Just a Gentle Reminder

If Ads are being added, and 'Takeaway' is a better way of saying'To Go', especially if the latter is followed by '...forth and multiply' then I have no hesitation in plugging my e-book downloadable from Amazon.co.uk. I would have preferred to have uploaded a photograph of the police helicopter that was hovering over Gravesend this morning. It was scouting around, so like the responsibe citizen I am I went to have a butchers. Being in a Birdwatching area i.e. my garden, the binoculars were within easy reach. The helicopter was over what was until recently the Kent and Essex public house. I made out the sign on the helicopter to be 'Essex Police'. They could well have been checking on what had been until recently their half.

Unusually coming from Essex they didn't like being in the limelight. Retribution was swift with the helicopter moving to hover directly above the house putting me, thankfully rather than them, in a spin. I didn't know whether I was coming or going. I wasn't sure whether to remonstrate or demonstrate. Choosing the latter I went back in to put the kettle on. In truth I was impressed. I had only just bought a couple of tickets for The London Prepares Track Cycling event next week. They'd obviously got wind of my success and wanted to warn me off applying for any real ones.

Message understood, Seb. I know when I'm beaten. Please don't send Harry, the Royal one that is, in an Apache. Otherwise I'll have no option but to sioux.

Putting Things in Perspective

No offence to Kew but I don't think they are a patch on those orchids that we saw in Singapore. Then again Kew will have similar opinions on my onion patch compared to theirs in the walled garden. 586PTQR6PGRW I hear you say. I may not have a Terracotta Army but I can Terracottaconfirm that the seeds I sowed are beginning to sprout. England did lose the third Test Match against Pakistan which means that Cloud Nine is a no-no. Hopefully one day we will do better in the one dayers. It looks like we will not be around,Seb, for the Olympics. Don't take it personally, there are thousands of others who feel equally rejected, dejected and ejected. At least there will be more room on the trains and roads without us being around. I do worry for the future as in previous times I have been forced to watch Nellie Quim at one Olympics and Fan Ye at another. If you do go to Singapore visit the Changi Prison where hundreds of women were detained during the Second World War. A Red Cross rep encouraged them to make a quilt to help them survive the horrors. There too you will see the headstones of many who did not survive, laying down their lives so that the likes of me have the freedom to write all this 586PTQR6PGRW and putting Olympic medals into perpective.

It's Cloudy in Cuckoo Land

Will Pakistan lead by a Triple Nelson? There are those, battered and breadcrumbed by England's recent batting performances who would argue that a single Nelson would be 39 steps too far even if Napoleon Solo's Uncle had been asked to return from San Francisco to join the Flower People in the absence of Goochie Goochie Goo. Even if you love the Fast Train to bits it does you good to slow down from time to time if only to see how the South East's Trackside Vista has changed. Waterloo East was where we had to change. In the days before mobile phones I made a date to meet someone at Waterloo Station at Sunset. How was I supposed to know that there was a second Waterloo further West? Put it down to an Abbaration. Right on cue Swanny got Azhar Ali for 157. We went to Kew yesterday. England need only a Triple Nelson moins neuf to win.

No queues at The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew despite being the first day of the Tropical Extravaganza in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. Our conservatory is covered in snow au moment. Cook has hit a four and Strauss has got off the mark, but Cook has already been dropped so the weather forecast for Cuckoo Land does not look promising. The Coffee was as they said on the brochure - freshly roasted as we fear England may be before long. Having been reminded of the problems caused by even two glasses of wine a day we went to the Temperate House. Having finished reading the brochures we went to the Palm House to turn over a new leaf. Winter bargains were still available in the shop though I decided to save my money to pay for award winning fish and chips when we were back in Gravesend. England 22-0. Strauss misses the cut but this is not so serious in Cricket as it would be in Golf.

