APAPS 20.3: Return to Mira Rio

One of the aims of this blog, which exists ostensibly to report on the present series of breakfast walks, is to try to get those of its readers who don´t walk - and they are the majority at the moment – involved, and not to spend too much time waffling on about a walk in which only the minority took part. It was for this reason that last week´s blog poked gentle fun at the cricket-loving TerryA while his team England were going through a bit of a rough passage. Terry took it very well and came back to me with this message:-

On 8 Aug 2020, at 18:42, Terry Ames <terry.jill.ames@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi John There I am in the kitchen cooking evening meal listening to the Cricket. Listening to England getting over line for a win. When Butler was keeping wicket I was thinking bring back Bairstow, but cometh the hour cometh the man.
I will try to come for a coffee with you all on Wednesday.
As they say it’s not over till the fat lady sings.
Take care 

And in the end, Terry had the last laugh (cue for closing music)  because England managed to dig themselves out of that particular hole they were in and win the match. So I replied, at the same time trying to involve Ingrid, stranded as she is in her mountain fastness, by alleging that she had cricketing expertise.:-

On 8 Aug 2020, at 23:48, John Hope <hopejh@sapo.pt> wrote to Terry:

Woakes done well, didn’t he?
Good to hear from you. All I am waiting to hear from is Ingrid, because I know that she is a great cricket fan, as of course are all Belgians. What does she reckon on Jos Buttler’s skills as a wicketkeeper, for example?
Anything she can say about this will be a great contribution to the Blog.
JohnH

But that was a failure because all I got out of her was this laconic two word reply:-

From: Ingrid Bonte

??????me cricket ?

A bit of a disappointing response , I have to say, although quite understandable since she has been an expatriate for a considerable number of years and so may not be fully up to speed on the current popularity of cricket in Belgium. In fact, a bit of Google research reveals a fair amount of cricketing detail concerning that country. Did you know, for example, that Belgium has an officially recognised international cricket team? Yes indeed; the current team is

Shaheryar Butt (c)

• Saqlain Ali

• Waqas Ali

• Murid Ekrami

• Soheel Hussain

• Syed Jamil

• Mamoon Latif

• Aziz Mohammad

• Noor Momand (wk)

• Noman Kamawi

• Abdul Rashid

• Ashiqullah Said

• Zaki Ul Hassan

• Saber Zakhil

Their first international was against Germany, who won.

Historically, the first recorded cricket match in Belgium was played by British soldiers on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. Whether that influenced the result of the battle is not made clear, but even more intriguing is some evidence that cricket was in fact invented in Flanders in the 16th century and brought to England by Flemish weavers. A poem thought to have been written in 1533 has been uncovered, which suggests the game originates from Flanders. In the work attributed to John Skelton, Flemish weavers are labelled “kings of crekettes”, according to Paul Campbell of the Australian National University. This discovery challenges the long established theory that the sport evolved from English children´s games.

Mr Campbell has uncovered an apparent reference to cricket in the 16^th Century work “The Image of Ipocrisie” , attributed to the English poet John Skelton, which refers to Flemish weavers who settled in southern and eastern England, They are described as “kings of crekettes”; “wickettes” are also mentioned in the poem. Campbell and his colleague, a German academic called Heiner Gillmeister, a linguist from the University of Bonn, say that the discovery proves that the quintessential English pastime is anything but English.

Gillmeister told the BBC “There is no way to relate the term cricket to any existing English word. I was brought up with Flemish children and I know the language well. I immediately thought of the Flemish phrase “met de krik ketsen” which means to “chase a ball with a curved stick.”

(Hm! Sounds a bit more like hockey to me, and Gillmeister is one of that crew who like to perpetuate the calumny that golf originated, not in Scotland, but in the Netherlands.)

I wonder what Ingrid has to say to all that. If she and others want to brush up on their cricket and its arcane terminolgy, it is recommended that they tune into BBC Radio 5 Extra which is currently broadcasting Test Match Special, a programme which starts at 10.30am and continues until 07.30 pm, where a few people spend a whole 9 hours non-stop, talking to each other about the cricket match which they are watching, uninterrupted by music or adverts, by nothing in fact other than the official Weather Forecast for seafarers three times a day on Long Wave. If rain stops play, as it frequently does, then they talk about the rain. They will learn more from that programme than from the following old chestnut which is designed to confuse.

CRICKET: As explained to an American:

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that´s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

The Walk

Perhaps it is now time to turn to the walk. Last week, our numbers of walkers had boomed. Not so this week, we were back to the Basic Four, who assembled bright and early at Mira Rio. 

The day was not so bright, however, and as we scrambled up the first steep hill after leaving the canal we even felt a few drops of rain. And it was there at the top of the hill that our tame zoologist successfully spotted the legendary Greater Silves Tree Python.

A little further on, we were greeted by some friendly equines.

After that, no other wild life came our way other than some pesky mosquitoes which seemed quite partial to said tame zoologist.

                                 Yves shows his mossie bite; his audience is unsympathetic.

Some old tracks were attempted relying on my somewhat faded memory, with only one false trail.

For once we avoided visiting the Clube Nautico because we wanted to be back in good time for breakfast. As we neared the look-out point over the Arade, a familiar-looking dog came bounding up to meet us in a most friendly fashion. It was Sascha, accompanied by Chris and Antje. So it was now six walkers plus dog.

Back at the restaurant in good time, we were joined by Paul and Myriam, so it was eight of us who sat down to what proved to be an excellent meal and, at 4 euros a plate, very good value. 

The photographers all attacked their food with such gusto that none of them discharged their prime responsibility of photographing the food for the record, so here is one I prepared earlier.

The grey day brightened up considerably when Rod arrived for coffee:-

and our numbers swelled again when Terry and Jill also dropped in for coffee and a chat.

Terry´s Merc, the only one of its kind in the Algarve we were told, was quite an attraction. (Technical specifications available by application to Terry.)

The Track (illustrated)

Since we were dealing earlier with things Flemish and things slightly poetical, I thought that I would end this blog with something in the same vein. Those of us who had the benefit of a old-style British education will no doubt have had to learn or to recite the poem by Robert Browning which sets off at a fair gallop in the first verse:-

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
'Good speed!' cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
'peed!' echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

The title of the poem is of course “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.”

(Ghent is in Belgium. Aix is the French spelling of the latter city which is in Germany, while the German is Aachen, the Luxembourgish is Oochen and the Walloon Axhe.)

But the notable thing about this poem, in the course of which two of the galloping horses drop dead from exhaustion, is that we are never actually told what the Good News was. But it now seems indubitable, following on from the research carried out by Herr Gillmeister and his associates, that what the Good News was, was the result of an international cricket match between Ghent and Aix, Aix winning by an innings and 10 runs.

                                                          They All Laughed