184 The Hell That Is Scrabble

I hate Scrabble.  I refuse to play if ever someone suggests a game.  

Even though I always lose, that’s not the reason I won’t play.  I really am not a bad loser.  Goodness knows I’ve had enough practice!

I always seem to lose at any board game I play.  I haven’t won a game of monopoly since 1993 and I have never won a game of Cluedo.  The nadir was my 6-year-old grandson consistently beating me at Guess Who last Christmas.

When I was a kid and played Scrabble with my friends, it was quite enjoyable but I remember that it all went wrong when Paul, who had recently moved to Suffolk from Newcastle, put down GAN.  We said it wasn’t a word, but he insisted it meant the same as “go”.  

Consulting a dictionary just made matters worse.  According to the dictionary, GAN was not there as a synonym for “go” but it was a Chinese dialect. 

“So, it’s OK,” said Paul.  “I can use it.”

“No, you can’t,” we all yelled at him, insisting that you had to know the meaning of any word you put down.  

“Where does it say that in the rules?” asked Paul.

“It probably doesn’t, but would you let one of us use 'squit'?” someone asked.

“That means what you’re doing now – talking a load of old squit.  Rubbish or nonsense.”

Paul grabbed the dictionary.  “It’s not there but ‘squits’ is and it means diarrhoea.  So, no.”

After that, Scrabble was never the same again.

I was reminded of my antipathy to Scrabble by a recent feature in The Times puzzle page that consisted of a Scrabble problem.

The article featured a point in a match between two contenders in a Scrabble competition.  Readers were shown the layout of the board and the letters in the rack of one of the players.

We were asked to determine the play he should make that scored 24 points and at the same time, severely restricted his opponent’s immediate scoring opportunities.

When I looked at the board, I assumed that some mistakes had been made.  Of the 23 different words on the board, there were only 8 I had ever heard of before and I wouldn’t have allowed 2 of them to be used in a game of Scrabble that I was playing.  

These words below must all be legitimate in Scrabble as the article stated that all words were featured in “Collins Official Scrabble Words”.

Maybe my vocabulary is limited compared with other people’s.  Here are the 15 words on the board that I have never come across before:

AE, BRR, DAWT, EN, ES, FAE, GAE, KAE, KAT, OOT, OUPA, QIN, RUANA, XU, ZINE.

Only 5 of those words appear in my dictionary but I researched and here are the meanings of them all.

AE	Internet domain name for United Arab Emirates.  Why is that allowed?
BRR	BRRR is a reaction to extreme cold.  Maybe BRR is just a bit chilly.
DAWT	A Scottish variation of daut*. And we all know what that means.
EN	A unit of measurement in printing that is equal to half an ‘em’.
ES	The chemical ‘einsteinium” and the internet domain name for Spain.
FAE	A Scottish word for ‘from’.
GAE	A Scottish word for ‘go’.
KAE	An obsolete Scottish term for a jackdaw.   Ridiculous!
KAT	Is a variant spelling of ‘khat”.  Obviously.
OOT	American abbreviation for ‘Out Of Town”.  American?  What!
OUPA	From Afrikaans, an affectionate South African term for a grandfather.
QIN	A Chinese dynasty from the 3rd century BC.
RUANA	A woollen wrap resembling a poncho.
XU	A Vietnamese monetary unit that is one-hundredth of a dong.
ZINE	A fanzine.

It appears now that Paul was quite right all those years ago.  If GAE is allowed as a Scottish variant of ‘go’ then surely, GAN must be as well.

Based upon these ridiculous, allowable words, here’s a tip for you if you play Scrabble again:

Just before you start, tell your opponent what a twontx day you’re having and that you hope the ugats in the town centre have skulted before, later in the day, you arzz collect the amelerants and lofs you ordered from John Lewis.  

That’s why I will never play Scrabble.  I really don’t mind losing at all but how can you possibly enjoy playing a game that by its very nature, is wide open to interpretation and probably, will lead to an argument?  

*  You were right.  Daut means “to stroke, pet or cuddle”.