The first review goes England's way. The Reviews are becoming the 'Power Plays' for Test matches. Only one left now for Pakistan. By now England will have a Review Coach as well as a Batting Coach, a Bowling Coach, a Sledging Coach etc.,etc. England Cricket will soon be rivalling Kew with its 200 science staff, 75 affiliated researchers and 110 horticulturists. It's obviously working, despite the fact that the sledging coach would be more fully occupied over here what with the blanket of snow that descended on Britain last night, as CMJ has told us that this is the highest England opening partnership in the series. 29! The advice is 'Get a dog.' If you are stuck on the M25 in the snow the dog blanket will be invaluable and while the dog's water is likely to be frozen the dry dog food should take you through to stumps on day 4 now there is going to be one. 36-0. As ever Sir Geoffery gets it right. 'Improbable, yes; impossible, no.'The Xstrata Treetop Walkway may have been closed at Kew but we'll be on Cloud 9 if England does do it.

Political Correctness

I run the local Cricket Club's 5th Team and I got this letter last week. I don't think it is genuine, but you never know!

10 Downin Street London SW1 2RAC
Dear Mr or is it 'Comrade' Alderson
It has come to the Prime Minister's attention that Middletin CC 5ths, sometimes known as 'The Pinko Shrimpers' has developed a Left Wing bias to its fixtures with the inclusion of Bulleaton Labour Club. I am writing to you as Protagonist-in Chief , filmed as you were by Sky TV presenting Dave, I mean Ed, Milliband with a bottle of appropriately poor quality champagne in your attempts to gerrymander your council into granting you planning permission for your new pavilion.

Mr Cameron is considering the cancellation of your East Malling fixture because of your team's past infiltration of The East Malling Research Centre. We hold your player Mr Steve Clarkson, no relation thankfully to David's mate Jeremy who would never make such an ass of himself, entirely responsible for the strawberry virus

spreading through the raspberry crop. MI5 have him on video holding a cane and gobbing cherry stones towards the raspberries, to the accompanying sound of his wife ' Red Debs' shouting 'Go on Steve, Higher! Higher!' Your club is very fortunate indeed to prevent publication of the incident under the headline 'DEB's DELIGHT AT CHERRY LOST BY RASPBERRY BLOWER'S MAULING'
Despite our attempts to influence your team to pursue excellence, etiquette and decorum by cajoling clubs in Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells to include you in their fixture lists I note that your captain Brendan Copps refuses to wear the Gravesend CC Designer Wear kit, choosing instead to wear that provocative red rag of a bull cap of his. Since appointing Mr Copps to further club office you can tell your Chairman Mr Pat Harlow that he has as much chance of carrying the Olympic Torch through Gravesend as there is of hearing something pleasant said by Sid from the Bowls Club.

I have read your so called book 'French and Spanish Cricket for Beginners' (Downloadable from Amazon.co.uk) and I am appalled at your antipathy towards the Bank Teams, in particular HSBC. To accuse their management of cheating is a slap in the face to those institutions that have done so much in the recent past for our country and does no credit to you, and you can inform Mr Verinder Bhoombla that as with all banks HSBC will continue to give no credit to you.

The Cabinet in its next COBRA meeting intends to impose an 'Exclusion Area' on your team preventing you from further polluting the fertile fields of Kent, the County known as 'The Garden of England'. You will be restricted to Clubs in the Gravesham area though there is no need to play Gravesham Cricket Club as it is already Really Really well manured.

The Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has asked me to report your player Ben Williams to the ECB for taking a series photographs of you slip fielders dropping catch after catch and then attaching them on the door of Gravesend Conservative Club with the logo underneath 'The NHS is equally safe in our hands'. Because of this we will be instructing the doctor and the dentist who play for you to withdraw from your team. This will particularly affect occasional 5th team players Mr Steve Dutton who pulls at least 2 muscles per game and Mr Ian Obie who spits teeth every time he has an lbw decision turned down.
The Home Secretary, Theresa May, who is under enough pressure at the moment, has asked me to complain on her behalf about receiving long, rambling and tedious e-mails from a Mr Bob James. Mr James has been continually complaining that his performance has been hampered by the fact that he has to use a second hand bat with holed gloves and has developed a twitch from having to adjust his trousers to secure his box and thigh pad even as the bowler runs in. Mr James has explained that he is unable to replace the faulty items as he is prevented from shopping at 'Wickets', the 'All Year Round Cricket Suppliers in Pelham Rd South to take advantage of his 10% reduction as it only opens on Saturday afternoons when he is playing and on Wednesdays from 10am to 2pm when he is still selecting his side.

