The Semantic North

 Shelley and I were in Belfast the other week. Whether you call it the Six Counties, Ulster, the North of Ireland, Northern Ireland or simply the North, you might want to read about what a wonderful time we had -:

I remember it like it was only yesterday…

Newcastle United completed the signing of Peter Beardsley from Vancouver Whitecaps on Tuesday 20^th September 1983. I learned of this on the first local sports news bulletin of the day on Metro Radio, just before dawn the following day. I was out of my pit extra early that day, on account of the fact I was off to the New University of Ulster, in Coleraine, County Derry that very morning. In what was to be a glorious promotion winning campaign, with Kevin Keegan, Chris Waddle and Beardsley himself scoring goals for fun, I first got to see the little maestro on Boxing Day when we beat Blackburn 1-0, as it was a little too far to get back for home games from my new home athwart the River Bann, which proved distinctly dissimilar to my childhood experiences of holidays in rural south west County Cork.

Returning at the end of three years “study,” armed with a moderate degree, a hacking smoker’s cough, an extra couple of stones courtesy of a severe black porter habit and zero idea of what to do with the rest of my life, I at least got to see Beardsley regularly during the last year of his first spell on Tyneside, his final appearance consisting of limping off against Manchester United in a 2-1 win on Easter Saturday 1987, and the whole of his Indian Summer return between 1993 and 1997. As regards the Causeway Coast, a liquor-logged weekend in January 1999 was the last time I’d been in that area, despite having clocked up visits to 31 of the 32 Irish counties (Kerry; you’re still on my radar) since then. Indeed, I’d taken it for granted that I’d not set foot on Portstewart Promenade again in my life, though it is strange how things turn out, especially as my son Ben has settled down with Lucy, who hails from Comber, County Down and my partner Shelley’s mother came from Sixmilecross, just outside Omagh in County Tyrone.

Those of you attuned to the hyper-sensitive semantics of nomenclature regarding that part of the world will notice I’ve so far avoided the use of any contentious names for the area as a whole. No mention, thus far, of: Ulster, the Six Counties, Northern Ireland, or the North of Ireland. As this piece will hopefully show, this is because the recent trip Shelley and I made to her ancestral home and the territory surrounding my alma mater (well, I hardly ever went there as a student, so why would I bother visiting the campus now I’m pushing 60?) has made me reconsider my attitude to a place that I have taken to calling the North of Ireland, or more informally, the North, but that I’m now ambivalent, rather than openly hostile, to calling Northern Ireland.

As I’ll hopefully show, things have changed over the last 40 years; almost entirely for the better. It isn’t as intense as it was; how could it be? While it’ll never be home to me in the way I feel about de Banks, you can go from Strabane to Larne and Portballintrae to Newry and sense you’re in a place that is now at ease with itself and what it consists of. I’ll still never build a bonfire or play a flute, but then again neither will about 75% of those living in what I’m no longer averse to calling Northern Ireland. Or perhaps just the North…

Next year, when I turn 60, I want to have both a beach holiday with Shelley and a trip to Belgium for beer and football with Ben. Therefore, the issue of a holiday this year required somewhere a bit further afield than Ayrshire, where we went last year but closer than the Maldives, for instance. Having sourced a place to stay with Ben’s father-in-law to be, Shaw, out on the Newtownards Road, the North was to be our destination. Shelley felt a need that bordered on an urge to visit where her mam’s family came from, especially as her mam’s 13^th anniversary fell on the Wednesday we were over there. In contrast, all I needed was the chance to sup black porter and, hopefully, see a football game.

Because of parental responsibilities with Shelley’s kids, we could only feasibly go away between Monday 21^st to Friday 25^th August, which I initially thought would rule out the prospect of seeing a game; all the more galling as Dundela, the team I’d been keen to watch, were at home to Ballinamallard on Saturday 26^th. Luckily, the IFA had rescheduled a couple of Premier Division games for the Tuesday night; Crusaders v Carrick Rangers and Linfield v Cliftonville. Despite paying cognisance to the stated aims of a new, more inclusive society in Belfast, there was no way I was heading to Windsor Park. If it had been at Solitude, fair enough, but I’ve already been there. Therefore, in the spirit of groundhopping, it had to be Seaview for Shelley and me. And what a choice that turned out to be, but more of that later.

We arrived at Newcastle airport with plenty of time to spare on the Monday morning. All the more so as the flight to Aldergrove, as I still call it, was delayed an hour. As ever, Easy Jet are only marginally behind Ryan Air in terms of treating passengers like cattle, so we eventually got squashed in on a fullish plane, landing 40 minutes later. Instead of the kind of hypervigilant, militaristic experience that going through any kind of customs checkpoint, whether it be road, rail or sea, involved during the 80s and, to an extent, the 90s, this time we waltzed through arrivals without being asked how old our grannies were or what school we went to, stopping only to marvel at the R2D2 lookalike robot floor cleaners that even asked you to please step aside while they swabbed the floors.

