MrGareth’s Missives

The recent and tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford put me in mind of the Eddie Izzard sketch, "The Gun Thing".  Not that there is anything funny about this dreadful and gruesome crime, but more because of how completely farcical the debate about gun control has become in the US.  We seem to have moved beyond abject denial and into something so much more surreal.

"...guns don't kill people, people do,"says Izzard, quoting the oft-used National Rifle Association strapline.  "But I think the gun helps".

The US is currently completely absorbed by a discussion over the apparently "toxic" nature of political debate in the US, and how it is responsible for these terrible events. 

Are they fcuking kidding? (please excuse my French.)

Has the seemingly endless array of mass shootings in the US not taught Americans anything?  Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood.  How often have random and indiscriminate acts of murder that deprive the innocent of their right to lifeuntil someone, somewhere, realises that "hey, maybe it's the guns that kill people!"

How did Australia react to the senseless mass shooting of innocent tourists at Port Arthur?  Regulated gun ownership.

How did Britain react to the heart-wrenching massacre of innocent children in a school in Dunblane?   Regulated gun ownership.

Am I missing something?  It's not the "toxic"nature of political debate that enabled Jared Loughner to shoot Ms Gifford through the brain, maim others and kill six.  If that were the case he would have shouted, ranted and maybe even spat or thrown an egg.  It was the gun in his hand - that he no doubt found easy to acquire despite obvious mental health issues - that enabled him to cause such chaos, injury and death. 

The rational reaction of any sane individual or community to any disaster is to examine the facts and determine a cause of action that will prevent such a tragedy happening again.  Americans, like junkies in denial of the fact that the drugs are ruining their lives, have come up with perhaps the most ridiculous furfie yet. 

Sadly not even the fact that in this event it is an actual Federal Lawmaker that has been injured will change anything.  The slaying of their own President in 1963 didn't seem to make any serious difference.  How many lives are worth the preservation of an Amendment - an Amendment mind you - to the "sacred" constitution?  The families of these poor victims must be beside themselves with fury, because I'm bloody angry and it has got nothing to do with me!

The title is not only a reference to the fact that this is my last post from Belgium (news no doubt coming as some relief to those bored to tears by all this War misery !), but also a reference to a marvelously poignant daily ceremony that takes place every day at the Menin Gate in Ypres.  Every evening at eight o'clock, no matter what the weather - as I can attest, having attended in freezing temperatures - between two and four buglers observe a small moment playing the "last post" and reciting what is called the exaltation out of respect to those lost in the Great War.  It's a moving moment, performed every evening since the fighting ceased.

Ypres was a different place in 1918.  The Germans deliberately and surgically removed this pretty medieval town from the map so that nothing was left standing by the end of the war, not even the 13^th century Cloth Hall  , the ruins of which remain a powerful icon  to the destruction of this conflict.  It was a quite spiteful act.  Quite strategically unnecessary and leaving a biter taste in the mouth of the local Flemish that lasts to this day.

But to walk around Ypres – or to give it its proper Flemish name, Ieper – is to understand the power of renewal.  The town was completely rebuilt, lovingly so in fact, and in such a way that unless you knew better you would be forgiven for thinking the new Cloth Hall is seven hundred years old, not less than one hundred.  The town was reconstructed in the 1920s according to strict adherence to the original street plan.  It is an act of defiance yes.  But an act of renewal as well.

One of the many hills the town of Ypres was shelled from is Hill 60 – famous now for the new feature film (Beneath Hill 60 -  - a smashing yarn well worth the viewing) about the Australian Sappers who built an intricate series of tunnels under a German gun emplacement in order to blow it up.  This was in parallel and in concert with the remarkable British mining efforts under the Messines Ridge that saw some 19 enormous explosions blow in sequence one after the other along an important ridge along the Ypres Salient front line that blew thousands of German soldiers to smithereens and buried many thousands more for ever.  The explosions, which were to said to have rattled the tea cups in Downing Street, were part of the most successful Allied offensive of the war.

