Tim Atkinson's Blog, page 7

Just one more thing...

No doubt the assembled hacks in the Rose Garden behind 10 Downing Street were all waiting for their Columbo moment. Either that or they're all as fawning and obsequious as Laura Kuenssberg and Robert Peston, who both seemed to play pat-a-cake with their prime-position questions to the man-in-chief, the power behind Johnson's throne and Machiavellian puppet-master Mr Cummings.



I'll spare them that. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. And ask, on their behalf...



1. Why Cummings wife, Mary Wakefield, didn't either drive or take a share of the driving if the journey back to London was a worry?



2. Why Cummings didn't just catch the train? There's a mainline station at Durham. Once he was cleared for work he could've been off on the 0620 and in the office a few hours later. Failing that, him being so important and all, why didn't he call for a ministerial car? A military helicopter? Thunderbird 3? He's clearly so pivotal to government strategy (he said so himself this afternoon, many times) they'd have chartered a private jet for him if he'd asked!



3. And why was it necessary for Mary and Dominic Jr to accompany him back to the capital anyway, to a house he'd already said he'd 'fled' when falling ill as it was being 'targeted' by all-and-sundry? If his family farm was such a safe place, why not leave his wife and child in safety there, to convalesce? No need for dodgy outings on your wife's birthday to Barnard Castle, possible pit stops for refuelling on the A1 southbound and unscheduled wee-stops in a wood. Just Dom, in a carriage on his own, on the train.



Oh and one more thing...



All that guff about 'other people maybe not agreeing' with his actions is fine up to a point, with an elected politician. Because we can vote them out if we don't believe them at the next election. But we're stuck with Cummings until Boris tires of him or decides he's a political liability or something.

Homeschooling is what keeps me going...

It’s been estimated that over 800 million children worldwide have been unable to attend school during the coronavirus pandemic. For them, the new normal has been a mixture of boredom, fear and, hopefully, some fun. But from June, our new, fairly relaxed routine could once again become the old 9am-3.30pm regime of registers and regimented learning.



Whatever the outcome of the debate over reopening schools, I’m not counting days the days until the school bell once again starts ringing. It's no surprise that four out of the five NHS recommendations for healthy mental health are covered by a daily dose of home schooling. Getting up and getting going every morning is what has kept me going... especially when the going got tough.



I began by thinking lockdown was a breeze: no school run in the morning, the kids at home with work set by the school that I could supervise and mark and then, maybe, some time to myself to work. At the time I was in the middle of writing a medical memoir on life with chronic, long-term pain caused by a condition that requires self-injecting disease modifying drugs up to twice a week. Even then, I didn't really begin worrying.



Then, the daily death toll started rising; more and more information started to appear about the virus, and my mood darkened. My next-door-neighbour’s friend and colleague, a nurse at the local hospital,  died of Covid-19; I was (belatedly) sent the dreaded shielding letter. And lockdown suddenly began to feel like a siege. There were sleepless nights where I was tormented by all sorts of real and imagined horrors. My lockdown dreams became frighteningly vivid. But come what may, next morning there were lessons to learn. My daughter and I went on a garden bug hunt; we researched the Bayeux Tapestry; we painted pictures and, when the sun shone, played. And then the next day, we did it all again. And again.



Far from feeling like Groundhog Day the daily routine felt good. My kids have been having some excellent online music lessons. And that meant I had to know what day of the week it was so we were ready with the laptop. And, of course, I had to force myself to get up. And get going.



The NHS's five steps to mental wellbeing are:



1. Connect with other people. Good relationships are important for your mental wellbeing.

2. Be physically active. Being active is not only great for your physical health and fitness.

3. Learn new skills.

4. Give to others.

5. Pay attention to the present moment (mindfulness).



I'm connecting with my children, obviously, and for a more sustained period of time than is usually possible; I'm learning new skills, too, never having been a primary school teacher! Steps four and five are integral to our routine. I'm giving (time, attention, sometimes expertise and experience) and forced by the nature of an inquisitive nine-year-old's constant questions to be 'in the moment'. Add some regular physical activity on our daily family walks and we've got the whole lot covered.