Shaw was waiting for us, and within the hour we’d done a bag drop and had a cuppa at his, before taking the Glider, a new-fangled swish commuter bus that is a fine legacy to Werner Heubeck’s long tenure as busfahrer. Alighting a stop too late at Connswater Shopping Centre (Van Morrison songs were to be a feature of this holiday), we doubled back on ourselves, via a charming, almost apolitical East Belfast celebrity mural (Eric Bell, George Best, CS Lewis and a fella called Morrison et al), to Bullhouse East, a craft ale paradise on the Newtownards Road, where the Rolling Papers Hazy IPA was a glorious, 5.2%, citrusy party on the palate. It could have been tempting to just sit down there for the day, especially with a wood-fired pizza oven out back, but there was a whole city to explore, so we took the Glider further on into town and headed for, where else, The Crown. Passing the Northern Bank, source of the PIRA Pension Plan withdrawal, I noticed it was now Danske Bank, who no longer sponsor the Northern Ireland Premier League. Sports Direct now have that gig, which we’ll say no more about.

The Crown is as good as ever; we got a booth, shared with a young couple from Nottingham, who asked us to mind their bags while they went out for a smoke. Not a request you could imagine hearing in 83 or 84. After a brace there, we opted against heading up the Golden Mile to Lavery’s or next door to Robinson’s and instead made for White’s, where the porter was exceptional and the seafood chowder worth the trip alone. Belfast is a proper gastronomic paradise these days and, even on a Monday, loads of new trendy bars were filling up with young ones, ready to hear endless ersatz versions of Brown Eyed Girl and Cleaning Windows until the early hours. Our last port(er) of call, before plenty of spirits and hippy songs back at Shaw’s, was Gerry Adams’s old stamping ground, The Duke of York. It’s just a beautiful bar in what is now a lovely, relaxed and compact city centre. As the fat lad from Hyndford Street correctly suggested; wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time?

Talking of whom, awakening late on Tuesday morning, my senses were assailed by the burnt aroma of slowly cooked arabica, creeping into the bedroom courtesy of Bell’s Bean Roasters round the way from Shaw’s place and a companion sizzle of an incipient Ulster fry being prepared by our host. What a hero. I still don’t know which food Van the Man was taking about when he refers to the smell of the baking / bacon from across the street got up my nose on Cleaning Windows mind. No matter, a proper heart attack on a plate set us up brilliantly for an afternoon’s research. We headed for the GRONI (General Records Office, Northern Ireland), as opposed to the PRONI (Public Records Office, Northern Ireland) on Stranmillis Road, just up past Queens. Going past QUBSU, I was transported back to the days we travelled up to see The Fall, Johnny Thunders, Everything but the Girl and New Order from Coleraine, in battered NUU minibuses that we’d semi-fraudulently hired as we overegged our alleged membership of the Musicians’ Union.

In the GRONI, after negotiating an incompetent receptionist and morally censorious archivist, Shelley successfully located and ordered her grandmother’s birth, marriage, and death certificates, as well as her late aunt’s birth certificate. A quick trip into the Ulster Museum put the whole of The Troubles in context for Shelley (remember she was still at school when the Good Friday Agreement was signed), before Shaw did the honours by chauffeuring us on the usual Belfast tourist route up The Shankill and down The Falls. Now I do realise the murals are probably more a kind of historical artefact than a statement of current political beliefs these days, but it does jar that a memorial at the bottom of The Shankill includes the names of those responsible for the Miami Showband atrocity on a list of fallen heroes, while the top of The Falls has a display dedicated to former Barcelona boss Patrick O’Connell, who once turned out for Ashington, trivia fans. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the efficacy of the moral compasses either side of the still depressingly real and recently reinforced Peace Line.

 

The next set of murals we saw were UDA dedicated ones on the Shore Road, as Shaw dropped us off for the game. He’s a lapsed Glen man and seemed to take us past The Oval every time we went out in the car. Mind, Seaview was also a regular sight to behold. I must admit to not feeling particularly at home in the environs of Crues ground, though the closer we got to it, the less political it became. Indeed, the preponderance of black and red flags and shirts meant you could easily have been in Phibsborough going to see Big Club. Well, perhaps not, but it stopped feeling like a Panorama documentary from the late 70s after a while. To be fair to Crues, and the half a dozen Carrick fans that made the 20-minute trip down the side of Belfast lough, there was not a single sectarian chant heard all night. It could be that the Huns v PSV Champions’ League qualifier on RTE (yes; really…) had thinned out the number of bigots on display, or they might all have been at Windsor Park for a cross-community singalong, but I’m prepared to give Crusaders the benefit of the doubt and applaud them for the warm, positive and welcoming atmosphere. Chatting with the fella who sold us a programme, he expressed genuine joy that we’d opted to pay them a visit as part of our holiday.

Then again, when you win 9-0, it is easy to be magnanimous I suppose. Ironically, Carrick could twice have scored in the opening minutes, before the home side tore through the opposition and fired in a quick two-goal, salvo. It would have been 3 immediately afterwards, but a last-man foul and penalty held up the cavalry charge for a minute or so. The spot kick went in, and Carrick were broken like a cheap, plastic watch in the opening quarter of an hour. Frankly, it got no better for them from that point onwards. A crowd of about 700 in a quirky, gloriously mismatched stadium cheered as the home side rattled in goals from every attack. It ended up 9-0, but there were 2 disallowed and a couple of near misses as well. All this on the day when Carrick were bought out by a consortium of American businessmen from the Estee Lauder foundation. Despite the final score, they are only promising cosmetic changes in the future. Arf!

Ironically, Carrick recovered from this mauling by taking a point in a 3-3 draw away to Linfield, while Crues eviscerated Dungannon Swifts 4-0 in their next game. Just before I wrote this, Crues drew 2-2 with the Glens at The Oval, in a rescheduled game that had been postponed the Saturday before we arrived after a month’s rain had fallen in one night in Belfast.