On a positive note the Prime Minister is pleased to see that cricket fixtures will continue during the Olympic Games. Be assured that there should be no problem as far as selection is concerned as I have yet to meet anyone outside of Parliament who has got any tickets. May I reiterate what Seb Coe has said that this is entirely due to the unprecedented demand for tickets and is not because of the 10,000 FBI agents and the 2000 soldiers manning the surface to air missiles required to protect the American Team and certainly not because of the seats allocated to minor Royals, Investment Bankers and corrupt officials of the various sporting bodies and all other Old Etonians who are not part of the above.

Finally No. 10 has noted the presence of Mr Matthew Walker at your AGM and would take this opportunity to warn him as he considers his future years not to become a member of the 5ths. To Be or not to Be may be his question but this should be superceded by the Question MBE or not MBE. No doubt Mr Walker will be looking to follow other cricketers such as Phil Tufnell, Darren Gough and Mark Ramprakash to appear on Celebrity or Reality Television. I would point him in the direction of The soon to be on air 'Boris Island, Get me out of here.' With its flight path just a couple of hundred feet above the Bat & Ball I would suggest that any further monies from the ECB should be spent on Ear Muffs, Calm Down Dear shatter proof tea cups and . It's an ill wind-At least the number of ducks per game will rise to the level achieved by the 5ths.

You have been warned

Yours truly

Rupert Merde d'Oc

I was once a Hacker

Okay, I admit it-I've been caught out. It may not be the best of photographs, but it shows what happened to my putter. What is now considered to be criminal behaviour took place on nine hole courses in 1999. Leeds Castle, Lullingstone, Wrotham Heath and Deangate Ridge. I can't think of the other five but I would like them taken into consideration, Your Honour. I felt bad about it; I tried to go straight but I couldn't help myself. I hacked my way round using only a nine iron. Even when a friend took me to one of the Sandwich Courses ( I think it was the second course )I got myself into a pickle. By George, I remember now, it was the first course. Like how I felt, it was a sort of toad-in-the-hole.


I needed to cover it up,before I made a meal of it. I used the excuse that I was fed up with birthday and Christmas presents being almost entirely golf related. I'd already carpeted our lounge with green baize and like me it couldn't take any more. As you know, Your Honour, I can write enough balls without Father Christmas depositing more down the chimney. I had to get rid of the evidence knowing that one day there would be an enquiry. Realizing that there was nobody to grass me up I turned to the the lawn mower. It was a Mountfield Petrol self-fulfilling Prophecy model. Terrific engine; shame about the handles. Manoeuvring around the apples and pears did for them. I needed a long term solution. As my short game was as bad as my hacking I could see a connection. I swung into action attaching my 3 put putter to the mower's bracket to keep it shut. Momentarily I regretted not having one of those sit-on mowers as I had a spare driver. I wedged the other side. I admit I was flagging. I even told the missus after a bit of foreplay, where to go when she said she needed a cup of tees. As a matter of fact I didn't mean to be so harsh but I didn't want her to become a golfing accessory.


There is a point to all this. Did I hear on the Radio this morning that the Times had been accused of Hacking into E-Mails? Maybe this is why the Sunday Times hasn't dealt with the matter brought up in the E-Mail I tried to send them after reading an article in the Travel Section last Sunday. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt as they probably haven't hacked in yet to how hacked off I feel about it. For those of you who haven't hacked in to my Hard Drive:-



I am trying to make a comment for the benefit of the author of the article with regard to no.1 in his 100 best holidays 'Take The Plunge' published in the 'Travel' section of The Sunday Times yesterday. I did go to thesundaytimes.co.uk/travel, but I seemed to be redirected to registering online which I don't want to do. My apologies for burdening you. I need to tell him that our then 18 year son leapt off the Pont du Diable at Thueyts into the River Ardèche below in 1999 fracturing his sternum. He most certainly would have drowned if it were not for his brave friend who jumped in to pull our unconscious son from the water. Thanks to the help of many others, some who knew him, some who didn't, some whose job it was and some whose job it wasn't, he made a full recovery. I can remember the Doctor at the hospital in Valence to which my son had been taken in an air ambulance asking me as I held his hand in intensive care why youngsters do it. I didn't have the Language to tell him that like the French he was untrammelled by our health-and-safety culture.