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 18th 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 101st, 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 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 3rd 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 they show 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 in sport, defies logic. Only when the hard facts confront me do I reluctantly accept that my hopes for Norwich that season will not be fulfilled.  Last season, however, 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 play France in the Rugby World Cup on 1st October, which team will the Quebecois support?

 

77. One Two Three........

I have a mental disorder.  You may have suspected it for some time but last Saturday, Caroline confirmed it for me and even went as far as to tell me what it is.  Apparently I suffer from arithmomania.

Unwilling to take her word for it, I looked it up.  It seems that she thinks that I have a “morbid compulsion to count”.  “Morbid” seems a bit strong though.  It means an abnormal and unhealthy interest in something.  
Counting isn’t unhealthy.  It can be fun.  But Caroline may be right.  Suddenly much of my life makes more sense than it did. 

When I was thirteen I found a game to play that made car journeys and even just walking down the street, much more interesting.

In Corton Road, around the corner from where we lived in Lowestoft, was a parked car.  Its registration number was ERH 1. One day, just after I had cycled past it on my way to the beach, I was overtaken by DEX 2.  From that moment I was on the lookout for a ‘3’ and then, once I had seen that, a ‘4’.  
These numbers had to be seen in the right order and it was extremely frustrating for example to see a 145 when I needed 144.

Five years later when I left school to go to Durham University, I was on 768.  University life was too distracting and I eventually stopped somewhere in the 790s.  Anyway, I had lost heart a year earlier when my father had got rid of his car with the plate WMJ 905.  Despite my pleading with him to hang on to it for a bit longer, he sold it.

I played cricket for more than 40 years and during many of those games I fielded at slip.  Between overs, I had to walk the 22 yards between the two sets of stumps and I eventually learnt to automatically lengthen my stride so that I covered those 22 yards in 22 paces.  Obviously, as I made those 22 paces I counted them in my head every time and that could have been as many as 65 times a game.

Did you know that in Tesco stores the wine, beers and spirits are kept as far from the door as is possible in order to make it difficult for shoplifters?  I was told this while having a conversation with a manager in the nearest Tesco to us which is so huge that I think that it possibly covers at least two different postcodes.  When I told him that it took me 243 steps to get to the non-alcoholic lager section, he looked at me with some surprise. 

“You count them?”

“Of course.”

I had to go to Guys Hospital a number of times last year.  I discovered that if I went from Winchmore Hill to London Bridge station via Highbury, I had to climb 128 steps on the stairways, whereas if I changed at Moorgate I only had to climb 97 and so that was the route I took even though it was longer.

Last December, Caroline and I were with friends in their house.  During the evening, their daughter Skyped them from America where she is studying at university.  I couldn’t avoid listening to the entire conversation.

“How are you?” her Dad asked.

“I’m like so stressed at the moment. Like everything’s happening like all at once.”

I listened in awe as she used the word “like” 32 times in an 8 minute 25 second conversation during which her father had spoken for almost half the time.  That number includes the one time that she used the word correctly when she said, “It’s yellow but not like a taxi.”

If you have read Amazingl“ posted on October last year you will know that for several weeks I was hooked on counting the number of times that the four judges on The X Factor used the word “amazing” in their descriptions of the acts.  I would record the show and then fast forward through the music and only listen to the comments.  It seemed very important at the time.

Caroline made her accusatory statement when I told her on Saturday evening that I had seen Jessica Ennis’s navel for the 500^th time since August 2009.  I first became aware of it on August 15^th 2009 at the World Athletics Championships held in Berlin.

I became interested when the cameraman made it the focus of attention for a few seconds by filling the entire television screen with her abdomen.  Earlier that day, I had seen a photograph of Jessica Ennis and her navel in The Times in a preview of the Games.  So that made it two in one day and counting!

The rules I set myself were strict.  I never sought sightings.  Looking for them on Google would not be not allowed.  The next day, even though she featured in many TV shots over several hours, I only allowed myself to count them all as one sighting but I made several more from photographs in the newspaper and on the BBC website.  Last Saturday morning the total stood at 499.