Shaw collected us at full time, and we headed back for an early night as Wednesday was the big trip out to Omagh and beyond. Fuelled by a sausage and bacon soda, we started on our 240-mile odyssey by heading out west, to a soundtrack of the wee man from Strabane, your Uncle Hugo Duncan on Radio Ulster, proving that schmaltzy country and western will never surrender. Minute scanning of Google maps took us out to Sixmilecross, a pleasant planter village that, despite a preponderance of post Reformation places of worship, has a distinctly more Nationalist feel to it as a result of demographic shifts, as shown by the autographed Tyrone GAA jerseys on display in the window of the local pub, The Whistler’s Inn. We called in to ask for directions and the woman behind the bar directed us out to where McNally houses were on the edge of the village. I’m not sure we saw them, but we soon found the other, much smaller, settlement of Mountfield where Shelley’s aunts were christened. There is only 1 place of worship in that village. There were no Union flags fluttering on lamp posts here, though the smell of turf burning clogged the August air. Nice place.

Next up, we visited Omagh for lunch, grabbed some maps from a wonderfully helpful Tourist Information officer, noted the bizarre sight of a number 93 double decker heading for Sixmilecross (how could it avoid all those low hanging branches on the country lanes?), and struck out for the Causeway Coast. The ragged beauty of the Sperrins, the less pressing allure of Cookstown, Maghera, Swatragh and Dungiven on the road to Coleraine, before we came across the beauty of Portstewart Promenade. Parking up at The Anchor, we took a stroll the full length of The Prom to where I used to live at number 5, then back again, stopping for a ice cream at Morelli’s. A winding tour down the small streets where I drank, smoked and read 4 decades ago, noticing places where I lived or simply dossed when drunk, and then down the coastal path to Portrush. Splendidly seedy as ever, Barry’s amusements were in full swing, and I was delighted to note my old home at 77 Causeway Street still has the same front door. It looks like the windows haven’t been washed since we moved out in 1984 either.  My eyes misted over as I reflected on how I’d seen all these important places again. I hope to go back for a proper visit. From there, Shaw put his foot down and we completed 240 miles in the car and 8 miles on foot, before another quiet night in his place. This had been a special and an important day for both Shelley and me.

Thursday was our last full day, and it involved a physical catch-up with one of my old pals and a phone catch up with another. Firstly, we did another Van Morrison influenced tour, cutting down Cyprus Avenue and across Hyndford Street, to get some keys cut for Shaw’s place, as he was off out on a work beano at some swanky place in town and we’d need to look after ourselves. We parked up in some particularly staunch Loyalist area, festooned like there was a Royal wedding imminent, which meant I needed the calming tones of Uncle Hugo Duncan to avoid meltdown. Keys cuts, we then headed out to Bangor, which I’d not set foot in since Autumn 1984. We had a dander about the marina, drinking lovely takeaway coffees and noticing the place is massively improved and no longer really a seaside resort, but rather more of a stop off point for the yachting set.

The purpose of going to Bangor was to meet my old Teenage Fanclub pal Pedro (Peter), and then to sink some pints. Turns out Pedro’s architect brother lives on Cyprus Avenue and designed Bullhouse East, so it’s a small world. We discussed this over several pints in Jenny Watts and then the magnificent Fealty’s, which served up the pint of the holiday. An incredible spot: a corner bar with a Free Trade meets The Cumberland vibe for Ouseburn heads wanting a reference point. It’s a music pub and, hearing sounds from the back room, Shelley was in her element after finding the County Down Ukulele Orchestra in full flow. Bright Side of the Road got an airing, of course; 40 ukulele players, plus one fella on the bodhran and another on the penny whistle. I nipped outside to take a call from my university pal Susan, who had hoped to meet us, but was scuppered by initial a bout of Covid (remember that anyone?), then impeded by work and the need to pack for an imminent Spanish holiday. It didn’t happen this time, but it will in future. After all, it’s only 33 years since we last caught up…

 

We finished off with a quieter one in The Imperial, took a very swish train to Lanyon Place (how much better than Northern Irish Railways to Belfast Central in the old days?), then hopped a glider to Ballyhackamore for a final couple in Hearth, before calling it a night. Fair play to Shelley, she didn’t like Guinness (or Club Orange or Tayto Crisps, which must put her Tyrone roots in doubt), but she drank a pint of black porter on her last night.

 

I drank rather too many and, following late night rums and red wine with Shaw and a couple of his inebriated work pals, I was traumatised by the drink on Friday morning. Thanks goodness Shelley took control, providing enough sugar and caffeine to get me upright and on the plane for a rapid journey home of about 5 hours door to door. She’s a keeper; I’m telling you.

So, how was it? Amazing from start to finish. Even the scary bits are only scary because of previous associations and memories, though Pedro did counsel me to keep my voice down when evaluating Jamie Bryson’s intellectual skills and cultural importance at one point. I love the place; it isn’t the Six Counties, and it definitely isn’t Ulster any longer. It may one day be Northern Ireland to me, as it doesn’t even feel like the North of Ireland did in my head. I feel happy calling it the North; it is both imprecise and geographically accurate. Whatever the name, it’s better to talk about semantics than Semtex. We’ll be back in the North, of that there is no doubt, though it’ll be Wilgar and not Windsor Park that I’m hoping to visit.