So it's getting up and getting going every morning that has kept me going. Of that I'm certain. My book might be on hold but I've come through some pretty tough times stronger and happier. Every day is now a school day. But it's what the kids teach me that's been the most important lesson.

Does God Exist?

I suspect there are plenty of people asking that question at the moment...



And although my latest book might not help answer it, it will help students come to grips with the complexities of a philosophical question like to other, a question of ultimate meaning and a question that underpins, in many cases, the meaning of our actions.



It's another in the series of notes from my days standing in the front of a classroom, revised and re-written as a book, rather than a collection of handouts designed to help students whose teacher might just occasionally have talked a bit too much keep pace with a packed curriculum.



Anyway, in the spirit of the times it's free to download on Kindle Unlimited and only 99p (the cheapest Amazon would allow me to make it) elsewhere. Here's an extract...





THE PROBLEM OF EVIL



The problem of evil predates Christianity. It was being discussed by the Greek philosopher Epicurus (371-270BC) over two hundred years before Christ’s birth and before that, polytheistic deities like the Olympians were as likely to deliberately cause human suffering as attempt to prevent it. The problem of evil is a particularly difficult one for the Christian religion because, as one of its greatest saints, Augustine (AD354-430) wrote in his Confessions:

“Either God cannot abolish evil, or he will not; if he cannot then he is not all-powerful; if he will not then he is not all-good.”

In case you’re wondering if all this ‘god-blaming’ is a bit unfair you have to appreciate that, in Christianity (as well as Judaism and Islam, for that matter) god has all the superhero qualities needed to stop bad stuff happening, once and for all. Christians believe god is:



• Omnipotent: he’s all-powerful, there’s nothing he can’t do;

• Omniscient: there’s nothing he doesn’t or cannot know;

• Benevolent: he’s kind and loving, not just a little but a lot;

• Immanent: he is with us, in the world, always;

• Transcendent: he also exists beyond our universe and our universal laws.



And Christians traditionally holds that all these qualities are always present, always, forever. (I.e. god can’t be omniscient on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and Benevolent only on Tuesday and Thursday.)



The next important thing to realise is that the category of bad stuff, or evil, is divided into: 



• Natural evil: earthquakes, disease and other natural disasters; 

• Moral evil: suffering caused by human actions - theft, murder etc; 

• Physical evil: bodily pain, emotional anxiety etc. 

• Metaphysical evil: things ‘wrong’ with the natural world - imperfections and privations.



Original Sin



So religion—Christianity especially—has always had a problem with pain and suffering. Evil. Bad stuff. Because it so often seems to happen to good people. And if God (with a capital ‘G’) is wholly good and all-powerful, He (with a capital ‘H’) should both want to stop it and be able to do so. But He doesn’t. It persists. We suffer. Why?



There have been all sorts of creative solutions (or attempted solutions) to this problem, from shifting the blame to the devil (which still begs the question as to why God would either permit it in the first place or allow it to continue) and from the devil, to man. And woman. Especially woman. Because, as it says in Genesis, God was especially hard on poor Eve, promising to:

…greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

That passage (2 Genesis, 3: verse 16 should you wish to know) has got a lot to answer for. But then, the Book of Genesis as a whole has plenty to answer for. For a start, there’s God’s curse on Adam for listening to Eve in the first place:

Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. (2 Genesis 3: 17-19)

And all was for an apple… Not any old apple, though. Because the forbidden fruit that the serpent persuaded Eve to pluck was from a special tree, the tree of knowledge. And God didn’t want that tempting fruit being taken because, as the serpent hisses:

God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Ye Shall Be As Gods. That gave humans a huge advantage, made mere homo into sapiens. Because knowledge is power. But it is also pain, the pain of being cast out from the nescience of Eden to the knowingness not only of the harsh, new realities of life (the bruised heel, sweating brow, pain of childbirth) but the knowledge of the paradise that was then but had now been lost.



