110. Loyalty, Allegiance and Support

Jeremy Corbyn didn’t sing the national anthem at a service in St Paul’s Cathedral soon after becoming elected as the leader of the Labour party.  He was accused by some of not showing respect or loyalty to his country. 

On Friday 18^th September, the day that the rugby World Cup started, a column in The Times newspaper was headlined,

“The left will never really love this country”.

If he cares about rugby at all, will Jeremy Corbyn be supporting the country of his birth or will he and other English socialists have their loyalties elsewhere?  What about expats living abroad; will they be supporting the country of their birth or will they be hoping that their adopted country triumphs?

I never had any interest in the Winter Olympics until the 2010 Vancouver games.   I couldn’t name one UK competitor but I was really hoping that Dow Travers would do well in the giant slalom because he was the Cayman Island’s first ever winter Olympian and Caroline and I were living on Grand Cayman at the time.  He finished 101^st only beating a skier from India and one from Mexico.  The UK didn’t have a competitor in that event but if we had, I would have hoped Travers would beat him.

In February 1956 I was given a book token as a ninth birthday present.  I didn’t use it immediately and so the token was unused for some weeks.  Then in April of that year I discovered the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.  I literally read the 1956 Wisden from cover to cover many times. 

I had lived in Sidcup in Kent until 1953 and so I started by reading about Kent County Cricket Club.  By the end of the summer of 1956, I could recite all the Kent averages from the 1955 season and all of the county’s records.   I can still remember many of the adverts in that edition.

Although I played cricket in Middlesex for many years and played with and against many Middlesex players, Kent remains the county whose result I always check first because Kent was, is and will remain, my county.

In January 1955 my Dad took me 30 miles to Norwich to watch Norwich City play Bristol City in the 3^rd Division South of the Football League. 

Norwich lost 0-1 but despite that and despite the fact that the school where I taught for 33 years was only three miles from Tottenham Hotspurs’ home ground, White Hart Lane, and even though for ten years I lived only 500 yards from Underhill where Barnet played, Norwich City is still the team whose results matter more to me than those of any other club. 

I am in touch with Patrick Gallagher.  Pat and I were at University together 50 years ago.  He was a very good cricketer indeed.  After we graduated, we both lived in London and we both joined Finchley Cricket Club.  In a game for Finchley against Malden Wanderers, Pat performed the remarkable feat of taking all ten wickets in an innings – the only time I ever saw it done.  That feat was astonishing enough but what made it almost incredible was that two of those wickets were as a result of catches by me at first slip.

A couple of years later he emigrated to Australia and he has been living in Sydney for the past forty years.  In July this year I met him and I was surprised to hear him talk quite casually of “our opening bowlers” when referring to the Australians: Johnson, Starc and Siddle.  I hoped that he was doing it to see if I would ‘bite’ but I soon realised that I was wrong; he meant it. 

After the test series had finished Pat sent me an email with his thoughts on the outcome and wrote:  “…all our quicks leaked runs…”, “I think our bowling can improve…” and, “Ever since 2005 our batsmen…”.  I think this shows that his assimilation into becoming an Australian is total and complete.

Perhaps Pat should bear in mind something said by Cecil Rhodes 150 years ago:

“Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.”

Does it matter that Pat has thrown away his lottery ticket when it comes to cricket?  No, I don't think it does.  Support for a team is rather like religious faith.  Faith is the belief in something for which there is absolutely no evidence.  Every year I believe and have faith that Norwich will get promoted that season or win the Cup.  For a week or two, I really believe that it will happen.  

Support both defies and denies logic.  It is only when the cold reality of the facts hit me in the face that I accept, grudgingly, that my hopes for that season with regard to Norwich will not be realised.  Last season was a wonderful exception.

With most sports, Pat transferred his allegiance to Australia within a couple of years but with cricket it did take longer.  In 1981 he had been in Australia a few years and when England won the Ashes series he was still a Pom, disturbing the neighbours in an Adelaide hotel while he cheered loudly in the small hours of the morning as England won at Headingley.

But, after a few years of playing cricket with Australians, watching and reading about Aussie cricket and talking about Aussie cricket, especially in the pre-internet days, he found it harder and harder to stay engaged with English cricket.

Is he demonstrating that he has passed the Aussie version of the Tebbit test?  I am always tremendously uplifted whenever I see an Afro-Caribbean or an Asian spectator in an England shirt supporting England and so I shouldn’t be surprised if and when the same thing happens in other places. 

But all those immigrants who support England today are second or third generation and I suspect that those who arrived relatively recently still support their country of origin. 

Fifty years ago, in the 1960s when England played the West Indies at The Oval, all the West Indians in the crowd, and there were many of them, vociferously supported the Windies.  That clamorous support is largely absent nowadays for two reasons.  Ticket prices have risen disproportionally in the past 45 years and are beyond the means of many.  Most South London Afro-Caribbeans who do go to The Oval were born here and those few who do attend are supporting England.