Finally, a massive thank you to Shaw who was an amazing host, an amazing chauffeur and amazing company throughout our stay.  Cheers mate!!

 

 

 

 

Word Salad Surgery

 Here's a piece I wrote for the latest TQ, about chance and randomness in song lyrics -:

Our enemies comprehend only the language of blood. The time for the pen has passed and we enter the era of the sword. Words are dead.

The above quotation is taken from the radical Kuwaiti dramatist Sulayman Al-Bassam’s Al-Hamlet Summit, a re-working of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, based on an uncompromising engagement with issues concerning the contemporary Arab world. In this specific case, the concept of state censorship and the line of demarcation between freedom of speech and apostasy. This is not the subject I wish to discuss in this piece, but Al Bassam’s words are pertinent to the concepts of both chance and randomness in what could loosely, or indeed glibly, be referred to as song lyrics in the No Audience Underground.

From my perspective as both a consumer and creator of experimental music, as well as a writer of poetry and prose, both fiction and non-fiction, it seems to me that Al-Bassam’s statement that “words are dead” is a succinct appraisal of the overarching attitude to song lyrics displayed by many practitioners of our craft. I am unclear why this is the case; perhaps the uniquely talented F. R. David nailed it on his 1983 magnum opus, “words don’t come easy to me?” It appears that most experimental music, whether electronic or acoustic, could best be described as instrumental, so lyrics and words in general have little or no value in the genre. Even such skilled vocal stylists operating in this oeuvre as Mobius appear to use the human voice as an instrument, rather a tool for narrative exposition, where patterns of sound are more important than any hint of a didactic lexical meaning.

However, at a micro level, words are proximate to essential when it comes to naming pieces. Of course, numerical titling has a long and continuing history; from baroque chamber music to Brian Eno’s Music for Airports and on to the present day, compositions without words have regularly been given a numeral title that stands alone, without words. I understand that and appreciate the decision of any artist responsible for choosing such an approach, but I must admit to delighting in the more creative names given to instrumental pieces by other, perhaps, more mischievous practitioners. Who doesn’t love the images conjured up by titles such as A Carrot is as Close as a Rabbit gets to a Diamond (Captain Beefheart), Big John Wayne Socks Psychology on the Jaw (Hatfield and the North) or Knee Deep in Shit (Rip, Rig & Panic)?

My own musical practice is as part of BARTHOLOMEW cusack. Alongside the electronic wizard Chris Bartholomew, who has the allocation of talent in the duo and is the real creative force behind this project, on 50% of our compositions, my role is to recite spoken word pieces, which I will discuss anon. The other 50% of our compositions involve me, a self-confessed anti-musician, coaxing noises from either a six string or bass guitar. At this point, I could digress extensively as to whether the No Audience Underground and associated adherents are actively campaigning for the abolition of guitar music, but I won’t. What I will say is that the noises I make with electric stringed instruments are planned rather than randomly generated, even if there is no possibility of these sounds being transcribed in musical notation. These pieces are not songs in the established sense, but neither are they free improvisations; the planned and rehearsed nature of their genesis makes each of them sound distinctly different from each other. Initially, Chris and I did not identify these pieces with titles, preferring instead to use descriptive terminology along the lines of “the one with the harmonics” or “hammer-off” to delineate these separate creations. However, as we continue along the tortuous road towards the release of our music on CD, the need for titles became a necessary aspect of the creative process, in order to identify these distinct instrumental / wordless pieces. And this is where the concepts of chance and randomness come to the party.

While Appalachian eefing has been a recognised Tennessee bluegrass singing technique for 150 years or more, scat singing an integral part of trad jazz from the very outset, and lilting a vocal element of sean nos Irish folk music for at least three centuries, the more cerebral arts have also sought to appropriate popular cultural tropes, by incorporating random vocal soundings for a considerable period of time. Improvisation and spontaneity have long been central to creative wordplay in the avant garde. Tristan Tzara’s Dadaist Manifesto of 1920 proposed cutting words from a newspaper and randomly selecting fragments to write poetry, a process later enthusiastically adopted by William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and other Beat Generation writers as Cut-Ups. For Dadaists, the apogee of their contribution to literature was the tonal poetry of Hugo Ball. His work attacked traditional literary concepts such as: structure, order and the actual meaning of language. Probably his most famous poem was I Zimbra, which was fashioned into a rock song by The Talking Heads on their stunning 1978 album Fear of Music, though it could be argued that Ball’s text could equally have found a home on the band’s later Speaking in Tongues set -:

 Gadji beri bimba clandridi

Lauli lonni cadori gadjam

A bim beri glassala glandride

E glassala tuffm I zimbra

Bim blassa galassasa zimbrabim

Blassa glallassasa zimbrabim

A bim beri glassala grandrid

E glassala tuffm I zimbra

Gadji beri bimba glandridi

Lauli lonni cadora gadjam

A bim beri glassasa glandrid

E glassala tuffm I Zimbra

In seeking to name the instrumental pieces for BARTHOLOMEW cusack, I attempted to incorporate elements of chance and randomness in a list of potential titles. As already stated, discussion of how these concepts can act as the stepping off point for longer prosodic or poetic pieces for recitation or declamation will follow later. Here, at the micro level, we can find memorable names from chance events in the world around us. Take a look at this list. Hopefully, at least 3 of them will be married up to non-vocal pieces on the forthcoming BARTHOLOMEW cusack CD -:

