Today I’m mostly confined to bed. By my own decree. Teresa’s at work. And I am on Easter break. Although it may be a bigger hiatus? That’s partly why I’m in bed!
I woke when Teresa got up, at 5.30am (mad!). But most of the time between about 9am and 3pm I’ve been in a 50/50 mix of resting/dozing, and outright sleeping. Snooker, with Kieran Wilson thrashing Ali Carter, on the Tour Championship, is helping on all fronts with rest and sleep!
An ornery mule, with an artist’s soul.
But around 2pm, after a second long chat with the alphabet soup brigade (the bouillabaisse of acronyms for mental-health organisations), I felt I needed an injection of culture and inspiration. So I hoyked a few art books off the shelves.
Angst meets beauty, in mixed media on canvas.
Having resumed a long derelict interest in making art, I thought I’d also resume the act of feeding on the soul food that art can be. Hence getting these tomes offa the shelves. Turner and The Sea, Guston, and de Kooning. Endless hours of fun and nourishment!
Not so eyebrow, n’est ce pas!?
And to keep my furrowed brows at the correct elevation, something a bit ‘Felix’ lighter!
No-brow? Love the Tintin style cover!
And of course, Viz. Thanks to the Viz Team I nearly died laughing last night.
It’s an incredibly rare occasion that I’m aware of snooker events before they occur. As I become more of an ardent fan of the sport – a veritable green baize junkie? – perhaps this first will become more of a norm?
Anyway, whilst catching up on my FB news feed (Paul O’Grady has died, aged 67!), I learned that the next snooker World Championship ‘takes place from 15 April to 1 May at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.’
It seems, according to the article that informed me of this, that this year we’ll see an influx of geriatric male stars – Hendry, White and Doherty, specifically – and several female contestants.
Could be interesting. But I’m glad that for once I’m aware of the event before and not after it’s started (or, at best previously, whilst it’s on). In the meantime my quest for the classic matches of yesteryear continues.
I kind of fancy going really old school, and watching a ‘Hirricane’ Huggins match, or maybe even that Davis vs. Taylor black ball one… Hmmm!?
‘Oozing class’, ‘a marvellous match… a Crucible classic’, ‘one of the best matches we have ever seen’. So sayeth the pundits, of this match. And i’sooth, it’s all true. ‘Twas absolutely fab!
Trump opened up a blistering and dominant 12-5 lead, only to have Williams, ‘the Welsh potting machine’, come roaring back at him. Some sublime snooker from both of them took us to the brink.
At 16-15 in Williams’ favour, the humbly eccentric former boxer looked poised to deliver one of the greatest sporting comebacks ever. But Trump dug in, or went to the well as they say, and took it to 16-16.
A standing ovation prior to frame 33.
The decider was a terrific frame, by far the longest of the match, clocking in at about 45-50 minutes. Both players had chances. And in the end there was a long safety duel, as Williams tried to beat the ‘astronomical odds’; he needed three or four snookers (and he laid a good few more than that).
But in the end, Trump triumphed by potting the blue. What an epically exhausting but exhilarating match. One for the ages.
If I could afford it, which of course I can’t, I’d have a thorough massage once a week. Particularly the back, and especially the lower (cervical?) area, and the neck and shoulders. Classic stress loci.
But whilst I can occasionally persuade Teresa to give me a few minutes of back massage, in the main I’m reliant on other stuff for relaxation. Self-medicating with booze works, for sure. But isn’t the healthiest way.
The results are immediately tangible.
Chester, our delightful and, of late, not so wee moggie, can be a real blessing. Today, like yesterday, I plan to spend as much time as poss’ resting in bed. And about 20 minutes ago he popped in, from one of his regular jaunts outside. The little darling came straight up to me and went straight into face rubbing. Which I adore.
Trump watching Higgins at work.
Another almost cast iron sure fire way I’ve found to relax is watching (good) snooker. For some reason it has to be players I find engaging, playing very well. Anything less, and it doesn’t work. Todays snooker menu consists of the gargantuan feast that is Trump vs. Higgins, 2019 World Championship.
Over eight hours of two of the greatest playing superbly. Although John Higgins is undoubtedly brilliant, he’s not one of the players I’m drawn to. For some reason (my artistic aesthetic side?) I like guys like Trump, O’Sullivan, Selby, etc. They play superbly, and look great doing it. Higgins looks like an accountant or a bank clerk!
Trump in killer shark mode, nailed eight frames in a row!
Trump played so phenomenally well in this match, particularly one session – which Steve Davis aptly described as ‘brutal’, and ‘controlled annihilation’! – that it really was one of the best snooker finals one could hope to watch.
And, as Stephen Hendry commented, these longer matches bring something the shorter formats just can’t deliver. Epic! And yet also soothing…
I didn’t see half as much of the recent Masters Snooker tournament as I’d have liked. But I did catch a few matches. Some, like the Trump vs Bingham semi, were quite dull. Even excruciating at times!
