These long-extended wickets and rueful ruins
Where nought but bowlers reign, and night dark night
Dark as was chaos ‘ere the infant innings
Was rolled together, as black as the pitch
Itself was rolled. The sickly in-swinger
By glimmering through the low-browed misty defences
Furled round with thy spittle and ropy slime
The ball a supernumerary horror
And serves only to make my night more irksome.
Those words which belong to one of the Blair brothers from Otago always enter my head when I am bowled out for a low score and help me calm the immediate daggers of the mind which lead to such thoughts as the dripping carcus of Hadlee impaled on the wickets of my brain which stand the top Gothic Calgary – he lusts after the Bleeding Nun who dances seductively around his writhing body, each movement driving the barbed spike deeper into his body – yet he can do nothing as his desire for the nymph of the nunnery increases –
he closes his eyes trying to shut out the beautiful visage, but she moves closer, her perfume filling his head and all his senses maddened by her touch, his agony and ecstasy complete as he becomes the more ensnared in this trap, this spider webb of human passion, she the black-widow smiling all the while….
“John, you know I’ve said this before a hundred times, but what a funny game this game of cricket is! How many times have I tried to fathom my utter fascination for this peculiar sport and really, it’s like trying to understand the very mysteries of the universe itself. Its great struggle between random chaos and calculated order seem played out over a lengthy period of five days, although admittedly this being a one-dayer somewhat condenses the process. It baffles and beguiles me!
“Dennis – Yes, but wasn’t that a lovely ball by Hadlee. It certainly baffled and beguiled Monk Lewis – in terms of what you’ve just been saying he certainly will be returning to the pavilion with a belief in intelligent beings existing outside his universe!
“Beware the man from outer-Hadlee”, he will be warning his colleagues. I think what you were about to say before that dismissal has validity to a point, although there would of course be little achieved in the like of Chatfield bowling maiden over after maiden over if there was not Hadlee’s penetration to complement it.”
“Of course, I agree with that and you’re really just saying what I said in reverse, but I should like to pursue, if I may, the more philosophical aspects I began on while we await the next Out of It batsman. I heard a delightful comment from a BBC commentator, and I think it may have been Christopher Martin-Jenkins, I’m not sure. But, he was talking in an aside to a game between New Zealand and England where he mentioned that Dereck Pringle happens to wear contact lenses on the field and glasses in “real life!”
This was a casual off-hand comment and would have passed by had someone not jokingly made a comment to the effect that “do you not think cricket is part of real life?”, which in turn led to a general discussion about the nature of cricket and real life. Now the point I make is….”
“I’m sorry Dennis but the real life game of cricket impinges yet again upon our fantasies as the number three batsman, Te Rauparaha, walks onto the field, waving his bat defiantly over his head as though it were a huata, his head held high as he walks towards the battle.”
“Just while Te Rauparaha prepares himself, I’d like to say a few words about Monk Lewis. He never really looked comfortable and an opening batsman’s job is never easy of course. I remember in the New Zealand versus England test series of 1965-66, in the match at Lancaster Park I think it was, the great Boycott himself went out for four, caught off the bowling of Motz in the first innings.
And to top it off scored the score of four in the second innings also when he fell victim to a run out. So, Lewis is in illustrious, if not enviable company with his four runs.”
“Thank you for that enlightening information. I’m sure that the Monk will feel all the better if he’s listening but our attention turns now towards Te Rauparaha and how many times in recent years have we seen a Captain bat at number three – it just makes me wonder, you know….”