This explanation for ‘evil’ (which in the philosophy of religion means all manner of bad stuff, whether it’s caused by people or natural forces) is that all our problems are caused by the ‘original’ sin. We’re all being punished for what Adam and Eve did. Things were all right before they behaved so badly and disobeyed god. There was no coronavirus in the Garden of Eden; earthquakes didn’t happen; and Adam and Eve didn’t argue with each other. But once banished, shit hit the fan big time!





You can download Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B086YVM3W6/

The New Normal

I read 'Normal People' just over a year ago and loved it. Reviewing it on Goodreads I wrote:



I’d give this book ten stars if I could. Twenty, even. I mean, can a love story be a thriller? Can a tale of two people in love and maybe not quite knowing it be as big a page-turner as the most ridiculous, boys-own adventure?



I’ve seldom been as moved, as involved, as utterly transfixed by a narrative as I was with this. It’s utterly, utterly brilliant! It’s deeply moving. It’s captivating, engaging and hypnotically diverting. And the writing... the writing is sparkling.



That's quite a high bar to set for the TV adaptation. So how did it do?



First, a huge 'five-star, must-see' for the stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal who totally inhabit both main characters to the extent that they morphed seamlessly into the ones I had in my head after reading the book (especially Daisy - what an inspired piece of casting that was!). Second, another high five for the adaptation which, given Sally Rooney was herself involved, was always likely to be good. But how do you transfer words like this from the page to the screen?



"Outside her breath rises in a fine mist and the snow keeps falling like a ceaseless repetition of the same infinitesimally small mistake.”



That image of the snow, the delicate flakes falling like a thousand, million mistakes, errors piling up on one another and then freezing, hardening into a pain that seeks permanent expression in a series of unhealthy relationships that themselves only stem from the damaged relationship Marianne (the main character) has with her mother, her brother, and her contemporaries at school, a pain that drives wedge like a knife through the only truly loving relationship she has, the flawed but beautiful story of her relationship with Connell (Paul Mescal), is beyond adapting, surely?



There is snow, of course. Marianne spends her Erasmus year in Sweden and we see her gazing over a frozen landscape. But we also seem to see, somehow, that that's as cold as it's going to get. Snow melts, and...



“He brought her goodness, like a gift,” Rooney writes towards the end of the book, “and it belongs to her.”



To be brutally honest there are maybe just a tad too many tears, a few too many anguished expressions in close-up, for my liking. It reminded me a little of my reaction when I first read "Tess" - there were a few "c'mon man" moments aimed at Connell, just as there'd been with Angel Clare. But such moody close-ups are probably the best you can do on the small (or any size) screen to get a flavour of the inner life that is so easily conjured by Rooney's writing. As an adaptation, it makes fantastic television.



If you've not seen it yet, you've a treat in store.



And if you've not yet read the book you've an even bigger treat.



I envy you both.









Normal People is available on BBC iPlayer now.

Normal People Hulu Book Review Rooney

I read 'Normal People' just over a year ago and loved it. Reviewing it on Goodreads I wrote:



I’d give this book ten stars if I could. Twenty, even. I mean, can a love story be a thriller? Can a tale of two people in love and maybe not quite knowing it be as big a page-turner as the most ridiculous, boys-own adventure?



I’ve seldom been as moved, as involved, as utterly transfixed by a narrative as I was with this. It’s utterly, utterly brilliant! It’s deeply moving. It’s captivating, engaging and hypnotically diverting. And the writing... the writing is sparkling.



That's quite a high bar to set for the TV adaptation. So how did it do?



