This World, This Life

  It's been almost a month since Putin's minions invaded the country.  A month of bloodshed and murder.  A month of desperate people - two million or more of them - depserately fleeing for their lives, taking whatever pitiful belongings they could manage in suitcases and Ikea bags, mostly women and children as their menfolk remained at home to defend their home land (and perhaps perish in doing so).  The images on the television news programs, both here in Poland and on the BBC World channel, haunt me night and day..... It's also been a month of mealy-mouthed platitudes from the leaders of the Western Alliance (or whatever epithet you want to use): of Biden and Johnson, Macron and Stoltenberg, Sholz and Blinken and Truss. Stating their admiration for the Ukrainian people and President Zelensky.  He is no more the stand-up comedian, but a lonely, heroic figure, prowling the ruins of Kyiv and posting mobile phone videos aimed at shoring up the morale of the popula...

  Sad to see today that Rodney Marsh, the great old wicketkeeper of Australia's wonderful 1970s and early 80s cricket team, has died at 74.  He was a hero of my youth, when I discovered and started playing this wonderful old English institution, and that team was one of the finest ever to play the game I came to love and still miss playing (although the love has turned to apathy....) I remember when they came to England for an Ashes tour in the early 70s - I can't remember the exact year - boasting one of the best fast bowling attacks in history in Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thompson.  They were both incredibly quick and agrressive bowlers, with beautiful smooth actions: from long run-ups they would pound in and still be accelerating as they hit their delivery stride.  Able to move the ball either way off the seam and with brutal bouncers (in the days before helmets and chest protectors) they were a fearsome proposition for even the best batsmen.  Behind the stumps ...