But as you drive around the farms that have replaced the Messines battlefields on the French-Belgian border, there is very little to tell you this carnage and slaughter ever took place at all.  A small cross to mark the spot of the Christmas Truce and the famous game of football that I have referred to before; the occasional run down and overgrown bunker complex; (and the ubiquitous cemeteries of course).  But you have to know to find them.  For the most part, even something that irrevocably re-arranged the landscape and widowed thousands in a single second is marked only by a number of craters, now filled with water and incorporated into either someone’s garden, or a golf course.  For me, as with Ypres, and as with the way Australian bush regenerates itself after a cataclysmic bush fire, this speaks of the power of renewal.  Its very encouraging, heartening and positive.

As Germany has made its very last reparations payment – some 91 years and 269 billion gold marks later  - and Europe approaches the centenary of this vicious holocaust, perhaps complete renewal is now finally drawing close.

UPDATE: As I've already said, the Menin Gate is dedicated to all those who's remains were never found and were deprived the dignity of a proper burial.  There are many graves in all of the many cemeteries in the area to an "unknown soldier" and many of the names would pair up with those on the walls.  But many are still buried in the mud.  In fact many are still being found.  As well as the 56,000 names at the Menin Gate, there are another 30,000 names of lost soldiers at Tyne Cot Cemetery at Pascendale, and a further 11,000 near the Hyde Park Corner memorial further south near the Messines Ridge.  With those three memorials alone, altogether thats more than 90,000 soldiers whose remains were never found.  

That's more people than this year's record attendance at the Boxing Day Test at the MCG.

As thoughts at Christmas are always drawn to the famous football match during the Xmas Truce in 1914, you are reminded of the incredible senselessness of the First World War.  But it wasn't until I went on a battlefield tour around the Ypres Salient yesterday that the scale of the slaughter really hit home.  Despite studying it at school and taking a lifelong interest in its history, I never truly understood how horribly wasteful the events of that conflict were.  In essence, I couldn't comprehend it.   

The moving Vancouver Corner Memorial to the Canadian casualties inflicted by the first use of Chlorine Gas in the Second Battle of Ypres.

Thanks to the thorough, informative and moving tour given by Andre De Bruin (of Over The Top Tours, which I highly recommend should you be in the area) in the company of Australian Blogger Kate Carruthers, (who was also able to offer considerable insight ) among other friends, I now have a much deeper insight into this dark and shameful chapter. It is an insight that – as the day went on – inspired a full spectrum of different emotions.   (Here is a slideshow of the tour)

There was  the anger inspired, for instance, by the pettiness of the Belgian Government in the way that the German dead are commemorated in comparison with those of the Allied dead.  The politics of the conflict aside – who started it and who won – the “sacrifice” of those fallen on both sides are the same, one would have to agree.  And yet if you visit the Langemark Cemetary to German dead just outside Ypres, you would I am sure be as shocked as I by the mass grave of 25,000 bodies amalgamated from several other German cemetaries across the area when the Belgian Government forced the Germans to consolidate their memorials.  It is a dark and infuriating site, where the tomb stones – black rather than white, and almost never of individual graves but only ever mass graves of various sizes – are forced to lie down on the ground to minimize their profile.  It mirrors the dreadful mean-ness of the Versailles Treaty in its lack of magnanimity.

There was anger too at the sheer magnitude of the insanity of the so-called “War to end all wars”, probably best exemplified by the Battle of Passchendaele.  Quite movingly Andre relayed a series of punishing statistics about the battle, fought over a small village on a ridge just north west of Ypres, as we drove through the snow across the site of the battlefield.  I will share them here because for me they represent the scale of the madness in a way that nothing ever has done before for me:

The three-month battle fought across a four-and-a-half mile front to secure a two mile gain in territory resulted in a staggering half a million casualties on both sides.  There was no shelter for the advancing troops – not a house, not a tree, not a bush.  The German machine guns had a range of one-and-a-half miles and at point 50 yards would decimate their victims.  The Allied shelling immediately proceeding the advance destroyed the intricate drainage system underlying the fields of the battlefront and as the battle got underway the week-long downpour turned the fields into an unprecedented quagmire of clag that prevented any chance of digging in for shelter.    The industrial scale slaughter amounted to 35 Allied dead per square metre.  Just Imagine that for a moment.  That represents a pile of bodies, every metre across a nine square mile battlefield.  The ground over which they were killed and into which their blood was shed was recaptured by the Germans no less than four months later.