“I’ll just interrupt you here John, as Hadlee runs into a slight breeze blowing at his back, he passes the umpire with that magnificent flowing stride of his, and bowls to the Out of It Captain who plays a lovely cover drive and the ball races out to the boundary as Te Rauparaha shows his intention from the start. He’s not the kind of player who likes to be held down or dictated to and…”
The radio commentary was gradually superceded in the Malone’s head by thoughts of his own. He had been meditating on the comment about Dereck Pringle and the difference between reality and dreams, real life and illusion. These were thoughts he had not allowed himself for many moons and he could feel the pull of his former Bohemian life becoming stronger, his sureness slowly subsiding like a seemingly secure stock-bank in times of flood…
“So nothing has changed then, all these years of the illusion of reality, undermined by a single, spring tide of high thinking. The iron curtain had lifted to reveal no security. A short while ago it was I was thinking as one of me Irish ancestors might who had no more book-learning than what you can get at the farm-bog gate, and now I’m seriously discussing with myself, through the catalyst of some comment about Dereck Pringle being in real life off the cricket field because he wears glasses, although when he’s on, bowling that round cork encased in red leather, he’s in some sort of supposed fantasy and then my mind extending the argument to the grand banality of philosophical truth or otherwise and all the time me own wife, Maureen O’Shea, is telling me that I’m living in some sort of unreality, and that I’d better get a job because we’ve got to pay the rent and eat the food and the baby is only two months away ten years ago and yet here I am…”
P.S.M. could hear the low-rev chugging of a diesel engine as it struggled in the Kingsland Embankment bringing a train of goods from Northland in its wake. The German word for train is zug and means the puller. The emphasis on the power in front rather than the “train” which follows had always intrigued Malone, as had the Germans themselves fascinated him.
He had always thought it something to do with the powerless being enchanted by the powerful, and he had also absorbed their guilt for the grand evil of Nazism and used it as a metaphor for his own, although he had nothing to feel guilty about except the fact that he was alive and was aware of the fact! And as he sat there on the Eden Park Grandstand, watching and listening to this fabulous game they called cricket, and
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Sonnet to Katrina by Michael O'Leary
Sonnet to Katrina
The boxcars of Biloxi have become homes
Again as the first world becomes the third world
Overnight. The piles of twisted, gnarled debris
And flood waters up to here, all through
The funky, jazzed-up city of New Orleans
Where she once sat in the sunshine, the light
And the heat of a day-time bar, music and sex
Shining across the neo-French playground
My lover, whose colourful postcard from the French
Quarter is at odds with television images from Baton
Rouge bursting through the safety of the lounge, she
Has in the past had a similar effect on my emotions
As though she were also named Katrina, but now I watch
The disappearing Nu’orlins Blues from a distance
The boxcars of Biloxi have become homes
Again as the first world becomes the third world
Overnight. The piles of twisted, gnarled debris
And flood waters up to here, all through
The funky, jazzed-up city of New Orleans
Where she once sat in the sunshine, the light
And the heat of a day-time bar, music and sex
Shining across the neo-French playground
My lover, whose colourful postcard from the French
Quarter is at odds with television images from Baton
Rouge bursting through the safety of the lounge, she
Has in the past had a similar effect on my emotions
As though she were also named Katrina, but now I watch
The disappearing Nu’orlins Blues from a distance
Saturday, August 28, 2010
'Flip Side of the Ballad of John and Yoko' by Michael O'Leary
Flip Side of the Ballad of John and Yoko
6pm News, Tuesday, Ninth of December, 1980
“We have just heard from New York
Ex-Beatle John Lennon was shot today . . . !!!!!!”
i
There I was sitting on a sofa
In one of the southernmost cities of the world
Listening to the radio whilst thinking about cooking tea
Well, how can you be honest about how you feel?
I’d just turned the station over
To get the “real” news of the world
When I heard the words written above: well fuck me!
What else can you do but swear at a time like this
I am thinking about my mother, his mother
Two of the responsible for bringing us into the world
And now John, you’re gone! There’s only me
Yoko and me, and the rest of humanity together in grief and love
Yoko’s in a black scumbag, I left the sofa
Wandered aimlessly around the room the day you left the world
Your death is a climax of events forcing mortality on me
Everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout Pol Pot, Nazism, Socialism, I.R.A. and junkies
Give me a chance, brother
You have helped me understand this world
Now you’re dead, am I enslaved or freeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!