First, a huge 'five-star, must-see' for the stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal who totally inhabit both main characters to the extent that they morphed seamlessly into the ones I had in my head after reading the book (especially Daisy - what an inspired piece of casting that was!). Second, another high five for the adaptation which, given Sally Rooney was herself involved, was always likely to be good. But how do you transfer words like this from the page to the screen?



"Outside her breath rises in a fine mist and the snow keeps falling like a ceaseless repetition of the same infinitesimally small mistake.”



That image of the snow, the delicate flakes falling like a thousand, million mistakes, errors piling up on one another and then freezing, hardening into a pain that seeks permanent expression in a series of unhealthy relationships that themselves only stem from the damaged relationship Marianne (the main character) has with her mother, her brother, and her contemporaries at school, a pain that drives wedge like a knife through the only truly loving relationship she has, the flawed but beautiful story of her relationship with Connell (Paul Mescal), is beyond adapting, surely?



There is snow, of course. Marianne spends her Erasmus year in Sweden and we see her gazing over a frozen landscape. But we also seem to see, somehow, that that's as cold as it's going to get. Snow melts, and...



“He brought her goodness, like a gift,” Rooney writes towards the end of the book, “and it belongs to her.”



To be brutally honest there are maybe just a tad too many tears, a few too many anguished expressions in close-up, for my liking. But they are probably the best you can do on the small (or any size) screen to get a flavour of the inner life that is so easily conjured by Rooney's writing. As an adaptation, it makes fantastic television.



If you've not seen it yet, you've a treat in store.



And if you've not yet read the book you've an even bigger treat.



I envy you both.









Normal People is available on BBC iPlayer now.

It's Just the Same Ol' Show...

... on my radio!



And why do I always sound as if I've got a blocked nose?



Anyway, as used to happen quite often (less so recently) BBC Lincolnshire came calling once again this morning and I was happy to talk to them, as always, this time on being a new dad in the 'new normal'.



It's nearly a decade now since I became a new dad in the old normal, but as I tried to make clear during my interview, a new baby is a new normal all the time, for everyone. Ok, so a dad today might not be able to attend ante-natal clinics like I did, but there's plenty more (especially if he's at home for longer than usual) he can do to help out afterwards.



A newborn's needs are fairly simple: to eat, to sleep, to be kept clean. And a dad can help to do all of those whether directly, or by supporting his partner while she takes the responsibility. Obviously, without lactating breasts, we're pretty stuck when it comes to breastfeeding but dads can do everything else, particularly by relieving a tired partner by bearing your fair share of what I was going to call the 'burden' but which is anything but.



Anyway, those difficult early days go by so quickly you really can't afford to do anything other than enjoy the precious time together... and for many, there's an awful lot more of that at present than before.



And help is at hand. I only accidentally got into parent blogging, all those years ago, when googling something I needed help with while on my own with Charlie. And I fell down the rabbit hole of what was then, almost exclusively, mummy blogging. It was an online community with advice and answers, a place for sharing the ups and downs and getting support.



These days there's so much more available, on line. Here are a few sites specifically for dads you might find useful:



Dad's Matter UK is billed as "supporting dads and mums suffering from anxiety, stress and PTSD" but it's a lot more besides, and well worth a look: dadsmatteruk.org









This Dad Can is a sign-up site (but it's free) doing what it says on the tin: supporting dads so that they can... do the whole range of parenting things. There are online courses and communities, a Facebook page and much more. Well worth a look.









And dad.info is billed as "Europe's largest advice and support site for fathers" which pretty much speaks for itself.









Not only is there more out there than ever before, I think attitudes to dads' involvement has changed over the past ten years, too. I once got into a bit of a heated on-air debate with Quentin Letts about this. I'd been phoned for a comment (obviously, I was at home looking after the baby) and Quentin was in the studio with Jeremy Vine. But there was a delay on the line and so what sounded like me arrogantly talking over the studio guest ("Hang on a minute, Tim, just let Quentin get a word in!") was actually down to the discrepancy between what I was hearing and what was being broadcast down the line in London. But despite what Letts so sniffily dismissed ("I think there's a lot of nonsense being said here") there is scientific evidence that proves beyond doubt that the physical response dads have to a baby's cries are as strong as a mum's. You really can't roll over and pretend you didn't hear!



