A season in Hull

On arrival in Hull I was asked if I would work on a special programme which meant working 40 hours a week rather than the 30 I had been contracted to do.  As I am away from home working anyway, so it didn’t matter how much I worked as it would not be keeping me from my home life, and there was an offer of overtime to cover the extra hours.  So the last three weeks its back to working as hard as I did more than five years ago.  All that is pretty much an explaination as to why posts have been few and far between.  After work, and preparing for the next days work, I just want to relax and go away from the site or sleep.

Following the Ashes I was pleased with Lancastrian James Anderson’s heroics which meant we didn’t lose the first test.  I was disappointed that England seemed to play without the intensity of 2005.  I am even more concerned now that, having got on top of the Aussies we have not turned the screw psychologically and made them follow-on.  I know England have not been great at getting the total needed in the fourth innings to win and that the pitch seemed quite benign, however I would have expected England to enforce to follow-on.  It is being said the ‘Freddie’ might not be up to bowling a second innings now and that’s why, but then why hamstring your side with  someone whose clearly not up to the game now?  I write as a big fan of Freddie.

I can’t let the incident of the interview on BBC Radio Berkshire with the newly selected Reading West candidate pass by without posting it here or anyone who might want to see the modern equivalent of ‘bair baiting’.  Anyone who read anything about ‘Naz Sarkar’ befrore the selection could see he would be a rubbish candidate.  Now he has confirmed it with this interview:

You really have to wonder why he was selected when there were many more applicants who would have been beter for the job.  Could it be that the outgoing MP, Martin Salter, didn’t want anyone selected who would show him up in a bad way and got his organisation in the seat behind the most hapless possible candidate?

Dress Down Saturday

As I’m in Hull it’s only appropriate that I pick for this weeks section of the memories of great bands from the 80’s the fab fivesome, the Housemartins.  They burst onto the scene in 1986 with the song ‘Happy Hour’:

and together with their other big hit, Caravan of Love, and their album, London 0 Hull 4 they were a part of the soundtrack to my post-graduation summer, where the sun shined, I fell in love but was spurned, and with a group of friends that I had a great time with.  I’m sure it wasn’t seen quite so golden at the time.  They split in 1998 and spawned a number of gropus and artists.  Here’s ‘Caravan of Love’:

Tags: Cricket, dress down Saturday, music, sport, work