Fuck the revolution, we have bred another generation
ii
When it all began, I was just another
Beatle fan. A teenager from the other side of the world
Looking for something more interesting than school’s authority
Distances travelled in space, time and sorrow add up to one thing
Your songs and books helped me discover
In myself, what all the education in the world
Could not; that I could write and illustrate my own story
Knowledge to one is ignorance to another, unless there is love
1968, Hey Jude, the death of my father and mother
Like a lost black sheep I entered the outside world
Sold my records, went to work in a dark, thankless factory
If a person makes enough of one thing, he or she becomes a thing
While I got lost in nothing, you found your lover
For whom you left the Beatles, left the wife, shocked the world
Yoko, through the years of illusion, offered you reality
Eternity may be a stone in Wales, but it is now we must live
And so, lest the press smother
You and your love both withdrew from the world
Which had built you a boat of fame, then left you all at sea
How many oak trees have been allowed to grow from the acorns?
“Just like starting over”
Is not starting over, you are now dead to the world
Sean and Yoko no longer have the shade and strength of their tree
That fallen tree made them a house which they must make a home
iii
We were always a decade away from each other
Yet we were of the same generation
You were the spiritual pathfinder
I followed to the point of penetration
And I never lost you, but let you go
It was not lack of love, but life itself, caused the separation
Now you too have joined the dead and living dead
Who haunt and torment my existence
On this quaint and sadly crazy planet on which
To live is not just to breath, but an insistence
That each such breath is a test of courage and will
Which we understand at a metaphorical distance
Christ!
I know
It ain’t easy!
6pm News, Tuesday, Ninth of December, 1980
“We have just heard from New York
Ex-Beatle John Lennon was shot today . . . !!!!!!”
i
There I was sitting on a sofa
In one of the southernmost cities of the world
Listening to the radio whilst thinking about cooking tea
Well, how can you be honest about how you feel?
I’d just turned the station over
To get the “real” news of the world
When I heard the words written above: well fuck me!
What else can you do but swear at a time like this
I am thinking about my mother, his mother
Two of the responsible for bringing us into the world
And now John, you’re gone! There’s only me
Yoko and me, and the rest of humanity together in grief and love
Yoko’s in a black scumbag, I left the sofa
Wandered aimlessly around the room the day you left the world
Your death is a climax of events forcing mortality on me
Everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout Pol Pot, Nazism, Socialism, I.R.A. and junkies
Give me a chance, brother
You have helped me understand this world
Now you’re dead, am I enslaved or freeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!
Fuck the revolution, we have bred another generation
ii
When it all began, I was just another
Beatle fan. A teenager from the other side of the world
Looking for something more interesting than school’s authority
Distances travelled in space, time and sorrow add up to one thing
Your songs and books helped me discover
In myself, what all the education in the world
Could not; that I could write and illustrate my own story
Knowledge to one is ignorance to another, unless there is love
1968, Hey Jude, the death of my father and mother
Like a lost black sheep I entered the outside world
Sold my records, went to work in a dark, thankless factory
If a person makes enough of one thing, he or she becomes a thing
While I got lost in nothing, you found your lover
For whom you left the Beatles, left the wife, shocked the world
Yoko, through the years of illusion, offered you reality
Eternity may be a stone in Wales, but it is now we must live
And so, lest the press smother
You and your love both withdrew from the world
Which had built you a boat of fame, then left you all at sea
How many oak trees have been allowed to grow from the acorns?
“Just like starting over”
Is not starting over, you are now dead to the world
Sean and Yoko no longer have the shade and strength of their tree
That fallen tree made them a house which they must make a home
iii
We were always a decade away from each other
Yet we were of the same generation
You were the spiritual pathfinder
I followed to the point of penetration
And I never lost you, but let you go
It was not lack of love, but life itself, caused the separation
Now you too have joined the dead and living dead
Who haunt and torment my existence
On this quaint and sadly crazy planet on which
To live is not just to breath, but an insistence
That each such breath is a test of courage and will
Which we understand at a metaphorical distance
Christ!
I know
It ain’t easy!