And, thankfully, most dads don't. Most dads now appreciate how important they are, and want be involved as much as they can. Which is a truly great thing!



Nb. You can hear the brief interview I gave to Sean Dunderdale this morning on BBC Lincs on Sounds, here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08b4tv6 (ff to 2.22.47 if you want to get straight to the point!)

Provided You Don't Kiss Me

Ok, so I’m not just reading books about cricket. I’m pretty much going through everything Duncan Hamilton has written. It’s well worth it, even though I’ve only ever really had a passing interest in football, and for twenty years of his writing life Hamilton was the football correspondent of the Nottingham Evening Post. At times I’ve actually detested the so-called ‘beautiful game’. It probably stems from growing up in Hull but ‘supporting’ (if my lukewarm attention to any club could be so dignified) Derby County. Everyone else supported with Hull City (understandable) or Leeds United. It was the early seventies and I’d been taken to Hammonds to buy my first football kit. I was never going to be allowed free choice. My mother was from Derby and my dad was from Derby-on-sea, or Skegness as it’s otherwise known. So a Derby Country kit it was.



I was happy enough in the dark navy shorts and white top of The Rams. Derby County were the only team I'd ever seen play (albeit the reserves) taken by my grandad to a midweek game at the Baseball Ground. I thought it'd be fine turning up to primary school PE like that. After all, it almost looked the the England kit.



I didn't, and still don't, understand such things. Thirty years later I was making the same mistake at a party in Liverpool, admitting I'd be supporting Man U in a forthcoming European fixture 'as they're the only British team left in the competition.' Silence. I got my coat.



Anyway, while I still don't really understand football, I do understand (and admire) great writing. Add a great subject (and my early association with Brian Clough and Derby County left an indelible impression) and you've got, for me, a winning formula. Clough, too, was the ideal manager for a non-footballer. He was entertaining, a real larger-than-life character and his style of soccer was entertaining too. But Clough was certainly a complex character; I watched his Saturday night appearances on Parkinson, knew he was a friend of my hero Geoffrey Boycott, another complex personality if ever there was one. Other than that I didn't know the first thing about him. I lost the token interest I ever had in football at around the time he was winning trophies again with Notts Forest and that was that. I read the obituaries when he died.



And then, years later, read The Damned United. And now I've read this, a book about the man, a book that spans his entire career, player and manager, and a book that acts as a wonderfully lyrical tribute to both the manager and the football he inspired. Duncan Hamilton doesn't shy away from the hero's feet of clay; but he does so sympathetically, with an understanding that says as much about the subject of this book as its author. And then there's Hamilton's prose, at times rising to the heights of his acknowledged sports reporter heroes, inspired by the heroic heights scaled by the man, Clough. And his assistant, Peter Taylor. At one point Hamilton makes reference to Boswell's relationship to Dr Johnson in attempting to give Taylor his dues in the matter. But if anyone here is Boswell to Clough's Johnson, it's Duncan Hamilton himself. The book is magisterial, a worthy tribute to a man whose name still inspires a nine-year-old's defensive loyalty, nearly fifty years later!

An Author's Lot...

Is not a great deal, as it turns out. Never mind a policeman's!



In a little over ten years, one way or another, I've published (had published) a little over ten books. I've had all kinds of deals, from advances to outright copyright sales to self-publishing to crowdfunding. Last year, after a lot of hard yakka on my part, I had my second novel published. It was a project I passionately believed in - a war book but not a book about war, a book about the unseen consequences of war for those involved, and for those who never returned.