I don’t think Pat supports Australia just to have a happy, calm and harmonious time socially and at work.  For reasons that I can’t understand and that totally elude me, he really does genuinely support Australian cricket and probably gets the same unrestrained joy when Australia wins a series against England 5 – 0 that I experience when Australia is bowled out before lunch for 60.   I regard it with the same mystification and bafflement with which I view religious faith.   To me at least, it challenges reason.

As I said earlier, support denies and defies logic and so at the moment I am looking forward to the Ashes series of 2017-18, supremely confident that by then Finn and Wood will have become world-beating opening bowlers; somebody will have been found who can open the batting with Cook; we have an authentic wicket-keeper/batsman and at least one genuine, international-class spinner and we will retain the Ashes by winning at least three tests.

I really believe that.

A last thought:  When Canada plays France in the Rugby World Cup on 1^st October, which team will the Quebecois support?

70. Disappointment

To be disappointed, your expectations have to be thwarted and until a few days ago I don’t think I had ever been disappointed.  Sometimes, of course, things haven’t turned out as I had been hoping.  

I suppose that when Norwich City Football Club, a 3rd Division South side, lost to Luton Town in the FA Cup semi-final of 1959, it was a disappointment but really it was more of an anti-climax after the wonderful run they had enjoyed up until that point.  Of course I was saddened, but that wasn’t real disappointment as I had never expected Norwich to win.  I just hoped that they would.

I thought that the general election result of 1979 was regrettable, but its inevitability prevented it from being a disappointment. 

I have just been watching England play against Scotland in the Rugby Union World Cup.  England played appallingly.  I can’t say that I’m disappointed because England have been awful for the last three games and I wasn't expecting anything better but I am certainly frustrated and dissatisfied. 

Last Tuesday I had my last golf lesson.  I shall have no more.  It’s not that I no longer need them, far from it.  The sad fact is that I have gained nothing from those lessons.  I realised on Tuesday that after six lessons I am worse than I was before the first one and I have made no progress at all.

I am genuinely disappointed.  Six weeks ago, I told you in ‘Bon Mots’ that I had visions of playing golf regularly and often over the coming years.  I expected to.  It would give me something enjoyable to do with my copious leisure time but alas it is not to be.  I wrote that, “I am not quite hopeless but I’m certainly bad.”  That is not the case anymore.  I am definitely hopeless and I am consequently, for the first time in my life, genuinely disappointed about something.

However, I am much better off than Sophie who was only 12 years old when in 2004, she experienced deep, scarring disappointment.

Sophie was a pupil at Fortismere School and one of my students.  Her parents are from Cyprus and her grandparents still lived there.  Sophie told me that they owned and ran a family restaurant in Paphos.

Caroline’s parents own a house in Paphos and before moving to live in the Cayman Islands, Caroline and I would go to stay in their house during August when the temperatures were highest and her parents sought refuge in the cooler climes of England.

One morning in August 2004 when the temperature had reached 39°C (102°F) and it was too hot to do anything outside, I sat under the air conditioning unit inside the house, with the Paphos edition of Yellow Pages on my lap and looked for the restaurant.  I thought I found it and later that evening we went there to have dinner and discovered that it was indeed the right place.  

When I told the who I was, Sophie’s grandparents were absolutely overjoyed to meet us and they made a huge fuss, plying us with unlimited amounts of food, wine and Filfar – a Cypriot liqueur made from oranges.  By the end of the evening, we were well and truly filfared.

They told us that Sophie and her parents had moved up into the Troodos mountains to escape the heat, but they would all be back on Sunday for Grandpa’s birthday party.  

He was to be 80 and we had to come too.   It was a lunch party that would start at around eleven in the morning.  They insisted that we came and told us how surprised and delighted Sophie would be to meet her teacher.

I wasn’t so sure about that but it would have been rude and even churlish not to say “yes” to the invitation and so accept it, we did.

We didn’t want to arrive too early and so we turned up at noon.  I parked the jeep and we went in through a gate in the middle of a long wall that ran along the side of the courtyard.  Directly opposite us and at the end of a ten-metre path was a long series of tables with about 60 people in total sitting along both sides.  Facing us, with two empty seats in front of her, was Sophie.

Grandpa saw us and let out a welcoming yell.  60 people looked at us and started applauding.  I was very embarrassed.  I gave Sophie a little wave and smiled at her.

Sophie certainly looked surprised but not at all delighted.  She nodded towards me and gave me a sort of half smile.  Caroline and I took our seats opposite Sophie and her parents and for the next seven hours or so we had a wonderful time.

It was just getting dark when I found myself talking to Sophie alone for the first time since we arrived.

“What did you think when you saw me come through the gate and walk down the path?” I asked her.

“I was surprised but a bit disappointed,” she said.  “They told me to sit there in that seat and keep an eye on the gate and I’d get a nice surprise.  So I did and then you came in.”

“Oh, I see.  I’m sorry.  I wouldn’t have come if I thought you’d be upset.”

“Oh no, that wasn’t the reason,” she said, before adding wistfully, 

“I thought I was going to get a donkey.”

Now that is a degree of disappointment that neither you nor I can imagine.