I was looking at the ‘Weekend’ section of The Times on Saturday - not the most obvious place for a navel seeker - when I turned to page 8 and there it was: a huge photograph of Ms Ennis and her navel accompanying an article on diet.

I had initially set myself a target of 1000 but that seems unlikely to be achieved now and so I am stopping at 500.

What shall I count next?

1. Bad Umpiring Decisions & Good Pub Quizzes

There are two people who might be reading this whom I know for certain have never played cricket and will know nothing about cricket umpires and the impact they may have on a game.

One is Caroline’s sister’s husband - my brother-in-law, Matthias.  The other is Gary whom Caroline and I met with his wife, Katie, in Miami.  Matthias is German and Gary is American.    

Matthias speaks fluent English and I first met him some twelve years ago before they were married, when Joanna and he came to Wood Green to visit us.  We went to our local pub.

In 1998, the Henley Arms in Myddelton Road, Wood Green was a proper pub.  It hasn’t been done up since 1958 and the only ‘gastro’ thing about it was that you can eat either crisps or peanuts.  It was smoky and crowded with people who got their hands dirty to make a living.

One of the regulars stood out because he was different from everyone else.  I’d noticed him several times.  From Monday to Friday, he would arrive at 12 noon carrying a large bag.  He would sit at the same table in the corner, take three or four very large books from his bag and then occasionally write things on to large sheets of paper.  At five p.m. every day he left.  The pub was his office.

One day, I was sitting at a table some way from him while waiting for Caroline to meet me and wondering what he was doing.  

To pass the time, I was attempting to do the Times crossword and I had completed perhaps five clues. Caroline arrived at last and sometime later I went to the toilet.  When I returned three minutes later, Caroline greeted me with a very smug expression, brandishing a completed crossword.

Caroline is incapable of lying and I soon found out that the man in the corner had come over, picked up the newspaper and her pen, and then filled it in as quickly as he could write. 

I got to know him very well after that and found out that his name was Mike Laws and that he was, "The Times Crossword Editor."  He has had an interesting life.  After Cambridge, he had fulfilled a lifelong ambition and became a postman and he remained a postman until he was over fifty.  He stopped when he started compiling crosswords full time.

That evening, the four of us entered the pub and realised that the weekly quiz was about to start. I looked at our ’team’ and decided that we had potential and would enter.  

Matthias was doing a PhD in some branch of physics; Joanna was paid to advise on environmental issues; I specialise in sport in general and cricket in particular, while Caroline claimed to be an expert on 80s pop.  It was in the bag.  

The only thing that bothered me was that one of the available prizes on display was 200 Rothmans cigarettes, but as one of the others was a monster bag of liquorice allsorts, we paid our entry fee and took our seats.

Mike was the question setter and the question master.  It was not easy but Matthias lived up to the stereotype of a German scientist and kept us in contention.  Joanna, Caroline and I added a little.  

Round five was interesting.  Words were given and we had to give a definition in four words or fewer.  Only a professional wordsmith could mark such answers.  The first one was, “parsimonious.”  That’s the kind of word that makes you think, “Now I know this.  Let’s put it in a sentence and think about it.”

“Mean spirited,” said Matthias immediately, while that process was going through my head.  I stared at him.  “Like penurious,” he said to help me out.  

Round six was on pop music and Caroline exceeded all our expectations by correctly naming Phil Oakey as the only constant band member of the group, Human League. 

However, Caroline really became the most talked about person in the pub during the interval activity.  During the 20-minute break, every table was given ten small bowls of crisps and we had to identify all ten flavours.  Caroline did it all on her own and would not enter into any discussion with us on the matter.  Our table scored 10/10.  The next highest score was 5.

Now to the point: cricket umpiring decisions are sometimes bad and a player can suffer because of a mistake.  It is really only an issue if the umpire makes a wrong decision because of ignorance of the laws of cricket or if he cheats.  I have witnessed both.

In the 70s, league cricket started in Middlesex and there were no ”neutral” umpires.  Every club was expected to provide its own.  Ours was Sam.  