There was even some relief in humour at the tale of John “Barnie” Hines, also known as “wild eyes”  , the “notorious” Australian soldier with a price on his head from the German Government.  He found a rifle simply ineffective for his purposes, and preferred instead two bags of grenades.  When introduced to a Lewis Machine gun, he was heard to have said, “This’ll do me…‘it’s just like hosing the bastards down”!  This killing machine was also a kleptomaniac and along with several pianos managed to steal a Grandfather Clock.  His fellow troopers were forced to destroy it though because it went BONG every hour and gave away their position!  Even this story ended in sadness, however, as the digger - who survived the war - wasn’t allowed to enlist for the Second World War and died a lonely vagrant in 1958

There was also the intense fury at the arrogance of the American commander who – with only six hours to go before the widely understood time of the cease-fire on the 11^th November 1918 – attacked a small village so that his men could have a hot shower…at the cost of 300 men.

There was also of course great sadness, for instance when you visit the dressing station where Canadian John McCrae was inspired to write the poem “In Flanders Field” which gave rise to the poppies as the emblem of rememberance.  

But most profoundly of all was the grief at the words written at the foot of one grave at Polygon Wood – scene of a particularly ferocious battle involving an Australian Division.  Every family was offered the option to include a small inscription – at a penny a letter – at the foot of their family members' gravestone.  The mother of one Australian, Lieutenant Harry Hill, chose to use the last words he wrote to her, signing off on his last letter home, “I’m alright mother, cheerio.”

I've recently been fortunate to make a brief visit to the US.  San Francisco in fact.  Again.  It's always exciting to visit the states of course, particularly there.  Home of so much of our culture from films to music to literature.  I ate a burger in the diner where "American Graffitti" was shot, and was more excited than almost anywhere else I can remember eating.

But at the same time it always depresses me immensely though.  America can be so horribly heartless and miserly which I always find sadly ironic for a country which attempted to institutionalise love for one's fellow man at the core of its constitution.

Every visit I see something that makes me angry about the way the poor and unfortunate are alienated and maligned in the world's richest country.  On this occasion it was the dual issues of Healthcare and tax reform.  In short, the Republicans were successfully fighting to preserve George Bush's regressive tax cuts for the rich of 2000; while at the same time Failed Presidential Candidate Sen Huckabee was running a massive campaign to repeal Obama's healthcare reform, which I consider to be one of the most progressive pieces of reform in a generation.

I am completely dumbfounded why so many people there can be so selfish and cruel in the way they exclude so many other people from the wealth and success the nation has enjoyed for so long.  However I was tremendously heartened by an event I was lucky enough to attend during this visit (courtesy of the Salesforce Foundation.)

While at times a little corny, cliched and even cringe-worthy, Stevie Wonder's words were very moving as he sought to remind a 15,000-strong audience in The Moscone Centre of the following:

"I am grateful for the gift of being blind as it allows me to see the world without colour," he said.  "Pain is the same no matter what colour we are.  There are far more similarities [between us] than not. We need to get beyond our differences. We cannot allow negativity to come between us...we have to move forward...every single one of us has value."

His words put me in mind of Martin Luther King, some of which are in fact inscribed on a monument to the great man not a stone's throw from where Stevie spoke.  It also put me in mind of JFK's important words, "our most basic common link is that we inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we all mortal."

However, the words that gave me even greater hope and optimism were said by the esteemed speaker who followed him.   Amusingly he opened his speech with, "after a lifetime as a mediocre musician, I never thought Stevie Wonder would open for me!"

I always think that in my lifetime it was Bill Clinton's term of office that offered the most hope, not only for America, but for humanity.  During his reign the world seemed to be on the up.  The past seemed just that, passed.  His term saw unprecedented peace in the world, witnessed the explosion of technologies that have revolutionized the way we live, and saw great reform and progression.

Railing passionately against inequality, former President Bill Clinton also reprised JFK's vision, this time that of a rising tide that lifted all boats, not just some.  He talked about how the banking and finance sector had enough money in its reserves to pull the nation out of recession and improve life for those that are suffering from record unemployment, property repossessions and poverty - but instead go cap in hand to the government, which in turn was forced to bail them out at the expense of programs that could help those same poor and needy.  He spoke also of healthcare, of education and if course climate change and how very meekly the US stacked up against so many other countries' efforts to to tackle them. 