The Glorious Dead garnered little interest from mainstream publishers (no surprise, a work of literary fiction by an unknown author) and I knew at the time of writing it that the window of opportunity for a book set in the aftermath of World War One was small as the centenary of the Armistice approached. Ideally, it would be published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of when the guns fell silent. Because this is when the work of the novel's characters began. 




I decided to crowdfund with Unbound having already supported several of their books. I knew the editorial process was rigorous and that the books they produced were good - both as physical objects and as examples of their craft. I knew next-to-nothing about crowdfunding but reckoned with a bit of hard work (which turned out to be a year of a LOT of very hard work) I stood a pretty decent chance of raising the ten grand that a hardback took to produce. I was also genuinely supportive of a model that took the financial risk out of the publication process, allowing greater editorial (and authorial) freedom by the simple expedient of covering costs in advance. And after that, of course, it was an industry-busting 50-50 profit share of sales. 




Or so I thought. 




I should explain I've not gone back over my contract with a fine toothed comb or had it scrutinised by the legal department at the Society of Authors. I ought to have done that at the time. Apart from a few typos and the odd grammatical infelicity it read pretty much like the other contracts I had signed. Except, of course, that in this case publication was contingent upon raising upfront the cost of the book's production.










I should point out that it doesn't have to cost ten grand to produce a book. It can be done well for far less. But Unbound weren't cutting any corners and the product would be given lavish amounts of attention for the money I was raising. I should also point out I was delighted with the book. It came out on November 1st 2019, the near-perfect time, and received praise and a modicum of attention. It appeared in bookshops. It was spotted. Friends kept sending me photos of it on the shelves. One of my own proudest moments was seeing it displayed on a table of 'Books for Christmas' in Heffer's in Cambridge, rubbing shoulders with Sally Rooney and Joyce Carol Oates...oh, and Anton du Beke, too. There's nothing like that feeling!








Sales seemed to be going well, I was told. If it wasn't flying off the shelves it was certainly moving, if slowly. I expected nothing from the first statement, but was confident by the second I might have made enough to celebrate with a decent bottle of wine. Yesterday I had the third statement. And I'm still waiting for the money to buy a packet of biscuits, let alone a bottle of wine. Because, in spite of raising what I genuinely believed were the publication costs, costs keep being added and money earned held back against future loses (such as trade returns). At my lowest ebb it seemed that everything short of the office tea money was being added to the debit column of my statement. 




I'm no accountant, obviously. Neither am I a businessman.  I might be naive but still, the question will not go away. How can a model where the upfront costs are covered in advance yield so little from subsequent sales? Surely each and every sale should, technically, be a profit. I've gone from being an eager enthusiast for a new model, to a rather impoverished critic. Cynicism has now set and hardened like cement. But it’s not difficult to feel bitter when everyone else, or so it seems, has been paid.



Except me.




It's enough to make me want to quit what Geoff Dyer calls this 'non-job' of writing books for good. I've earned so much more from infrequent press articles than I've earned from book sales, although thankfully the good ol' PLR (public lending rights) payments that come from the token payment made when someone borrows something of mine from the library help keep things going. Why bother even trying, any longer? It's depressing, and by no means unfamiliar. The Society of Author's estimates that up to 90% of authors earn a little under ten per cent of the revenue books accrue. And most of us are 'earning' under ten grand a year.




Even as I make such a dumb resolution I know that it will never happen. I’m a writer; putting one word after another is the itch I’ve got to scratch, however low the returns. I seem to think in a sub-vocalised narrative of sentences, a kind of synesthesia of sorts that presents ideas and emotions as a kind of running commentary, important only as the raw material for making more words. It's what I do, have always done. I don't do it exceptionally. But I don't believe I do it badly. I enjoy it, but it's hard work. Hard work that seems to have paid a lot of people part of their monthly salary, but has paid me next-to-nothing.




It’s better to travel hopefully than arrive, as Robert Louis Stevenson said. And I know I'll have to carry on writing, because I enjoy the process. 




But I hate the so-called 'industry' that seems to leech the blood from an author's veins.