1.      Dromedary

2.      P.C. Callum Smith

3.      Thomson’s Gazelle

4.      Abattage

5.      Chloe’s Urinal

6.      The Big Budgie

7.      Desimineni

8.      Mucladnee

9.      Nice Little Outfit

10.  Don’t Forget the Fucking Cauliflower

All of these phrases introduced themselves to my consciousness through chance or random events. Well, apart from the first one, which is culled from an as yet unwritten poem of mine that will include the line “I’m a Dromedary in a herd of wild Bactrians.” P.C. Callum Smith was the name of a smiling neighbourhood Bobby who was handing out flyers and business cards outside my local Sainsbury’s to announce his arrival on the patch. As all nature lovers will know, Thomson’s Gazelle is the best named animal in the entire world. Google translate suggests that Felling, the scenic little fishing village on the South bank of the Tyne where I arrived in the world, can be rendered en Francais as Abattage.

I have always loved misspellings, mispronunciations and misreadings; my step daughter’s return from university for the holidays saw me fail to grasp the word “arrival” on the calendar in the kitchen and assume she was purchasing a pissoir, for number 5. A disgruntled fan of some other team put Newcastle’s improvement down, not to Eddie Howe’s superb management, but to the existence of a large, feathered wallet, on the BBC Football discussion forum.  In the company of Chris, I always try to pronounce musical terms correctly; luckily, I’ve not had to refer to a note half the length of a semiquaver just yet, while a YouTube documentary about street fighting men in County Limerick made reference to “My Uncle Anthony” at one point.

Finally, there are some phrases that simply must be preserved, such as my partner Shelley describing a summer t-shirt and shorts combo that I wore on the first decent day of the year as a “nice little outfit,” which made me feel like a toddler. Best of all was the instruction barked by an irate pensioner to his son, outside a fruit and veg shop in Blaydon Shopping Centre. Tragically, the shop has been pulled down, but the words live on.

Finally, at the macro level, junk emails have proved themselves to be a rich source of lyrical inspiration, which I’ve exploited ruthlessly in my creative writing activities. If both Al-Bassam and F. R. David are correct in their assertions, where can the creative artist go to find lyrics? In the same way that Carl Andre’s famous pile of bricks stopped being a functional object and became a work of art at the precise moment he called it a work of art, then words found in unsolicited junk emails, often randomly generated and badly translated by computer software, take on a poetic quality when used for artistic purposes. For instance, this poem was an amalgamated rewrite of two unsolicited emails, which will appear in my forthcoming chapbook of poetry and prose, tentatively entitled Violent Heterosexual Men. The title is the subject line of the two emails -:

 Information / Fun

 I am trying to find a individual who is brought in to having fun with me!

We may obtain information about you from other parties for any of our purposes.

 A dry spell is killing me, just a one-night stand is enough for me.

We may share information about you with other organisations as the law also allows this.

 The guy should be set for a lip service and all styles of bang whole night, and I expect this will remain confidential.

You are not allowed find out more about our purposes, how we use personal information or your rights in this matter.

 Probably, I will like a guy to host, as am available the whole weekend for an experience with an older guy.

The law allows us to check the information you provide to improve our knowledge.

 I acknowledge that the effect of that piece is meant to be a visual one, as demonstrated by the contrasting fonts and that this article is about the collision between sound and words, thus I’d like to finish by sharing My Name is Diana, which BARTHOLOMEW cusack performed live at the TQ Live event at the Lit & Phil on 19 August 2022, and which will appear on our forthcoming CD. I’d like to think the words, altered slightly for clarification purposes from the original email, are both banal and sinister, two qualities that I’ve long aspired to -:

My name is Diana, I'm 24 years, light skin, and I'm great in bed. It has been six months since I dated, so I would love to find someone. I’m currently working and eager to meet someone. I haven't tried online dating, though lots of success stories got my attention. I'm optimistic it will work fine for me. I want a guy good in bed, since it's been a while since I was shagged. I’m very hot, and so the man should be great in bed, as I want him to be my bed buddy, and if he gives me a good loving, we will meet regularly.  The guy should be tall, dark, and good looking. He should be also kind, full of life, and a joy to stay with. Hope he gifts me after. Cheers.

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

Drowning, not Waving

Wet and miserable times for Tynemouth 3s during the rainy season...

Saturday 8^th July:

The Mouth of the Tyne Festival may have brought many visitors to Tynemouth for a joyous weekend of musical entertainment, but for Tynemouth Cricket Club, the results on the pitch were as gloomy as the skies overhead, with two games washed out and two others seeing heavy defeats. The first XI hosted Whitburn while the second XI made the reverse trip down the coast to the Village Ground, with severe rain putting paid to the chances of a result in both contests.

At Preston Avenue, Whitburn batted first and, in the 33 overs possible before the deluge, made 120-2. This comprised a century opening stand by Ethan Chivers (68*) and Lee Henderson (32), which ended on 107 when the latter was dismissed by Andrew Smith, who was soon back in the thick of it, catching Muhaymen Majeed from the bowling of Tshepo Ntuli, immediately before the weather intervened. The 2s fixture saw Tynemouth bat and reach 154-8 from 35 overs. Top scorers were Barry Stewart (40) and Sam Robson (34).