Page #8 & 9 of “OUT OF IT” a novel by Michael O’Leary
“Yeah, anyway the local word for referee was Bumpyre which meant ‘being in the hot seat’ but because the English were not able to say bum they ummed and arred, went red in the faces and changed it to arrpire. However, someone said that arrpire sounded silly and that they should say ‘um’..’um’.. damn I’ve forgotten. (What about umpire said Milligan, an unexploded Irishman who was there and unexplained) – anyway – hey! What’s the matter John! Dennis!…”
The radio commentary suddenly disintegrated into a static sound crackling and distorted but what was really two grown men falling about the small box of a building and trying not to laugh all at once. Watching the last two balls of Hadlee’s over the P.S.M. Malone tried to fix his radio, nearly breaking it forever in the process. He was thinking to himself, because no-one else was inside his head, unless you count God and the angels…Well, that’s that. I’ve lost count of all them angels – but me radio’s broke and I can’t hear what I can see anymore. That is the first time this…? What do you mean by that? That is the first time that this…? I don’t understand what I’m thinking – no wonder other people don’t understand what I’m saying. Now, let’s say it slowly. That is the…I got it! This is the first time that I have had a day off work, except weekends when I really work and I feel so good I feel guilty. I know that’s me Catholic heritage and I’m proud of it! Them Protestants can’t have half the fun feeling good about what they enjoy. Even their priests get married and look happy. Ah! Maureen me love, they got no soul….
The radio came on with a vengeance at that moment.
“Ouch! Me ear! It’s that bloody Protestant God again” groaned Malone.
“Well we seem to be back on the air again John.”
“Yes Dennis it seems that it’s Ewen Chatfield to bowl from the Railway or Sandringham Road end of Eden Park. We must apologise to our listeners for a temporary break in transmission caused by…”
There was a stifled appeal, I mean laugh, and then…
“I didn’t actually see the last two balls of Richard Hadlee.”
More silence and crackling and crackling, then….
“Neither did I Dennis, but I think we can safely assume that – Oh the scoreboard has moved up to eleven so the Mad Monk must have hit a four. Anyway, I’m sure we can sort it all out but in the meantime Chatfield comes in to bowl to Hendrix who defends, playing the ball gently back up the pitch where it is fielded by the bowler.”
Malone’s thoughts took over his mind again. This time they were more subdued and he realises he had been thinking in Irish for the first time in a long time. He had been sober in thought, word and deed for such a long time that he had all but lost his sense of he absurd as his life had revolved around the absurd reality of a nine to five, commuter, suburban existence.
“I must stop tinkin’, I mean thinking like this “thought the Malone to himself – again no-one else was listening. He turned his attention to the cricket, which was why he was here at all. He hadn’t come to Eden Park to hear himself think!
“…and yet again Chatfield proves his worth to this New Zealand side.”
“Yes, he really does have a marvellous ability to get that line and length very early on and just stay there. We have just seen him bowl a maiden over on his first over of the day. Whilst he lacks the drama and penetration of Richard Hadlee, I think we can say he is a perfect foil for the Great New Zealand medium fast pace bowler. If we can just compare the first two oversee as an indication of what I mean. In Hadlee’s first over while producing a confident appeal for L.B.W., which I guess was very unlucky to be turned down, he also conceded eleven runs. And yet old Charley Chatters…”
“I’m sorry Dennis, but Hadlee is running in now to bowl to Monk Lewis. In he comes past the umpire and – Oh, my goodness, he’s bowled him, middle stump! Well, one can only imagine the black Gothic thoughts going through the Mad Monk’s mind at this moment…”
“Ah! How dark
The radio commentary suddenly disintegrated into a static sound crackling and distorted but what was really two grown men falling about the small box of a building and trying not to laugh all at once. Watching the last two balls of Hadlee’s over the P.S.M. Malone tried to fix his radio, nearly breaking it forever in the process. He was thinking to himself, because no-one else was inside his head, unless you count God and the angels…Well, that’s that. I’ve lost count of all them angels – but me radio’s broke and I can’t hear what I can see anymore. That is the first time this…? What do you mean by that? That is the first time that this…? I don’t understand what I’m thinking – no wonder other people don’t understand what I’m saying. Now, let’s say it slowly. That is the…I got it! This is the first time that I have had a day off work, except weekends when I really work and I feel so good I feel guilty. I know that’s me Catholic heritage and I’m proud of it! Them Protestants can’t have half the fun feeling good about what they enjoy. Even their priests get married and look happy. Ah! Maureen me love, they got no soul….