Sam was well into his seventies and despite having to stand for over three hours at a time, he loved it and he umpired more than 100 games a year.  He once told me that he hated the winters because he never got to meet anyone from October until March.

Sam was a really nice guy but hopeless as an umpire.  He was so bad that he was well known throughout the county.  He lacked knowledge and insight. He gave me out LBW once when I had scored 87. 

I was surprised as I was sure that it had pitched outside leg stump and would have gone on to miss leg stump. I said nothing, made no gesture and just walked off.

The golden rule for umpires is never to engage a batsman in conversation after giving a decision against him.  It opens the gate for all the batsman’s anger and frustration to come spilling out.  During the tea interval, Sam came up to me and said,

“Bad luck.  I thought you were going to get a hundred.  Pity I had to give you out.”

“You didn’t have to give me out, Sam,” I said.

“Yes, I did.  I thought it might just have clipped the leg stump.  It was touch and go.”

“So, you had doubts?”

“Oh yes.  Still, never mind.  There’s always next week.”

(Cricket law states that if there is ANY doubt in the umpire’s mind, the benefit of that doubt must be given to the batsman. It’s the law!)

The following season Finchley - my club - was playing Enfield.  It was the last game of the league season and we were second, four points behind Enfield.  All Enfield had to do to win the league was not to lose.  If the game was drawn or they won, the title was theirs. 

In those days there was no limit on the number of overs bowled in an innings.  There was nothing in the league rules to prevent Enfield from winning the toss and batting for 6 hours, ensuring a draw.  For us to win, we would have to bowl them out and then score more than them.

Enfield won the toss and batted.  It was very boring, as they took no risks at all and just blocked ball after ball.  After two hours they were 40 for 2.

Then, out of nowhere, our quick bowler produced a ball that pitched just short of a length and reared up at the batsman’s throat.  He was taken completely by surprise and in his attempt to avoid the ball, stepped back on to his wicket.  One or two of us may have appealed but I didn’t.  There had never been a more obvious case of, ”Out, hit wicket.”

But, the batsman stayed.  Some of our younger players began to harangue him.  I walked up from first slip and said to him, “You’re out mate. Hit wicket.”  He was unmoved and stood his ground.  I turned to Sam and made a formal appeal.

“How’s that?”

“Not out,” said Sam.

“But the bails are on the ground.”

“Don’t worry,” said Sam, striding down the wicket toward us, “I’ll pick them up.”

The game was drawn.

Sam was also responsible for another of my foreshortened innings. Finchley was playing a “friendly” all-day game against an Australian touring side.  We batted first and were about 180 for 3.  The Aussies in their endearing way made a concerted, orchestrated, 11-man appeal every time the ball passed the edge of the bat or hit a pad.  It was very annoying.

I played at a ball from their leg break bowler and was completely beaten by a googly (don’t ask - life’s too short) which went down the leg side.  It was extremely well taken by the keeper who, in that irritating way that top-class keepers do, flicked off the bails with his right hand and let out a huge appeal.  I wasn’t concerned, as I knew that I had not lifted my foot and had not left my ground.

I was disconcerted to then hear the fielders shouting, “Yes!  Well done Wayne.  Great take.”  I looked round to see Sam, the square-leg umpire, waving his right index finger in the air.

After the game, which we lost, Sam came over to me. “Why did you walk?  You weren’t out.”

“Sam, you gave me out.”

“No, I didn’t. You walked.”

“Then why were you waving your finger about?” I asked him.

“I was pointing at the keeper, telling him that he must stop making frivolous appeals.”

Syd, a friend of some thirty years, emailed me recently and suggested that we were both born out of our time and that if referrals to the third umpire had been in place when we played, he would have much better career bowling figures than he has.  

I replied that my batting average, instead of being in the thirties would be 117.64 if all the LBW decisions that weren’t out, all the catches that were really bump balls and all the run outs that never were, could be taken out of the equation.  

Unfortunately for Syd, his bowling average would actually be much worse!