In Which A Book Leads Me To Why Being A Teetotal Atheist Doesn't Help My Social Life, Welsh Rugby At Its Lowest And My Hatred Of Dr Pepper

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well Euro 2016 has taken a break for the next few days. The last couple of games were great with Hungary beating Austria and Iceland drawing with Ronaldugal. Underdogs doing well. That's what I want to see.

As you can guess by now I'm back at work. And I'll be at work today for THAT game. Must admit glad to be missing that one and that work will distract me. That said, not sure will be feeling the same way when it actually happens.

Well have finished Sundog by Jim Harrison. As you may know I try my best not to talk about the plot of the books I read,especially fiction, as not to spoil anything for the reader. But this is a book not easy to describe if I did tell you.

Having read my first ever book by this author I'm clearly now a world renowned expert and was trying to think of a perfect description of this novel, which I liked. The first thing that came to my mind that he was an acquired taste. That though suggested snobbery. As if to say I can reach literary Nirvana but you just have to settle for James Patterson (plus 1 other) but I'm that type of guy. It's that type of person who says they can appreciate a particular wine from a remote region in Bolivia that you can only reach by Llama.

That though was quickly discarded.....what do I know about wine? I don't drink.

Rather like my position on poetry my attitude to alcohol is based on a very mundane reason. Not for me any moral/religious issue. And I don't mind moderately letting myself go. No. it's quite simply that from beer to brandy,wine to whiskey I just don't like the taste.

I get it from my mother. She didn't drink for exactly the same reason although she does like to put vino in her minestrone soup which would make me remark that she liked being drunk in her food (untrue but it raises a smile).

Though not being the most sociable of people I do know that if I would've made many more friends had I been more partial to drink. I could have spent my Saturdays slumped on a wall telling some stranger I really loved them.

I remember once going to a pub in Cardiff watching a (then) five nations rugby game in the late nineties with my wife (then girlfriend) her brother his partner and their friends. Wales was playing ...somebody else ...but not England and it was as I remember an unimportant game in terms of the championship. Wales I seem to remember were at their lowest ebb. It seemed to have been personified by the fact that their poster boy was a man called Arwel Thomas. Small, with an angelic innocent face he was always looked like a man who joined the game after a spell of choir practice. All very laudable of  course, but when linked with rugby just seemed out of place.

As I recall Welsh rugby was not impressive at that time. The one exception being Llanelli, (not the Scarlets you understand. This was before WRU decide that teams should go all NFL). If you listen to English coaches and players interviewed you'll hear a tone about that team which you wouldn't hear if they spoke of any other aspect of Welsh rugby at that time. That tone was one of respect.

Anyway back to the pub. I don't remember the result and wish drink was the cause. All I remember was my future brother in law prending to take off his trousers and everybody having a good time...except me.

The year after the group (including me) went to a Wales / Ireland game (behind the posts too far away to appreciate anything). Afterwards at a pub I was approached by a tall bearded irishman who saw me nursing a glass of orange juice and said in a friendly tone. "Why don't you just get pissed?". And of course he was right. I was at the wrong place and definitely at the wrong time.

Being an athiest the social circle for the teetotal (religion) is also out of my reach.....ah well.

Until recently I would drink any soft drink going instead. The one exception was Doctor Pepper which my tastebuds would react to as if it had tasted bleach. Their advertising slogan seemed odd too. "Doctor Pepper. So Misunderstood." What sort of  slogan was that? That's a slogan for a disgraced politician trying for a comeback.

This book then is a ramble (like this post) but nor rambling (which I hope this post wasn't). Perhaps then the best thing to say is that you have to be in the mood to read it. That although I liked it. I would understand and not criticise those who didn't.

So to the next book.

A28 - Clive Bell - Civilization

A vintage Pelican paperback. A modest title. We'll see how good it is.

Until the next time.

Couldn't Watch Euro 2016, So I'll Moan About Archaeology Instead

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well I was working the afternoon/evening shift at work last night so missed the start of Euro 2016. The match was between France and Romania. The French won thanks to Dimitri Payet. And at club level who's got Payet? "We've got Payet,We've got Payet" (sorry,sudden bursts of singing does not work when read).

Perhaps I'm going to miss the first three days of the competition because of work is a good thing (no point recording them I'd know the results before I could watch them) because I also missed some of the English fans going retro and turning into the apes of the past. God it just makes me despair sometimes.

Suddenly you realise that there is a connection between Euro 2016 and the EU referendum in that thanks to some English fans more Europeans actually would want us to leave.

So instead of the football I'll moan about archaeology instead. I shouldn't worry about making archaeologists angry. They won't put you into a grave. They'll just dig you up thousands of years later to take anything of value (either monetary or sentimental) buried with you.

As you probably know (or guess from the background picture) I collect vintage Penguin/Pelican paperbacks and I've just finished Digging Up The Past by Sir Leonard Woolley first published in 1930. Essentially this book is an introduction to archaeology based with his own experiences in the field.

Now let me be fair to Sir Len. He would have had to a produced a book pretty spectacular for me to have been interested in the subject. Fireworks and dancing girls would've needed to have been included. After all if I wanted to be outside, bored  and covered in dirt I would have taken a far greater interest in gardening.

So I approached this with not a closed mind but let's say it was unlocked but shut. A lot of this tome is boring but I felt that it was more to do with me than him so I'll give him a pass on that. However there were moments that interested me for the wrong reasons.

Sir Len mentioned that workers on his sites (say for example Egypt) were paid "a fair wage" and yet there was no explanation on exactly how this wage was actually "fair" Len was after all an archaeologist so exactly what knowledge did he have on a living wage for the average Egyptian in the nineteen thirties? Let's not forget the conditions they would have worked under as well. Calling it "a fair wage" doesn't mean it was. It's a trick that's used to this present day. Say something often enough then some people will always believe it to be true.

Yet despite this "fair wage" he had also a scheme, "described as baksheesh" where workers who discovered any valuable objects got a bonus. It struck me as a sort of cultural equivalent of the double glazing salesman getting extra money for being the best flogger of glass that month.

Also, when talking about this bonus scheme Lenny described his Arab workers as liking it because they're...wait for it...."gamblers by nature". Now even if you take account of the time it was written, and that he was not implying that after working in the dig they were trying to place a bet at 2:30 in Haydock, it's still a pretty insensitive remark. I'd argue that it shows his low opinion of the workers on his site,

But do you know what shocked me more. It was the chapter on digging up ancient graves. He seemed to treat it as just part of the job but I was thinking to myself that here is a grave digger justifying his actions on the grounds of historical accuracy. We're not talking about rich pharaohs here. Lenny Boy talks disapprovingly about the people who raided graves to take things like jewellery but though I don't approve of that it seemed more understandable than doing the same thing to find a Celtic Warrior's sword or even worse a child's toy.

You might say it doesn't happen now. I've no idea and I don't care. If you see the results of an archaeological dig in a museum there is a possibility that the remains were treated with more care than the workers who found them and that a final dignity was taken away from ordinary people in the name of culture.

Archaeology. Didn't dig it before reading this book. Dig it less now.

So have a new Penguin book to read from the larger white spined "King Penguin" series of the nineteen eighties.

Jim Harrison - Sundog

Jim Harrison died fairly recently in March of this year. Though picking from the great unread was purely coincidental. 

Until the next time.