Brandishing Seaxes

With rain delaying the start of play on the third day of the recent Lords Test against the West Indies, I retired to the Middlesex Room with the brother-in-law for a cup of coffee (yes, honestly it was coffee - and not very good coffee at that). "Why do Middlesex use the same three swords as Essex?", he asked. "I'll look into it" I replied, little knowing that I was about to enter a heraldic minefield.

Leaving the early Saxon kings aside (which I cheerfully do), it wasn't until the twentieth century when the two counties had their coats of arms specified - in very non-20th century terms.

Essex: Gules three Seaxes fessewise in pale Argent pomels and hilts Or points to the sinister and cutting edges upwards.

Middlesex: Gules three Seaxes fessewise in pale proper pommelled and hilted Or points to the sinister and cutting edge upwards in chief a Saxon Crown of the last.

Obviously both counties identified with the three-seaxe badge, and both are left-handed counties as well, and both signed up for the red (gules) background. Thus the only difference is that Middlesex was to have a saxon crown over their three seaxes in order to differentiate. And over the years it seems that Middlesex just got lazy (or republican) and the crown disappeared.

Commentators on all this have included Germaine Greer whose 2003 Telegraph article concluded that the three seaxes charged on a field of blood is indicative of the counties grim joy of fighting. The device could be printed on the breast of every T-shirt worn by every hooligan from Essex or Middlesex. Ah well, sadly I'll miss the gladiatorial Twenty20 contest between the Essex Eagles (okay, so the Eagle is the regimental emblem) versus the Middlesex Panthers (yes, the team wears pink pyjamas in support of the breast cancer campaign) at Lords on 26th June, but I might try to catch the Chelmsford encounter four days earlier.

Censored Books

Oh hell! According to today's Mail on Sunday I'm likely to have my book confiscated next time I travel from Heathrow. I like Robert B Parker and feel sorry for 58-year-old bank worker Carolyn Burgess who was spotted carrying a Spenser three-in-one volume onto a plane. The gun image on the book's cover was deemed to be inappropriate and likely to upset her fellow passengers.
I'd actually planned to take Parker's Apaloosa on my next flight. Rather than featuring the Boston private detective Spenser, who does most of his fighting with his fists, Apaloosa is one of Parker's westerns in which everyone totes a big Army Colt in a flap holster. I recently enjoyed Gunman's Rhapsody which features Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Doc Holliday and Parker's take on the gunfight at the OK Corrall.
I guess I'll have to take some non-violent reading matter to Cyprus next month. It is after all high time I read Sense and Sensibility.

In the Dog House

As someone who is almost perpetually in the dog house I was pleased to spot an appropriate place to stay if I ever visit Cottonwood, Idaho. The Dog Bark Park Inn is listed at Number 10 in TripAdvisor's list of 'The World's Weirdest Hotels'. At this Bed and Breakfast establishment you actually get to sleep inside a 45 foot, air-conditioned beagle created by husband and wife hoteliers and chainsaw artists Derrick and Frances.

Included in the dog are a sleeping loft, microwave oven, fridge, books and games. Breakfast includes Derrick and Frances's celebrated fruited granola, and there is a gift shop.

Just in case you are interested, the list of the weird hotels includes a converted tea factory in Sri Lanka, a converted prison in Oxfordshire, a 'cave' hotel in Turkey, an ice hotel in Canada, and the fabulously expensive Al Maha Desert Resort in Dubai.

Maybe our son and heir will treat Mrs Rumbling Nappa and I to a week-long stay in a Bedouin Suite at Al Maha with private infinity pool and dinner served exclusively for you 'under the stars' out in the desert. It's a favourite with Mrs Beckham apparently.

Road to Rack and Rouen

I've always tried to avoid Rouen. People have told me what a fine city it is, but I have always associated it with horrendous traffic delays, a real hindrance spoiling a good drive to somewhere else. Yesterday, with a morning to spare, I braved the city centre and was blessed with a parking space within a hundred yards of the cathedral. Yup, a parking space within a hundred yards of the burial place of Richard the Lionheart's heart (his bowels are in church of the Chateau of Châlus-Chabrol in the Limousin, his brain in the abbey of Charroux in Poitou,and the rest of him is buried next to his father at Fontevraud Abbey near Chinon).

It is certainly a fine cathedral and the spire (pictured in the background above) made it for a short time in the nineteenth century the world's tallest building. The city centre (starting a few paces from my parked car) is pedestrianised and so it was good to amble through the cobbled streets with their strange mixture of shops (one moment Hermes, the next a small outlet for baking utensils), past the Palais de Justice, the Grand Horloge, and into the market square where St Joan of Arc was burned.

The strange modern building in the foreground of the above picture is the Eglise Sainte Jeanne d'Arc which was completed in 1979 and which, according to the guidebooks, is shaped to resemble an upturned Viking warship. I thought it looked like a manta ray with a very long tail. I also thought it was rather (if not very) ugly. Inside the church is apparently very impressive, but it was getting close to lunchtime so it was closed. Typically French. Like their whole attitude to Joan of Arc really. First the Burgundians take her prisoner and sell her to the English. Then after a mockery of a trial (her main offence seems to have been wearing mens clothes) she is sentenced to death. Meanwhile Charles VII, King of France, doesn't even try to protest despite the fact that she sat beside him at his coronation.