The radio came on with a vengeance at that moment.
“Ouch! Me ear! It’s that bloody Protestant God again” groaned Malone.
“Well we seem to be back on the air again John.”
“Yes Dennis it seems that it’s Ewen Chatfield to bowl from the Railway or Sandringham Road end of Eden Park. We must apologise to our listeners for a temporary break in transmission caused by…”
There was a stifled appeal, I mean laugh, and then…
“I didn’t actually see the last two balls of Richard Hadlee.”
More silence and crackling and crackling, then….
“Neither did I Dennis, but I think we can safely assume that – Oh the scoreboard has moved up to eleven so the Mad Monk must have hit a four. Anyway, I’m sure we can sort it all out but in the meantime Chatfield comes in to bowl to Hendrix who defends, playing the ball gently back up the pitch where it is fielded by the bowler.”
Malone’s thoughts took over his mind again. This time they were more subdued and he realises he had been thinking in Irish for the first time in a long time. He had been sober in thought, word and deed for such a long time that he had all but lost his sense of he absurd as his life had revolved around the absurd reality of a nine to five, commuter, suburban existence.
“I must stop tinkin’, I mean thinking like this “thought the Malone to himself – again no-one else was listening. He turned his attention to the cricket, which was why he was here at all. He hadn’t come to Eden Park to hear himself think!
“…and yet again Chatfield proves his worth to this New Zealand side.”
“Yes, he really does have a marvellous ability to get that line and length very early on and just stay there. We have just seen him bowl a maiden over on his first over of the day. Whilst he lacks the drama and penetration of Richard Hadlee, I think we can say he is a perfect foil for the Great New Zealand medium fast pace bowler. If we can just compare the first two oversee as an indication of what I mean. In Hadlee’s first over while producing a confident appeal for L.B.W., which I guess was very unlucky to be turned down, he also conceded eleven runs. And yet old Charley Chatters…”
“I’m sorry Dennis, but Hadlee is running in now to bowl to Monk Lewis. In he comes past the umpire and – Oh, my goodness, he’s bowled him, middle stump! Well, one can only imagine the black Gothic thoughts going through the Mad Monk’s mind at this moment…”
“Ah! How dark
“Yeah, anyway the local word for referee was Bumpyre which meant ‘being in the hot seat’ but because the English were not able to say bum they ummed and arred, went red in the faces and changed it to arrpire. However, someone said that arrpire sounded silly and that they should say ‘um’..’um’.. damn I’ve forgotten. (What about umpire said Milligan, an unexploded Irishman who was there and unexplained) – anyway – hey! What’s the matter John! Dennis!…”
The radio commentary suddenly disintegrated into a static sound crackling and distorted but what was really two grown men falling about the small box of a building and trying not to laugh all at once. Watching the last two balls of Hadlee’s over the P.S.M. Malone tried to fix his radio, nearly breaking it forever in the process. He was thinking to himself, because no-one else was inside his head, unless you count God and the angels…Well, that’s that. I’ve lost count of all them angels – but me radio’s broke and I can’t hear what I can see anymore. That is the first time this…? What do you mean by that? That is the first time that this…? I don’t understand what I’m thinking – no wonder other people don’t understand what I’m saying. Now, let’s say it slowly. That is the…I got it! This is the first time that I have had a day off work, except weekends when I really work and I feel so good I feel guilty. I know that’s me Catholic heritage and I’m proud of it! Them Protestants can’t have half the fun feeling good about what they enjoy. Even their priests get married and look happy. Ah! Maureen me love, they got no soul….
The radio came on with a vengeance at that moment.
“Ouch! Me ear! It’s that bloody Protestant God again” groaned Malone.
“Well we seem to be back on the air again John.”
“Yes Dennis it seems that it’s Ewen Chatfield to bowl from the Railway or Sandringham Road end of Eden Park. We must apologise to our listeners for a temporary break in transmission caused by…”
There was a stifled appeal, I mean laugh, and then…
“I didn’t actually see the last two balls of Richard Hadlee.”
More silence and crackling and crackling, then….