While I've still got some, I might as well donate it myself to the NHS. At least there you get a post-donation cup of tea and biscuit.

I Don't Like Cricket...

A Last English Summer: The Biography of a Cricket Season by Duncan Hamilton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Like any love affair, my love affair with cricket has its ups-and-downs. But whatever the downs (sledging, booming muzak accompanying every wicket or boundary, the WWF-isation of Twenty20 competitions) I always like to keep up-to-date with the scores. If it's on TV I'll usually watch; live is good but I'm as happy with the highlights on Channel 5 and live radio coverage on TMS. I still go to the odd game, if I can, whether it's village cricket, Test Match or odious ODI. But what I really like is the County Championship. The slow, relaxed (almost narcoleptic) pace of early championship games is about as relaxing and perfect (on a warm, spring day) as sport gets. For me, anyway. So I'm missing it, somewhat, this year, for obvious reasons. And instead of following it, I've been reading about it. Having heard the wonderful Radio Four adaptation of Duncan Hamilton's biography of Neville Cardus last year (and enjoyed it immensely) I thought I'd search out another of Hamilton's books on cricket. And I'm at a loss to know why it's taken me so long. If this isn't the best, most lyrical, poetical and wonderful cricket writing available today then I don't know what is. It's clear Hamilton has taken a leaf out of Cardus's book, perhaps quite literally. The debt is acknowledged early on, but the book is less derived than inspired by the great vein of cricket writing Cardus began. Quite honestly, it's a damn good book whatever it's about although you have to like cricket, I suppose, to get the most out of the prose. Each chapter is ostensibly about a match Hamilton attends in the summer of 2009 but, taking the advice given to Cardus when first sent to Old Trafford by the Manchester Guardian, Hamilton eschews dry statistics (though there is a scorecard included for the nerds!) and gives a flavour of each game, a gem of writing that brings a moment of the game to life so vividly you could almost have been there. Indeed, I was at some of the games described, notably at Scarborough watching the ex-captain of England, Michael Vaughan, being sent to field at third man at each end by the (then) captain of Yorkshire. How are the mighty fallen... If you're missing cricket, read this book. You won't regret it. And rain will never stop play!




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Lockdown, day two...

Day two of our new lives dawns bright and clear; the birds are singing and - as I write this - the pencils are scratching on the work that my children have been sent by their respective schools.



Yesterday seemed fairly easy really: we did a little maths, my son watched a YouTube live stream from one of his teachers and my daughter began a project on Queen Victoria. Other things happened too: we were made to do PE (in the garden) although I was excused as I have a note from Matron (having had a hernia operation... ahh, ow!).



Today the kids were up before me, dressed and raring to go. And today it was primary school English, that baffling and absurdly over-complicated way of learning (unlearning?) your native language that was invented by Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings when they ran the Education Department and invented solely as a way of atomising everything that could possibly count as 'knowledge' in order that they could explicitly dictate that every teacher teach it and then test the teacher (via the children) on how well they'd done it. And no doubt (they thought, at the time) sack them if they hadn't done it well enough. Ha! No-one's sacking teachers now we need them for emergency childcare and remote learning, are they? Oh no!



Anyway, if like me (and I have a moderately respectable 'A' level in English and have taught it in secondary schools) you're struggling to separate your prepositional phrases from your fronted adverbials or your modifying nouns from your determiners, help is at hand.



If, like me, you were content to be taught nouns, adjectives, adverbs etc. I'll attempt to translate that into modern primary 'English'. If you weren't ever taught them, you'd better start here, with this brief explanation.