There is even some dispute as to the exact location of her execution. A signboard in a flowerbed says that "Le Bucher" took place exactly there, while other experts have different ideas and tourists have their pictures taken all over the square.

Her ashes were apparently thrown in the Seine but, whatever the history, and there is lots of it at Rouen (I haven't even mentioned the World War II bombing which destroyed large parts of the centre), it is a wonderful city.

I'll definitely brave the traffic to return - with or without a parking place.

Parliamentary Expenses

I'm just not very assertive!

Last year I went for a job as an assistant manager at the Parliamentary Bookshop. I particularly liked the benefits package which included a good pension and free use of the House of Commons gym. I failed to get the position.

After a few minutes of shame and feeling humble following receipt of the rejection letter I resolved at least to apply for reimbursement of my rail fare to Westminster which amounted to £15.20 (including my Senior Railcard discount). I wrote a nice letter which I sent off as instructed to HRM & D, Department of Resources, House of Commons, 3rd Floor, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA together with my ticket receipt on 22nd October. Needless to say I never received a response let alone payment.

Obviously they are too busy with more important payments to more assertive claimants. Or could they have set the sum aside while they wait for an "ageism" challenge in the courts?

Pshaw, there cannot be many people out there with my experience of working with books on politics coupled with bookshop administration, enthusiasm, brightness of character, good looks, telephone manner, tact and diplomacy, table manners, raw energy, vibrancy, scrupulous efficiency, glowing health, IT proficiency, creative skills, snooker wizardry, omelette cooking medals, linguistic talent ... It's just that I'm rather elderly, and obviously not very assertive.

Let There Be Light

The big new thing at Lords this summer is the installation of a high-tech floodlighting system. Four giant 50-metre retractable masts, each carrying a frame of 100 lamps, have been installed and they look mighty impressive. Somewhat disheartening then that bad light stopped play on a couple of occasions during the West Indies test match.

The MCC had to battle hard for planning permission. After all the Twenty20 matches for which the lights are primarily intended are referred to as the "crack cocaine" of cricket and the St Johns Wood Residents Association had plenty to say:

“The Twenty20 World Cup [in the summer of 2009] will create a host of adverse impacts – it will attract huge crowds in the evening, there will be DJs playing loud music and more noise will be generated. The overall effect would be to generate ­levels and types of ­disturbance beyond any reasonable tolerance, in this densely residential and sensitive location."

As a result permission was granted on several conditions. The lights can only be used at full power until 21.50hrs. Bars must close at 21.00hrs on match days. The lights can only be used for a specific number of cricket matches between April and September. The frames must be dismantled within two weeks of the beginning/end of each cricket season.

All a bit limiting for what is described as the most modern, cutting-edge lighting system of its kind anywhere in the world. I for one will be at the inaugural match of the ICC World Twenty20 series on June 5th to witness the lights at full blast and to purchase my beverages pre-21.00hrs.

Readers Digest

Over three days last week I brought myself up to speed on a dozen or so classics of English literature, took a brief management course, taught myself table manners and watched England win a test match at Lords . This means of course that I have been staying at the older brother’s flat in Notting Hill and taking advantage of his lavatorial reading matter when not at the cricket.

Every polite household offers books or magazines for visitors to the lavatory. Usually these are quirky, informative, humorous and digestible a few pages at a time. My friend the Ayatollah even keeps some bottles of wine for the entertainment of those using the smallest room at his Romney Marsh mansion.

The older brother, efficient and self-improving as always, keeps a single 600-page tome for the purpose entitled (appropriately) “Passing Time in the Loo, Volume 1”. This curious book published by Scarab Books (www.loobooks.com) in the US includes short, two-page summaries of around fifty novels and plays; biographies of important people; rules of important games such as baseball and ice hockey; a section on punctuation (which I should really heed more carefully); and quotations ranging from a rather nice Danish saying “Fish and guests smell at three days old”, to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder”.

If all that was not enough, the book includes a section of ‘vocabulary building’ words – postulate, orotund, didactic, sophistry – and (specially for me) a chapter headed “Control Your Depression”. This last item might have been required had it not been for excellent performances on the pitch by Messrs. Bopara, Swann and Onions.

Cardboard Engineering

Ged Kelly and Efrem Cockett both work (hardly a surprise with names like that) in the funeral business. I missed the Jonathan Ross show where their handicraft was first shown to the nation and so it came as something of a surprise when, passing an undertakers window display in Petersfield yesterday, I saw the diversity of their entrepreneurial endeavours. What Messrs. Kelly and Cockett manufacture are environment-friendly cardboard coffins printed with the design of your choice. The company is based in Guernsey and trades as www.creativecoffins.com.

Their catalogue ranges from pretty sunflower coffins, through patriotic union jack designs, to (oh dear) comical coffins. If you (or your grieving family) so wish your coffin can be printed to resemble a packet of frozen peas inscribed, inevitably, “Rest in Peas”. Or, subject to copyright laws, a cigarette carton, a Smirnoff vodka coffin, or a wine bottle with your name and date on the label.

Oh hell, I’d been worried enough when wicker coffins were introduced - I imagined the thing creaking loudly under the weight of the Rumbling Nappa, or worse still splitting open. Now I live in fear that my survivors will order a Gordons Gin coffin in which to despatch me.