Thank you for your time

Best wishes

Mike Kelleher

Mr/Mrs/Ms/ Har Haaarrrggghhh

England 14-0, after the bowlers docked the tail in clinical fashion. Part of the tail is now in a spin trying to remove the openers.Cook is struggling. Ajmal the destroyer is coming on. Will the England players have long enough to study his action or will they leave that to Bob Willis. As oldies we have got tickets for one of the 'London Prepares' Diving sessions for a fiver. We are looking forward to seeing another Olympic venue from an insider's point of view. This is despite the memory of a near fatal diving accident for our son, which may leave us uncomfortable in our pre-Olympic seats.

Thanks to Seb we are Greco-Roman wrestling in our minds of whether to disappear abroad during the Olympics as we are not feeling quite the ticket at the moment. 25-0. More holiday boxes than usual need to be ticked off. A pool? Proximity of fishing? Remote? Remote control for satellite TV? Enough already! Did I ever imagine that our sport mad sons would be so discouraged at the lack of availability of tickets that they would ever contemplate leaving this sceptered isle at such a time? As Strauss walks off caught prodding for 11, the fear, the uncertainty of the inevitability that I feel for the England batsmen mirrors the reasons for choosing to watch the Greatest Sporting event that has taken place on home soil since just before I was born, from foreign climes. 39-1.

It is the boxes, that is the corporate ones that are sticking like a fish bone in one's throat. I'm not referring to the Royal ones as they have always been there, and I don't intend to speak ill of the dead. Nor do I have the heart to speak of the nearly dead, save to say that I hope the NHS pull out the same stops for the rest of us as did the French equivalent for my son all those years ago, even though we needed his E Nelson.

Eight years ago we watched the Athens Olympics on TV in Peniscola in Spain. Barry Davies was the commentator. We spent an enjoyable hour or so trying to work out which country, excluding Greece would be last to enter the stadium. You needed a maths degree to be sure of winning as the names on the team plaques looked like quadratic equations.I didn't win. I could never differentiate properly. If you want more detail you need to download 'French and Spanish Cricket for Beginners' from Amazon.co.uk as it's lunch at the cricket and I need to take a cup of tea up to the missus. IIL-I at Lunch. At least I'm only contemplating Beefy eat his Samosas and not Toffee nosed Champagne swilling Charlies devouring canapés in Beef Wellingtons with chips on my shoulder. Oh by the way E111s are known as Napoleons in France.

To those sadly not able to get in to watch Ebbsfleet for £7 or to warm your hands with fuel bought from the Winter Fuel Allowance or to travel to Dartford Market on the FastTrack etc.

Went to London Prepares Gymnastics last night at the O2 with Ben's Mum and Dad and Lizzie of course plus Heth. Sat next to two Brazilian ladies. 2-2 as far as Gold medals were concerned. 2-0 to them as far as pints of lager were concerned. I am concerned as they said it cost them £5.40 a pint. If it wasn't for the fact that the wonderful Lizzie had brought Pizza half price in Tescos (Sorry about your shares, Tesco, not) together with a bottle of wine from Uncle Martin specially chosen by Nephew Jack who works at Majestic that we were able to consume in Car Park 1 due to the unseasonal warm weather that our generation has bestowed upon you, I would have been somewhat disappointed, to use an expression that our generation has failed to bestow upon you along with the appreciation of the apostrophe. The event was enjoyable and cheap especially for those of my generation.

The point of all this is twofold. Firstly to remind you that on Tues 17th Jan tickets for the Diving 'London Prepares' become available to be held at the Aquatic Centre from 20th-26th Feb. Once again they are reasonably priced and hopefully as with the Gymnastics you can actually get hold of them. Secondly to remind Seb Coe that just like thousands of others I have still not been able to get hold of any F***ing Olympic Tickets, cementing my view mirroring what most of my generation felt at the time of your athletic peak, that they prefer Steve Ovett as an individual to you. No hard feelings. Yet! And it's not just because you defeated my mate to become MP for Falmouth/Camborne.