Both the Saturday and Sunday 3s saw their games played to a conclusion and perhaps wished they hadn’t been. At Heaton Medicals on Saturday, skipper Chris Grievson lost the toss and saw Civil Service decide to bat first. Two rain delays saw the game reduced to 34 overs, from which the home side posted a score of 170-6. Asik Miah (4-35) produced his best spell for the club, but there was a sense that the total was an imposing one, especially as the game had been played in farcical circumstances before the second delay, allowing Civil Service to get away from the visitors. This proved to be an astute prophecy as Tynemouth’s innings never get started, lurching from one disaster to another as they were bowled out for 60 in 20.2 overs.

Sunday saw scarcely better fortunes, as a trip to Hetton Lyons provided little succour, other than Sean Aditjandra’s impressive 5-23 as the home side made 205. In reply, Tynemouth were skittled for 90, with only Joel Hull-Denholm’s battling 31 offering any true resistance.

 Let us hope for better weather and better fortunes next weekend.

I’m not putting out any spoilers here when I tell you I haven’t scored a run or taken a wicket since I last blogged on cricket. This afternoon’s performance was textbook trash from me. On a day when we dodged showers and really did well to snatch defeat from the jaws of an abandonment, losing our last wicket about 10 minutes before the heavens opened for a 12-hour spell of torrential rain, I contributed an unbeaten 0* from 2 balls. In the context of our 60 all out, that wasn’t so bad. However that was barely relevant when placed in the context of the single, wretched over I bowled with a bar of soap, that went for 17 runs. All of them were scored by a powerful left-hander, who clubbed me to the fence for each of the first 4 balls of the over, aided by 2 incompetent bits of fielding that turned singles into boundaries, then tickled a single, allowing me to bowl a maiden ball to a studious right hander who played me correctly back down the pitch. It wasn’t much of a consolation, or even a pyrrhic victory. Rather typically, it took place just as Shelley was arriving to see me play at her first ever game of cricket. It’s a good job she loves me, otherwise she may not have been so enthusiastic about slogging it back up to the bus stop on the Coast Road in a downpour on a Saturday tea time.

Saturday 15^th July:

For the second successive Saturday, rain ruined play for Tynemouth’s three teams. The first XI travelled to Felling, where only 4 balls were possible before the skies opened. In that time The Croons advanced to 3-0. The reverse fixture saw Tynemouth 2s, having already seen their NEPL T20 group game away to Ashington cancelled on Friday evening, host their Felling counterparts. In the 8.4 overs at Preston Avenue, Felling made 21-1. The sole Tynemouth bowler to take a wicket on Saturday was Neil Bennett, though Dan Storey of Tynemouth 3s may have cause to rue this. On the back field, visitors United Stars had reached 43 without loss from 8.3 overs when the deluge hit. During this time, Storey was denied a wicket when ian cusack made a woeful hash of a straightforward chance at square leg. Thankfully, he only endured reputational rather than material damage courtesy of this drop.

The Sunday 3s, on a bright and breezy afternoon, enjoyed a comfortable 7 wicket win over Philadelphia Academy. The visitors batted first and were dismissed for 115, with every bowler picking up at least 1 wicket and Sean Aditjandra (3-25) again returning quality figures. In response, top scorers were Joel Hull-Denholm (60* from 70 balls, including 9 fours and a six) and Hamish Swaddle-Scott (41).

Additionally this week, Tynemouth 2s crushed Littletown in the second round of the James Bell Memorial Cup. Batting first, Tynemouth bludgeoned 185-2 from their 20 overs, with Swaddle-Scott (76*) and Hull-Denholm (69) doing the damage. In reply, Littletown were dismissed for 77, with promising youngster Chris Beever (3-9) the pick of the bowlers.

What can I say? Another incompetent attempt at clutching a swirling, skied effort saw me saw on my arse, muttering apologies to Strez. The fact that a biblical thunderstorm swamped the ground meant my drop became irrelevant, but I should have taken the catch. In the context of the day, I think most of my team mates will remember Adam Blake almost being blown away as the covers billowed in the howling gale, as he sought to retrieve his bails. Enduring image. Not captured, sadly.

Saturday 22^nd July:

All games rained off.

We were scheduled to play Newcastle away, but as they sublet the back field at TCC, it would have been at home, so to speak. I didn’t make the team for this one, so I’m kind of ambivalent as to the intervention of storm clouds. Instead I took in Percy Main 1 Jarrow 5 in a pre-season friendly; let’s just say it was a good workout eh?

Saturday 29^th July:

 

On the last Saturday in July, Tynemouth 246/9 beat Chester Le Street 113 all out by 133 runs. A superb all-round team effort including a player of the match performance by Matthew Brown were the main reasons behind this win against a strong Chester Le Street side on Saturday. A win that lifted the team out of the relegation zone and should give confidence for challenges ahead.

Conditions were pretty kind with a blustery, yet warm and sunny morning greeting the players and spectators as they arrived at the lovely Ropery Lane ground in Chester Le Street. Proper ground, proper Club.  Home skipper Ash Thorpe won the toss and decided to let Tynemouth have a bat first on a flat wicket with a good tinge of green about it. Understandable after another wet week. It proved to be a wicket with a bit in it for everyone and provided a good contest between bat and ball all day.