He spoke for a good 90 minutes, both in a speech and then in Q and A.  (With Stevie's segment, I was in the hall for a total of two and a half hours.  I stood for almost all of it.  I was happy to.)  He said many things that were inspiring, enlightening and moving.  While Mr Wonder had very poetic and I guess Wonderful things to say, it was Mr Clinton who actually drew a picture of how things should be:

"We've got to be in the business of tomorrow," he said towards the end. When asked what "tomorrowland" would look like he said that it would be a place of community, diversity and fiscal equality, and with a sensible attitude to immigration.

I liked the sound of it.  I wondered if I would ever be able to visit that America instead.  And I wondered (pardon the pun) if the delegates at Congress could begin to vote in reforms that would start to move towards tomorrowland instead of busily denying the disadvantaged any of the advantages they desperately seek. 

Or at the very least perhaps they could repeal the law passed after Roosevelt limiting presidents to only two terms, because I can tell you, that hall in San Francisco was on its feet clapping and cheering for the longest time!

So I visited the Waterloo Battlefield yesterday.  There's plenty written about the battle - agreed to be one of the most important in Western history, and there's a remarkably accurate 1970 dramatisation staring Christopher Plummer and Rod Steiger as Wellington and Napoleon respectively, which is well worth the watch.  So there's no need for me to add anything to that.  Suffice it to say it is an amazing experience to visit it if you get the chance.  

To give you a feeling for the scene, almost 200 years since it happened, here is a video panoramic:

But here are a series of photographs I took from various salient sites on the field on which I have written some detailed captions to give you a better feel for the key spots and the action that took place there.  

Slideshow: http://picasaweb.google.com/MrGareth2005/Waterloo?authkey=Gv1sRgCO2f26rt4eKM0...

But it is better to visit for yourself!

Amid all the Ashes excitement in Australia, you wouldn’t imagine that there is a small grave in a field in Belgium with profound and poignant relevance to the world’s oldest sporting rivalry.  But I traced that very link from a last minute invitation to a very small ceremony in the Oxford Road Cemetery in Ieper (previously known as Ypres and colloquially known as “Wipers” by British troops during the First World War.)

Colin Blythe was a Sergeant in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and was killed somewhat arbitrarily - like so many others - by a random shell in the battle of  Passchendaele  in November 1917.

Colin, also known as Charlie, was also thought one of the finest spin bowlers of the pre-war period, and played several tests for England - including Ashes series in England and Australia.  In 2009, the year that England reclaimed the Ashes from Australia after the debacle of the 2006/7 series, the England cricket team visited the Oxford Road Cemetery where  a stone cricket ball was laid at the grave of England and Kent bowler Blythe. "It was a deeply moving and humbling experience," said captain Andrew Strauss.

Also laid at the grave was a small miniature cricket bat, which was recently and astonishingly stolen.  And so it was decided by members of Kent Country Cricket Club (for whom he played) that it should be replaced and a ceremony was scheduled to dedicate it.  It was a very small, brief (6 minutes) but dignified ceremony – conducted by my father, the Chaplain to the nearby St George’s Memorial Church, Ieper  (which you can watch here on You Tube.)

The whole experience put today's Ashes events in quite startling perspective for me.

It’s an arresting place to visit.  Certainly not one of the large grave yards – for there are several vast cemeteries in the area to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of war dead in the area through 1914-1918.  But the Oxford Road Cemetery in particular is important for its location as well as for its significant resident. Situated just metres away from an important field dressing post on the road back from the  Passchendaele  Battle front.  Of the several hundred graves there, many of them all died within a few days of each other – between the 24^th October and the 7^th November 1917.  Of the graves there, all are of gentlemen younger than myself – which makes me very sad.

But as you tour around the rest of the area, you appreciate how lucky Mr Blythe is to have such a grave at all, let alone one so well attended.  Many of the graves in that cemetery are of an “Unknown Soldier” – sometimes its not even clear of what nationality.  But so many of the war dead were never even found. The grand Menin Gate in Ieper town centre records the names of some 56,000 British Empire dead – Canadian, Australian, Indian, New Zealand and South African as well as British – the remains of whom were never even found amid the mud of the Ypres Salient.

(More pictures of the Oxford Road Cemetery here.)