“Neither did I Dennis, but I think we can safely assume that – Oh the scoreboard has moved up to eleven so the Mad Monk must have hit a four. Anyway, I’m sure we can sort it all out but in the meantime Chatfield comes in to bowl to Hendrix who defends, playing the ball gently back up the pitch where it is fielded by the bowler.”
Malone’s thoughts took over his mind again. This time they were more subdued and he realises he had been thinking in Irish for the first time in a long time. He had been sober in thought, word and deed for such a long time that he had all but lost his sense of he absurd as his life had revolved around the absurd reality of a nine to five, commuter, suburban existence.
“I must stop tinkin’, I mean thinking like this “thought the Malone to himself – again no-one else was listening. He turned his attention to the cricket, which was why he was here at all. He hadn’t come to Eden Park to hear himself think!
“…and yet again Chatfield proves his worth to this New Zealand side.”
“Yes, he really does have a marvellous ability to get that line and length very early on and just stay there. We have just seen him bowl a maiden over on his first over of the day. Whilst he lacks the drama and penetration of Richard Hadlee, I think we can say he is a perfect foil for the Great New Zealand medium fast pace bowler. If we can just compare the first two oversee as an indication of what I mean. In Hadlee’s first over while producing a confident appeal for L.B.W., which I guess was very unlucky to be turned down, he also conceded eleven runs. And yet old Charley Chatters…”
“I’m sorry Dennis, but Hadlee is running in now to bowl to Monk Lewis. In he comes past the umpire and – Oh, my goodness, he’s bowled him, middle stump! Well, one can only imagine the black Gothic thoughts going through the Mad Monk’s mind at this moment…”
“Ah! How dark
The radio commentary suddenly disintegrated into a static sound crackling and distorted but what was really two grown men falling about the small box of a building and trying not to laugh all at once. Watching the last two balls of Hadlee’s over the P.S.M. Malone tried to fix his radio, nearly breaking it forever in the process. He was thinking to himself, because no-one else was inside his head, unless you count God and the angels…Well, that’s that. I’ve lost count of all them angels – but me radio’s broke and I can’t hear what I can see anymore. That is the first time this…? What do you mean by that? That is the first time that this…? I don’t understand what I’m thinking – no wonder other people don’t understand what I’m saying. Now, let’s say it slowly. That is the…I got it! This is the first time that I have had a day off work, except weekends when I really work and I feel so good I feel guilty. I know that’s me Catholic heritage and I’m proud of it! Them Protestants can’t have half the fun feeling good about what they enjoy. Even their priests get married and look happy. Ah! Maureen me love, they got no soul….
The radio came on with a vengeance at that moment.
“Ouch! Me ear! It’s that bloody Protestant God again” groaned Malone.
“Well we seem to be back on the air again John.”
“Yes Dennis it seems that it’s Ewen Chatfield to bowl from the Railway or Sandringham Road end of Eden Park. We must apologise to our listeners for a temporary break in transmission caused by…”
There was a stifled appeal, I mean laugh, and then…
“I didn’t actually see the last two balls of Richard Hadlee.”
More silence and crackling and crackling, then….
“Neither did I Dennis, but I think we can safely assume that – Oh the scoreboard has moved up to eleven so the Mad Monk must have hit a four. Anyway, I’m sure we can sort it all out but in the meantime Chatfield comes in to bowl to Hendrix who defends, playing the ball gently back up the pitch where it is fielded by the bowler.”
Malone’s thoughts took over his mind again. This time they were more subdued and he realises he had been thinking in Irish for the first time in a long time. He had been sober in thought, word and deed for such a long time that he had all but lost his sense of he absurd as his life had revolved around the absurd reality of a nine to five, commuter, suburban existence.
“I must stop tinkin’, I mean thinking like this “thought the Malone to himself – again no-one else was listening. He turned his attention to the cricket, which was why he was here at all. He hadn’t come to Eden Park to hear himself think!
“…and yet again Chatfield proves his worth to this New Zealand side.”