Basically a sentence (in English) works like this:


A noun is the name of something. It can be an object (my blog) a person (Tim) a place (my living room) or even an idea (helping other parents).
A pronoun is a word like 'I', or 'you' or 'they' or 'it' that you use so you don't have to keep repeating the noun. Which would sound odd. (Tim wrote a blog post on English. Tim typed it up and then Tim published it on his blog. Tim hoped it might help someone, somewhere, make sense of the English their children were doing.) [If I was still a teacher I might get you to re-write that sentence using pronouns... Stop talking at the back!]
A verb is an action, something you do, or something you think or feel. When I was at school (a long, long time ago) these were called 'doing words' or 'being words'. (Tim thought that what Michael Gove had done to education was a travesty. So he decided to write a blog post all about it.)
An adverb tells you something about how, or where or when or for how long a verb was doing its thing. That's why it's called an adverb. (Tim had always thought Michael Gove was a bit of a pillock). Confusingly an adverb can also add this sort of information to an adjective or even to another adverb. (He couldn't stand Gove's extremely smug expression) but that doesn't really matter. Once you know what they are it doesn't really matter where they occur.   
Tense: this tells you when what was happening (the verb) actually happened. Basically this is easy - you just add things like '-ed' or '-en' to the verb to indicate the past tense (it happened last night, last week, last year) or '-s' to show that it's happening now. (Tim had written a blog post listing useful websites earlier in the week. He hates Michael Gove with a passion!)
Subject and predicate: every sentence has a subject (what the sentence is about) and a predicate (what is happening to the subject or what they are doing). The subject usually (but not always) begins the sentence and can also include a pronoun and maybe some description. (Old, slightly overweight and balding, Tim was deliberately avoiding looking in the mirror these days.)  


Ok, so those are the basics. I could go on and talk about punctuation, spelling, common mistakes and so on. And I will if you want me to. But I'm also aware many of you (ok, well, maybe three?) have clicked today to find of what the f**k a fronted adverbial might be, so that you can help your children with their unnecessarily complicated English homework. So, here goes:


Determiner: this is a word that comes before a noun in order to tell you something specific about it. When I were a lad these were called things like 'the indefinite (or definite) article' or 'quantifiers';  even good ol' pronouns can be determiners and that's a good way to think of them: they're pro- the noun, helping it out in some way. ('One of Tim's blogs has been getting lots of traffic since the UK schools shutdown.)
Modifying noun: this is just a noun used as an adjective, so I'm a bit at a loss to know why it seems to have acquired a separate definition and identity, but hey-ho, you've got to fill your Year 6 SPAG tests with something! (Tim thought Gove had made a real pig's breakfast of the National Curriculum.)
Prepositional phrase: grammar teachers love the words 'modify' and 'modifier' and in the case of prepositional phrases it might just be the best way to think about it. If a preposition is a word like 'at, for, in, off, on, over, and under' that tells you where or when or how something is happening (the cat sat on the mat) then a prepositional phrase is just the preposition plus the object that it's governing, e.g. the cat sat on the mat or Michael Gove really does have a lot to answer for. Actually, is that a prepositional phrase? Even I'm confused! 
Fronted adverbial: if you put an adverb at the front of a sentence (and remember you might have more than one word for this) it's a fronted adverbial. Basically. Technically it's a little more complicated. But technically, so is rocket science. And all this talk of 'fronted adverbials' is a bit like trying to teach kids the science of a NASA space mission in order to appreciate the moon. (Every morning, as the sun is rising, Tim gets out of bed and curses Michael Gove.)


Enough, already. When I tweeted some of this a little earlier someone tweeted a reply:





Is that why we see so many errors of things like 'they're, their, there' and 'you're, your and yore' ? It's too difficult so people give up? (I don't see any foreign English speakers making these mistakes...)




Quite apart from whether it's true that non-native English speakers have a greater tendency to avoid making these mistakes, it might reveal something interesting (important? Who am I to say? Ask Michael Gove. Or Dominic Cummings!) about how best to learn a language, viz. that you can be competent, confident, accurate and even fluent in your use of English without ever knowing (or needing to know) any of this 'under-the-bonnet' stuff. 




I can drive a car... but I've no idea how to build an internal combustion engine.