I'm of course well aware that there are many in the world find it staggering alone that a game of cricket - of anything in fact - can take five days to complete.  It is therefore even more galling to people that at the end of that process you can still not even have a result!  I recognise that this may seem a little stagnant, stale or futile even.  But I must reassure those worried about the wasted energy, time and money invested in cricket, despite the draw the first  Ashes test in Brisbane has been one of the best examples of why test cricket surpasses anything for sporting drama and excitement and was well worth it regardless.  The drama and significance of the long weekend entirely negated any apparent anti-climax a draw might be accused of. 

In answer to someone asking after my health this past weekend, I did in fact admit that my mood and spirits were entirely dictated by the cricket, and at that particular moment this was not positive.  Its hard to describe the horribly and deeply sick feeling I and millions of others experienced when the English Captain Andrew Strauss was out on his third ball (especially given the ghosts of our last start here); or the disbelief and horror I felt as Peter Siddle savaged through the English batting middle order in one over and in consecutive balls, taking a historic rare-as-hen's-teeth hat trick (only the third in more than a century of Ashes cricket). These miserable events were happening to me almost as much as they were to the players involved.  (The degree to which your own interests are at stake when you are a pom living in Australia cannot be overstated.  That's not to say that it's any more important to a pom in Australia than someone living in Fulham.  It isn't.  But as a collective we are considerably more exposed.  Social media has meant this at times light hearted banter, and at other times verbal combat, is all pervasive of course - as Ashley Kerekes (aka @theashes) can attest.)

The oscillating emotions experienced by a test cricket student (and with a myriad of statistics and history to keep across, to consume an ashes test match is more like study than spectating) covers an entire spectrum from end to end.  Especially when it involves the often unpredictable English sporting temperament.  Shortly before Peter Siddle took three wickets in consecutive balls - on his birthday no less - I had been talking to my father online.  He had just risen, living in the northern hemisphere, and asked how the cricket had gone on the first day.  At that point it was looking relatively comfortable despite Strauss' early and fruitless exit.  "But" I said, "it just depends on how the middle order do."  Not ten minutes later Siddle scalped his three hat trick victims, Pietersen, Prior and Broad -they *were* that middle order!   That is how quickly test cricket can turn.

England were doomed twice during the course of the match and came back twice, with bat and ball, to steal a draw from defeat's jaw.  Australia too were in turn dominant and dictated to during separate phases of the turbulent five day battle.  Hussey and Haddin's 307 partnership was truly awesome in it's perseverance and determination - particularly amid what Haddin describes as the "toughest and highest quality test bowling you’re going to get".  Yet Cooks's historic 235 run contribution to the final 517/1 2nd innings English total was equally inspiring and even miraculous - the highest total ever without losing a second wicket.  (After so many appalling English batting collapses, its also impossible to decribe how much delight those figures brought.)

The match saw the establishment of two new National heroes - Cook and Siddle - yet both were not even certain to make the team only a month before the test.  While it saw the dramatic debut of one new player, the phlegmatic Steve Finn who got a six-for (six wickets from his bowling), it probably also saw the death nail in Mitchell johnson's career who's bowling endeavors cost 170 runs for no wicket, fielding saw a dropped catch and batting saw a 19-ball duck.  

Finally anyone familiar with the history of The Gabba, (affectionately known in Australia as the Gabbatoir) and its usually fatal impact on the ambitions of so many visiting teams cannot possibly deny the importance of a draw there.  But anyway, what is so exciting is that whatever happened in Brisbane, anything can happen.  Despite the most impressive English batting performance since 1924, and the highest Gabba Total since Bradman; Sir Ian Botham's warning about Australian sporting virility still rings true and should deter any complacency - "you can pick eleven random blokes off an Aussie beach and still expect a decent game from them". 

Sadly I won't actually get to a game until the Ashes Series comes to Sydney in January, but watching it now reminds me of the greatest day's cricket-watching I can remember, during the 2002-03 series.  It wasn't really the cricket that was so amazing, although it was a win for England (miserably this was the last Test Win in Australia for England!).  But being lucky enough to be sitting where the old Hill used to be at the SCG meant I was right in the middle of the Barmy Army.  I thought it might be worth sharing what I wrote at the time for those lacking that unique experience of watching cricket from within the ranks for the Barmy Army.  Sadly Australian grounds now try to split up the Army as much as possible to dilute their influence, but in those days the core corps were well centralised in one place and dominated the day's proceedings.