“Yes, he really does have a marvellous ability to get that line and length very early on and just stay there. We have just seen him bowl a maiden over on his first over of the day. Whilst he lacks the drama and penetration of Richard Hadlee, I think we can say he is a perfect foil for the Great New Zealand medium fast pace bowler. If we can just compare the first two oversee as an indication of what I mean. In Hadlee’s first over while producing a confident appeal for L.B.W., which I guess was very unlucky to be turned down, he also conceded eleven runs. And yet old Charley Chatters…”
“I’m sorry Dennis, but Hadlee is running in now to bowl to Monk Lewis. In he comes past the umpire and – Oh, my goodness, he’s bowled him, middle stump! Well, one can only imagine the black Gothic thoughts going through the Mad Monk’s mind at this moment…”
“Ah! How dark
Friday, August 27, 2010
Page #7 of “OUT OF IT” a novel by Michael O’Leary
blood red ball pierces the skin of the air, the wind cries with the awareness of its own existence but the ball keeps coming and coming until it hits my bat mid-on and I’m running and the wind is crying…
“And the Mad Monk is home despite a good accurate throw from John Bracewell. So after the single out to mid-on Jimi Hendrix and the team’s score moves on to seven only after two balls have been bowled.”
“What’s an Irishman of the Holy Roman doin’ at a cricket game and what’s he talkin’ – thinkin’ to himself. My darlin’ Maureen Malone, I was nothing before I met you and without you I’ll return to nothin’. I must be like ashes to ashes except it’s man to man. The Malone will return to just being a man without his wise woman’s influence and love and tellin’ off.”
But the radio broke the Malone man’s talkin’ – thinkin’ with an appeal for L.B.W….
“Well that must have been close. Umpire Woodhead has turned down Hadlee’s appeal. Hadlee went up, Ian Smith went up, then the whole New Zealand team went up, but Willy Woodhead’s finger stayed down.”
“Yes Dennis, the New Zealanders will feel deprived there. Monk Lewis can count himself a lucky man to still be standing in front of those three pieces of wood.”
“Youse wanna hear how the word umpire came into being eh, well I’ll tell you. It was in India eh during the Raj, when the English were Lording it up all over the world especially in India, eh. Anyway the locals used to think they was funny, the British, as locals all over the world did. Anyway they knew how prudish the English were in public (and how prudish they weren’t in private I might add – as did locals all over the world)…”
“I’m sorry Billy but Hadlee’s just coming into bowl again, to Lewis who tries to flick the ball off his pad, but misses and the ball goes straight through to the keeper."
”I think that the delivery before last would probably have unsettled the Mad Monk somewhat and that he’ll be struggling a bit out there….”
“And the Mad Monk is home despite a good accurate throw from John Bracewell. So after the single out to mid-on Jimi Hendrix and the team’s score moves on to seven only after two balls have been bowled.”
“What’s an Irishman of the Holy Roman doin’ at a cricket game and what’s he talkin’ – thinkin’ to himself. My darlin’ Maureen Malone, I was nothing before I met you and without you I’ll return to nothin’. I must be like ashes to ashes except it’s man to man. The Malone will return to just being a man without his wise woman’s influence and love and tellin’ off.”
But the radio broke the Malone man’s talkin’ – thinkin’ with an appeal for L.B.W….
“Well that must have been close. Umpire Woodhead has turned down Hadlee’s appeal. Hadlee went up, Ian Smith went up, then the whole New Zealand team went up, but Willy Woodhead’s finger stayed down.”
“Yes Dennis, the New Zealanders will feel deprived there. Monk Lewis can count himself a lucky man to still be standing in front of those three pieces of wood.”
“Youse wanna hear how the word umpire came into being eh, well I’ll tell you. It was in India eh during the Raj, when the English were Lording it up all over the world especially in India, eh. Anyway the locals used to think they was funny, the British, as locals all over the world did. Anyway they knew how prudish the English were in public (and how prudish they weren’t in private I might add – as did locals all over the world)…”
“I’m sorry Billy but Hadlee’s just coming into bowl again, to Lewis who tries to flick the ball off his pad, but misses and the ball goes straight through to the keeper."
”I think that the delivery before last would probably have unsettled the Mad Monk somewhat and that he’ll be struggling a bit out there….”
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