific memory that I can pin to the Kinks, but I do get a sense of my Englishness from them. It's Englishness that has nothing to do with jingoism and everything to do with a sense of almost whimsy mixed up a bit with melancholy.

There are any number of Kinks numbers that deserve a mention but I've picked Waterloo Sunset because it's a beautiful song laced through as it is with great wistfulness. This bit of video is a bit murky, but don't forget it was Britain in the 1960s, we'd only just got electricity.

Also-rans: There's nothing wrong in being an also-ran to the Kinks especially if you are the late Kirsty MacColl. She did a beautiful version of Days. If I listen to both these songs back-to-back I get quite emotional and have to take a long walk with the dog, preferably in the rain.