"It’s unusual to go to a sporting event to watch the spectators rather than the spectacle, but because of the reputation of the English Barmy Army as the Ashes road-show rolled into Sydney for the final test, that’s exactly what we did do, and its a spectacle I shan't forget in a hurry.

Tickets for the fourth day, put us smack in the middle of the Barmy crowd, with England in bat and surprisingly an imposing 252 for 2 ahead (or as they say down under, 2 for 252) in the second innings.  I didn’t have any idea just what to expect.

Taking my seat, I settled down to what I expected to be a day’s sedate cricket watching just in the shade from a warm (late twenties), slightly breezey Sydney summer’s day: you know, the gentle brush of leather on willow and so on.  About half an hour into the morning, after little more than a few cheers and claps, several hundred people to the left of us suddenly stood up, arms in the air, and sang out, " we're the left side, we're the left side, we're the left side over here," and sat down.  Odd, I thought.  Seconds later, everyone around us stood up and sang out, "we're the middle, we're the middle, we're the middle over here" and sat down again, closely followed by everyone to our right singing, "we're the right side, we're the right side, we're the right side over here."  My confusion turned to hilarious laughter when the entire Barmy Army then stood up, pointed to the right at where unsuspecting Aussie fans sat and sang out, "you're the convicts, you're the convicts, you're the convicts over there!" (For a video of this performance, go here.)

It wasn’t just me who was unaware what to expect.  Most of these are of course English football fans adapting songs they sing week in, week out for cricket, all foreign to the Australian crowd who are strangers to a singing culture like this.  However, their reputation proceeded them, and the Barmy Army were allocated the section of the SCG as far from the Members enclosure as possible.

The Barmy Army are a hotchpotch of young men, wearing a uniform of English team shirts of all kinds, rugby, cricket and from football clubs from all divisions.  They are trained to sustain the punishment of a tour that requires you to endure 30 days of cricket watching, under the Australian sun with beer constantly in hand.  Each day of cricket or beach-bumming is followed by a drill of all night drinking sessions, every night for two months.  Their skin, bottoms, wallets and livers all suffer for a duty to English cricket.

As lunch approached and England hero Michael Vauhan made 183, their singing soon began to eclipse the cricket as the main spectacle and incessant beer consumption took effect. What I became quickly familiar with was the sight of thousands of people able to stand and sing entirely as if one entity: an Army.  

Before long, I was introduced to the Army's signature song (video), led by a strange gent who bares a remarkable resemblance to Jimmy Saville (pictured).  This middle-aged chap from Oldham, was sitting about twelve rows ahead of me, wearing a tall three-lions, inflatable top hat, St George vest and waving a huge St George Flag.  His moment was heralded by a small group around him singing, "Jimmy, Jimmy give us a song." 

Standing up, he settled his audience putting his finger to shooshing mouth in Pied Piper style, pointed to the scoreboard and shouted Saville-esque, "How's about that then, guys and galls?"  Then he began a well-rehearsed routine, while the Army echo each line in turn:

"Everywhere we goooooo-o, the people want to knooooooo-ow, whooooooooo we are ,and where we come from,shall we tell them,

whoooooooo we are, and where we come from?

We are the England, the mighty, mighty, England, we are the Army, the Barmy, Barmy Army!"

Then, altogether, they leaped up in their hundreds for the Barmy Army's anthem din that echoed across the Sydney Cricket Ground with staccato clapping, "Hoo-ssain's Barmy Army," over and over again for up to ten minutes.

After a few hours and many gallons of beer - the abuse and the banter with the Aussie crowd picked up.  The Barmy Army dominated proceedings, and while some  Aussies jovially took them on (‘I’d rather be a convict than a pom’, or ‘stick your union jack right up your arse’) they were quickly drowned out.  Of course, the humiliation England have suffered after a long, painful tour provided much material for Australia who won the Ashes in the first 11 days.  However, following the recent decision of the MCC in London that the centenary-plus Ashes Urn is too delicate to travel; (much quieter) songs about Aussie cricketing prowess, were retorted with the truth that (much louder) "you'll never see the Ashes!"