I’d heard the pundits mention that this one, O’Sullivan vs Williams, was a good ‘un. So I thought I’d check it out. I wasn’t disappointed.
‘The best shot so far this afternoon’, quoth Dennis Taylor, as Ronnie pocketed the above pictured long red, clean as the proverbial whistle. This quarter final clash of two snooker Titans, both legends in their own lifetimes, lived up to its billing. Quite a rare thing, I find.
Williams, as funny a player as this face suggests.
Mark Williams is, as any Snooker fan will know, an oddball. Perhaps ironically, being one of the best ‘single shot’ snooker players ever makes him a formidable break builder. A lot of the time he favours floating the balls into the pockets, ‘dead weight’. And this slow measured approach means that sometimes you might forget how good his technique is.
The contrast with Ronnie’s more attacking and aggressive flair makes for a great pairing. And both are super canny, and can, as Hendry likes to observe, be as hard as granite in freezing other players out. Both have superlative Snooker brains, often seeing things others wouldn’t.
This match was great. Perhaps the best of the tournament? Ronnie looked unbeatable at the outset. But Williams turned the tables on him. Both showed how, sometimes, just one mistake can be super costly.
Williams took ages over this shot!
The match reached a final 11th frame decider, and – after a typically gonzo one-armed off the cushion shot (missed!) – Williams played the ‘best shot in this wonderful match’ (Taylor) – pictured above – which had Hendry frothing: ‘magnificent, absolutely magnificent!’
I love Snooker. I find it very relaxing. And I particularly enjoy a really great match, like this: two players playing at the top of their game. Williams finished with a total clearance. Fab!
I’ve had a sore throat for a few days now. Symptoms are very Strep A like, and I believe that’s running amok in the UK. Teaching in schools, I guess, may make me more likely to be exposed? It seems more virulent amongst the very young. And I teach in two primary schools.
But I can’t find any particularly helpful maps of known cases. Something I thought might shed light on whether this might be Strep A or something else. And then there’s the various varieties: Strep A, Scarlet Fever and IGAS may all be caused by the same bacteria, but (I believe?) each manifests in slightly differing ways. So, for example, I don’t have any rashes, so I don’t have Scarlet Fever.
… and Scarlet Fever.
But without proper medical advice – ironically I had an over-50s NHS health check last Monday, before I got this damned sore throat – which is increasingly hard to get as the Tories grind the NGS into the ground, how do I know what’s causing it, or indeed even what ‘it’ is!?
BTW, the info-graphic map images I’ve used here are from my researches, and usually the webpage (if not always the image itself) adds more info, such as when the statistics were gathered, or the time period they cover, etc.
I guess I was after this sort of thing, for our area.
What I really wanted was a map with ‘pins’, something rather like the above image, but showing cases in my living/teaching zones. Maybe then it’d be easier to see if there were recorded cases where I’m teaching, for example? Anyhoo, calling 111 has (so far) got me nowhere.
Teresa and I are back to childminding at my sister’s. And we’ve been roped into an extra night over, as my mum backed out of her usual Sunday commitment. She did so partly due to dad having Covid (so I hear!?), and me having this sore throat.
I also booked two Amazon delivery shifts: one today, another tomorrow. Todays was a real nightmare. First off they had approx 30% more stuff to deliver – 30 bags as opposed to he usual 20 or so – than I normally have, and yet supposedly to be delivered in the same (two hour) time frame!
My Flex shift today was hellish!
On top of this, even before I’d left, the scanning and naming/numbering of the deliveries didn’t tally correctly. There were extra bags, numbers/names/codes didn’t match, and, well, more on this later…
I’d also very much like to opt out of making any deliveries to Cambridge. Most trips to Cambridge involve dropping deliveries to at least one ‘block of flats’ or student halls of residence. In theory I can contact the customer. In practice this doesn’t always work. Today I had a whole slew of Chinese students in multiple occupancy residences , none of which had sufficient info to locate the customer, that made the entire shift a total nightmare.
Supposedly 2-4pm, I didn’t finish till 5pm. And when I did I had two bags of undelivered stuff left over! I had to call the Flex driver support line several times. To their credit, they do try to help, and sometimes they even actually sort things out. But, as ever in modern life, there’s far too much interacting with automated robotic systems. And they can’t always resolve stuff satisfactorily.
I anticipate negative feedback from Amazon on this delivery run. One particular order initially took over 45 minutes to ‘complete’ (or so I thought), putting me seriously behind schedule. And in the end this was – or so it seems – the order to which the two extra mystery bags that were left over belonged to. So adding that in, as well, at the end, means that one stop accounted for about an hours work!
How all this makes me feel!