Ben Debnam and Matt Kimmitt opened up for Tynemouth and were quickly into their stride . Kimmitt fluent off the front foot and Debnam looking to pull anything short moved the score on nicely to 50 when Kimmitt drove a ball uppishly to mid wicket and was caught by Ross Whitfield Jnr off the bowling of John Richard Harrison for 18. Debnam continued to show good form and was well supported by Tshepo Ntuli at the other end. With 100 up on the board and Tynemouth bossing the morning session Debnam was adjudged lbw for 49 on the stroke of lunch walking across his stumps and caught in front by Amaan Ulhaq.

Matty Brown joined Ntuli for the afternoon session and they put on another good stand of 61 before Ntuli was bowled by Ulhaq for a determined 47. Brown, who had escaped a routine boundary chance early in his innings was beginning to take control and everything pointed towards a big first innings score. However the middle and late order batting disappointed with only Joe Snowdon’s 17 offering any real support to Brown who was in great touch. 161-2 became 216-9 as the medium pace of Richard John Harrison ( 4-56) and the off spin of Ash Thorpe (3-21 ) surprisingly proved too good for the Tynemouth batsmen. The last wicket though saw Brown really open up producing a flurry of fours and sixes as his skipper, Martin Pollard, defended well at the other end and when the end of the innings came after the full 58 overs had been batted Brown had moved on to an excellent 85 not out and a final total of 246 looked above par.

With all of his Seamers missing Pollard needed a cunning plan as to how best to use the new ball. Whereas Baldrick’s cunning plans invariably failed this one most certainly didn’t as he paired man of the moment Matthew Brown to bowl some seam up at one end with the guile and accuracy of Tshepo Ntuli’s off spin at the other. Ntuli was straight to work first bowling opener John Coxon for just 4 and then striking again next ball with the wicket of England Under 19 player Ross Whitfield Jnr. Brown was running in with great enthusiasm - a young pup off the leash - and clean bowled the dangerous Andrew Smith for just 5 with a beauty. Chester were 41-3 and in trouble. Pollard then had Stu Wilson brilliantly caught above his right shoulder by keeper Stu Poynter and in the next over Brown had the excellent Jacob McCann lbw for 35 and the Keets were in big trouble at 65-5 at tea. Brown’s spell of 11 overs 2-33 was impressive. All bowled with the joy of a young kid on Christmas morning!

A minor recovery after tea by George Harrison and Robbie Dawson gave a glimmer of hope to the home side but the returning Ntuli had Harrison caught by Ed Foreman and the game was up for Chester at 104-6. The current format of play though requires a side to bowl out the opposition for a win and Tynemouth still needed 4 wickets when Pollard brought on Josh Koen who produced a high quality spell of medium pace bowling taking all of the last 4 wickets himself. This was classic line and length bowling with a hint of movement. A slow and steady strangulation of the batsmen in the corridor of uncertainty that proved too much for the home sides tail. 4-17 off 8 overs. Chapeau!

An important win for the side and one that was thoroughly deserved on a day the weather Gods decided to smile on the region’s cricketers again.

Meanwhile Tynemouth 2s. having seen both of their midweek cup games washed out by the torrential rain, welcomed Chester le Street 2s to Preston Avenue. Unfortunately, as in the game between the respective first XIs, it was the away side who triumphed. Batting first, the visitors posted 217-5 from 51 overs. The pick of the home bowling was Sam Robson, who returned a more than respectable 3-46 from his spell. In reply, Tynemouth were never really in the game, falling to 20-5 at one stage, before Barry Stewart (66) Robson (39) showed some resistance, before the innings was completed with the home side 160 all out.

The 57 run margin of defeat was disappointing but was dwarfed by the crushing 227 run loss endured by an unfamiliar Tynemouth Saturday 3s in their home game against Leadgate. Stand-in skipper ian cusack won the toss and inserted Leadgate, which proved to be an astute tactical masterstroke as this enabled the Croons to accrue some bowling points. This was achieved by Rohan George’s excellent, accurate spell of 9-1-38-2, including a double wicket maiden. Both dismissals were caught by Simon Bogg, whose second victim saw a glorious full length dive that drew applause from both sides. At 100-2 at drinks, Tynemouth were in the game, and even more so when young pace bowlers Oliver Hiscott and Leo Tierney took a wicket each. Sadly, the lack of a full bowling attack, which saw cusack pressed into action, only to return an abject 6-0-44-0, allowed Leadgate to amass an impressive 256-4 from their 40 overs. Perhaps the less said about the home side’s innings of 29 all out the better.

Oh how I wished it had rained for this one. An incredible 35 players were unavailable across the club, meaning the 3s were in danger of conceding on Friday evening as we were down to 8 players. Some incredible efforts by Chris Fairley saw us manage to scrape together 11 humans, if not players. Almost incredibly, and for once my age has nothing to do with this, I was the longest serving player available. Consequently, I had the poison chalice of being captain. I won the toss, which was about the best point of the day. I inserted them as I didn’t fancy the game finishing before 3 o’clock. From that point on, things got worse. I did another drop at square leg, from the usual misplaced skier, bowled 6 overs of filth for a million and made a single ball 0* as we were all out for an appalling 29, to lose by 227 runs. Perhaps the tin hat was put on proceedings when I got home to see Linaz had already emailed out the match fees due invoice. A day when I thought about giving up on life, not just cricket.

Saturday 5^th August:

All games rained off.