Other abusive chants included the old classic 'he's got the whole world in his hands' morphed into "we get three dollars to the pound," which is followed in turn by,  "we're so rich its unbelievable." There’s also, "there are only 3 Aussies singing," "get your shit stars off our flag" and as the runs piled on, "you’re not singing anymore." To the tune of 'Yellow Submarine’, they finished the job with, "you all live in a convict colony!"  All songs repeated over and over all afternoon as the sun beat down.

It wasn't just the Aussie crowd that came in for taunts, there was plenty saved up for the Aussie bowlers as England uncharacteristically piled on the runs.  Fast bowler, Brett Lee has been known for a dodgy bowling action in his time, and so the army intimidated him with chants like, "keep your arm straight when you bowl," and, "shall we show you how to bowl."  As he ran up to the crease over and over again, the crowd shouted each time, hundreds in unison, "no ball!"

Jimmy Saville was not the only celeb to be represented, and four blokes in particular stood out - three dressed as crocodile-wrestling Aussie TV cult star, Steve Irwin, and one as his pet crocodile.  Drawing most attention though were girls dressed in a variety of St George's cross-inspired bikini tops, who I understand are paid 45 quid an hour to keep the beer coming.

The day's highlight came shortly after lunch, not on the pitch but actually 10 seats to our left.  Barmy Army hero, Jonathon Agnew - 'Aggers' - the English commentator working for the ABC and BBC, came down with his crew to do a recording from the very heart of Barmy Army territory.  This sparked fervent singing, mainly of, "Aggers, Aggers, give us a song".  Perhaps more embarrassing for him, and his female producer, was the rendition of, "is she really going out with him, is she really gonna take him home."

Aggers sat down and got someone to teach him the Army anthem, before standing up to lead the Army in its war cry.  Photos and autographs a plenty proved a happy highlight for a crowd of supporters that have obviously had a lot of fun, but actually have had very little to cheer about from a cricketing perspective...until, that is, the fourth day of the Sydney test.

By late afternoon, England had scored another 200 runs and set a target of 452 for an Australian side that hadn’t lost a home test in four years.  This reality was not lost on opening batsman Mathew Hayden, who smashed a dressing room window in disgust after his two run dismissal.  After Declaring, and much to the amazement of the Barmy Army themselves, what Aussies described as ‘Hussain’s weapons of misdirection’ took the three Australian openers’ wickets inside just one hour, making an Australian victory all but impossible. 

Aussie captain, Steve Waugh - who became only the third Australian to score 10,000 career runs on the second day of Sydney - said before the match that he wanted a 5-0 whitewash, and now the Barmy Army had a simple response.  To the tune of ‘she’ll be coming round the mountain,’ thousands sang: "you can stick your 5-0 right up your arse." 

They won the test the next day by 225 runs to finish the series 4-1. www.barmy-army.com"

I'm not sure why but in preparation for a very long drive - about a 1,000 Km - it seemed like a good idea to, amid the hype, download the audiobook of Tony Blair's Memoirs.  I wasn't actually prepared for the fact that he was actually reading them, but that's another issue.

It seems funny that all of the 'coalition of the willing' have issued their memoirs within weeks of each other.  Not a coincidence I am sure. Of all of them Mr Blair's is probably the one I was most interested in.  In retrospect - and steeped in irony as I'm surprised he can remember anything at all - of the three it might be that Mr Bush's might be the most valuable. 

Anyway, I digress.  Of the several hours of what I must admit is fairly tedious self-serving excuse-making I did listen to, one passage lept out at me as profound.  He spends some time talking about Neville Chamberlain.  It's an innocent reference, picking up on the fact that Mr Chamberlian's diaries - I sensed hand-written diaries - are still an important relic preserved in Chequers, the British PM's country residence somewhere in Buckinghamshire (I say 'somewhere', I went to school very close to it briefly, but can't remember where that was either!)

Now the reference to Chamberlain was subtle, but obviously his sympathy, and subsequent attempt at apology for him is loaded with unstated significance. He begins by making the comment that a comparison to Chamberlains' Premiership is about as bad a political insult as one can wear.  I wonder that in time he is worried that that will be superseded by reference to his own legacy?

Mr Blair goes on to make sound and convincing apologies and explanations for poor old Neville.  These are points that all resounded with me because I always had sympathy for him.  These emanate from the fact that I always had a lot of time for his father (Joseph Chamberlain) also - an equally misunderstood individual I thought.  Indeed I spent a good deal of both my History A Level and Degree apologizing for his father and would have happily done so for Neville also.  In my mind, he was the principle conscientious objector.  There's a famous yarn about him, the original afraid-of-flying poster-child, flying to Munich to meet Her Hitler and looking out of the window as he flew over London and imagining Guernica happening there.  He arrived at the 'peace conference' determined to avoid war at all costs.