Add to this my sore throat, the bigger than usual load, that for much of the shift it was cold and very rainy, and, nearly all of it being in town, there was heavy traffic congestion to negotiate… Bah! Not fun at all. For the most part I do enjoy doing Amazon Flex deliveries. Not so today! As already mentioned, I’d like to decline any further delivery trips to Cambridge.
Back ‘home’, at Hannah’s in Northstowe, I’m mainly staying in bed, as I don’t feel at all well. The right hand gland in my neck is swollen and painful, swallowing hurts, and I’m on a diet of liquids, paracetamol and lozenges.
Missed (again!). Bloody awful.
Thought a bit of snooker might help. So I watched the Trump vs Bingham Masters semi-final. Trump won, 6-1. But, my sweet lard, was it ropey! It was excruciating at times. I like fast heavy scoring snooker. This was low breaks, tactical grinding (and wailing and gnashing of teeth), and, frankly, quite boring . Both players playing well below their best.
It’s a little bit sad to say this, but perhaps the most interesting things to happen so far, in the much-hyped Trump vs. O’Sullivan ‘22 World Championship snooker final, might be the spats ‘twixt O’Sullivan and Belgian ref’ Olivier Marteel.
The match itself has been a bit one-sided. Trump being rather dominated by O’Sullivan.
What caused the latter of the incidents is not altogether clear. The first was totally cut and dried, and arose when Ronnie wasn’t happy with Martel’s replacement of the white. Marteel was in the right, as the cameras very clearly showed. But he rather politely and somewhat meekly allowed O’Sullivan to bully him.
O’Sullivan suggests Marteel try taking the shot.*
The next time – apparently in relation to a hand gesture Marteel thought Ronnie made – O’Sullivan suggested, rather ironically, that Marteel check the cameras (doing so in the first instance categorically showed Ronnie to be in the wrong!). Add to this that Ronnie is already under official investigation for a allegedly similar incident in another recent match… well, Ronnie looks bad in all this. At least to my eyes.
It’s not as if he’s a stranger to getting shirty with refs. I’ve seen him do it to Marcel Eckardt as well. When he gets like that, I think ‘you conceited prick; get on with your job, and let the referee do likewise’!
I can also recall a time when he had a go at Mark Allen, and Allen commented after the match, ‘Ronnie just tries to bully people out there and I wasn’t having any of it.’ Well, yes, that’s what it looks like to me.
Two titans of the green baize game.
Then there’s the shoulder barge thing with Ali Carter in 2018. Who’s the recurring character in all these incidents? Can you think of any other snooker player linked to so many spats? Maybe Alex Higgins? But he had the ‘excuse’ of being an old school pool-hall hustling alcoholic.
I hope Trump makes a comeback. In fact, for reasons of karma, I hope he beats O’Sullivan, as did Ali Carter in that 2018 confrontation. That didn’t look very likely at the point where I started writing this post. Nor does it based on form coming to this point, either. Ronnie’s firm favourite any way you slice it!
But Trump has fought back this afternoon, taking the first three frames. Yay! Keep it up. I feel for Marteel! Who’d want to do his job when Ronnie’s in of his moods?
* I’d suggest Ronnie should try a spell refereeing!
POSTSCRIPT
Well, Ronnie won, convincingly. And it seemed pretty inevitable. So not the most thrilling of snooker matches! It was quite nice to see how moved Ronnie was, at the end. A tearful embrace with Trump almost got a bit weird, it was so prolonged!
He’s a funny fish. No two ways about that. But, as Hendry observed, he’s taking the game to other levels, and is an artist. So an odd character seems fitting.
Another night of insomnia, with yet more snooker as my medicine. This 1996 match finds Hendry looking young, fresh, handsome, even. O’Sullivan looks a bit dorky, with his altar-boy pudding bowl hair. But I prefer this look to the later match I watched next.
This shot sums up the match, for me.
The pic above captures the balance of power in this match. It was a bit one-sided. Hendry pulled rapidly and decisively ahead, after the fourth set (two all at that point). A few flashes of Ronaldo brilliance were not enough to claw his way back, from 8-3 behind. Hendry dominated this best of 19 match.
2002, Ronnie’s hair stylist is still in the ‘90s.
After this four or so hour March, I tried to sleep. No dice! Sooo… another long ‘un. This time, still going with the fag-peddlers as sponsors, but now Embassy, as opposed to B&H! This one is the best of 33 frames, and in excess of six hours!
Does this pic indicate a re-run of Hendry style cold hard domination?
At the time of posting, as with the first of the two matches mentioned in this post, it’s two frames all. A long way to go. Will Hendry dominate again. The pic above came up when I googled the match, possibly suggesting an outcome with a whiff of deja-vu?
Or will I be mercifully enfolded in the arms of sleep? I do hope so…
Wow! Now that’s what I call a snooker match. Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Selby, two of my favourite players, slugging it out in a best of 19 final.
I’m not going to précis the entire match. Just watch it. What I will saying, in summary of the events, is that it’s what what could happily call a ‘come back special’.