By Friday afternoon we’d learned that our short trip to Priors’ Park for the Lions game was out the window. A shame, as I’d been selected for this one. Instead, Shelley and I took in Whitley Bay 2 Garforth Town 1 in the FA Cup extra preliminary round. It wasn’t a brilliant game and the crowd (287) was surprisingly small, but we enjoyed some lovely Two By Two Snakes Eyes Pale afterwards in the Left Luggage Room and then The Ticket Office. I think the fact we journeyed between the two by rain, without paying for tickets, counts as a Metty Mission in young peoples’ speak…

Saturday 12^th August:

A disappointing batting performance from Tynemouth CC first XI of 132 all out, was followed by a masterclass from Bajan Professional Shane Moseley as South Northumberland cruised to victory at Roseworth Terrace on Saturday.

Home skipper Sean Tindale won the toss and asked Tynemouth to bat first on a day when rain threatened but didn’t arrive. It was good to be playing again after several recent washouts and the hybrid wicket played well, with a bit of carry and turn for the bowlers to work with and good pace and consistent bounce for the batters to enjoy.

Ben Debnam opened up with Matt Kimmitt for the visitors, but both were dismissed early leaving their team at 8/2. Tshepo Ntuli and Joe Snowdon looked to repair the damage with a partnership of 20 before Ntuli hit one to Jonathan Wightman at mid-on off the bowling of Sean Tindale. Worse was to come for Tynemouth with Stuart Poynter adjudged lbw second ball for a duck from a delivery that seemed to hit bat first.

At 28/4 Tynemouth were in big trouble when 15 year old Robbie Bowman joined 18 year old Joe Snowdon at the crease. The two youngsters both batted well. Snowdon watchful, but always looking to score when the opportunity arose, and running well between the wickets. Bowman played a lovely innings.  Full of power and timing. A player of real promise. Someone with talent but also who is learning how to build an innings and is improving rapidly as a batter as a result. A partnership of 68 lifted the spirits of the Tynemouth players and spectators before Snowdon went for 29 and then Bowman shortly after for 42. Having recovered to 96/4 at one point, the middle order and tail rather collapsed as a final score of just 132 was all that was mustered. Ed Foreman dug in for a determined 17 not out. Sean Tindale and Simon Birtwistle took 3 wickets each for the Champions elect.

Skipper Martin Pollard decided to open the bowling with the pace of Andrew Jones and the spin and guile of Tshepo Ntuli, but neither could get the early breakthroughs necessary. Indeed former West Indies Test Player Shane Moseley took a liking to both and quickly took the match away from the visitors with a quite brilliant exhibition of positive batting. A tall left hander, Moseley defended with some panache and quickly pounced on anything off line or length. A series of crunching extra cover drives were his signature shot but this was a high class knock from the man from Barbados and Tynemouth had no answer. Ntuli did dismiss Birtwistle but that just brought the impressive Nikhil Gorantla to the crease. Gorantla finished on 25 not out and Moseley was also undefeated on 87 off just 76 balls as the pair reached the target in just 20.2 overs.

Next Saturday the team return to Preston Avenue after 3 away games on the spin and will hope to register a win against Ashington. The start is at 11.30 and it’s a 50 overs a side game.

Meanwhile the 2s hosted South North 2s in the reverse fixture. The visitors batted first and compiled 213/9 from their 45 overs. For Tynemouth, the elegant James Carr (3/37) and Shamsul Oraikhil (3/38) were the pick of the bowlers, backed up by the frugal parsimony of Richard Hay (1/17) and Joel Hull-Denholm (1/30). It was an interesting, but as yet unanswered question, when Tynemouth had two bespectacled opening bowlers, as was the case with Carr and Hay today. In reply, Tynemouth came up short with 197/9, with skipper Chris Fairley (67) and Sam Robson (42) keeping the contest alive until a flurry of late wickets swung the game decisively in the direction of South North, as the run chase became firstly desperate and thence eventually fruitless.

On the back field, Tynemouth Saturday 3s produced an excellent display of bowling and fielding, other than catching of course, to dismiss visitors Annfield Plain 2s for 124. Despite hostile and impressive opening spells by stand-in skipper Ed Snelders and Lewis Hurst, the visitors had reached 61 before a double bowling change made a massive difference. Dom Askins (2/18) and the returning Evan Hull-Denholm (2/25), who took a wicket with his first competitive ball for almost 2 years, brought Tynemouth back into the contest. An unprecedented 4 run-outs, as well as an eye-catching spell from the fiery Asik Miah (2/8), saw Annfield Plain dismissed in the last over.

Sadly, as ever, the batting performance by Tynemouth 3s was borderline inadequate. Hull-Denholm (27) did his bit, but once he was dismissed, any hope of victory, or even running the visitors close, went out the window as Tynemouth subsided to 74 all out with 10 overs still remaining. It was a sad undoing of all the good work in the first innings and leaves TCC rooted to the bottom of the table with 5 games remaining. Survival looks a tough ask.

Bleary-eyed and hungover, I crawled out of bed after my 59^th birthday carousing and rejoiced at the incessant rain outside. Sadly, it abated by noon, we started on time and lost, in a bitterly disappointing fashion. For once, I didn’t make a rick in the field, but my attempts with the bat were shameful. I didn’t even see the ball that bowled me, which was probably more because of its pace that my receding hangover. Still, at least we got into the pavilion in time to see the second half of Newcastle demolishing Villa, which was nice.

So, 5 weekends left. We need to win a minimum of 2 games to stay up. Tough ask.