Blair makes the point that - contrary not only to popular belief, but also what I was in fact  taught during my history A Level - Chamberlain was not at all duped by Hitler and he saw him quite clearly as the "madman" we all now understand him to have been.  It was for this reason in fact that he was even more determined to contain him as much as possible.  No one can blame him for not seeing what was down the road, but I am sure if we think about it - given my point about Guernica and given the still horribly raw memory of WW1 - we can understand his aversion to more conflict.

Blair reminds us of how - on his return from Munich - with that famous piece of paper in his hand, Chamberlain was hailed as a hero, and not only was he greeted with rock-star acclaim on his arrival home, but was also besieged in No 10 for hours before he made another speech.  It was seen as THE great diplomacy coup.

But he was wrong.

Blair was wrong too.  But his wrongness cannot be weighed in the same terms as Chamberlain's and I'm upset that he insinuated his mistake is comparable.  It is not.  Chamberlain's was expensive, sure.  But it was made with the best of selfless, fatherly, protective intentions.  Blair's was egotistical and weak at the same time.  None of his explanations have made sense since and they never will.  I was a strong Blair supporter until I thought this through, despite everything.  But this attempt to assuage his guilt has tipped me over the edge.

I hope Chamberlain went to the grave resigned to what he did, he deserved to - it was honorable idiocy.  Blair's was not.  In the future, in the dictionary, when talk about pride coming before the fall, they might talk of it as Blairness.

I've been Watching Ken Burns' "the west" lately, if you don't know it it's a very sad in-detail look at the grim realities of the wild west in the nineteenth century through the voices of those who were there.  Primarily it is the detail of man's cruelty to man: native American Indians, African americans, the chinese labourers, Mexicans and Mormons.  All got a brutal dose of the wrong end of humanity as the European settlers of the new world spread westward across the north American continent with voracious appetite for land, riches and glory.

Which ever way you look at it the conquest of the west is a miserable tale of what competitive-man can be like faced with abundant opportunity.  Most importantly, what is most depressing is the failure to seek it in a sustainable  fashion or with any sense of moderation.  Furthermore, the speed which many will resort to acts of theft, betrayal or will renege on a promise waterboards any faith in human nature with each sordid anecdote.

It led me to think of what an amazing new opportunity such a great piece of virgin, mineral rich and accessible new land afforded the people of that time.  Then I wondered whether that could ever happen again. 

Then i went to see "the social network" and of curse remembered all the analogies everyone made between the West and the dot com boom of the late nineties.  Particularly the Land and Gold Rushes but also the building of the continental railroad and the rapid proliferation of new towns and cities all across the western plains and down the west coast.  (This analogy was particularly echoed by the famous bumper sticker "f@&$ you...and the dot com you rode in on!").

Certainly one comment that made this seem all the more poignant was one made by an Indian chief writing as the final collapse of his people' future seemed nigh.  I cannot quote  exactly from memory but it is to the tune of, "we thought there was enough here for us all to share.  We were wrong.  They wanted it all."

Spoiler warning. 

This in my mind mirrored a key plot in the Facebook movie.  Mark Zuckerberg ultimately ended up accruing an incredible $25 billion in less than seven years with his little idea, (which he argueably pinched off the Winklevoss).  Yet along the way he cheated, he lied and most astoundingly he stole whole swathes of company assets that has been promised to his hitherto best friend, co-founder and CFO.  The sheer audacity is as breathtaking as it is disappointing.  But the tune was very familiar for me and if you look at the ways the Indians were betrayed over the black hills or the way the Chinese were treated, you'll see what I mean.  Greed outweighs all conscience.

However, while scorned and disapproved of, like the crimes of the wild west, zuckerberg's greed is accepted and excused in the name of good enterprise and entrepreneurship.  In  one vivid scene in the film, Zuckerberg is discussing one of his many law suits for ill deeds  with his lawyer, who urges him to settle: "it's just a speeding ticket." she says.

Now...what shall I do next, update my status or watch "blazing saddles"?