The Virtual Stoa

I HAVE, I hope, raised a prima facie presumption that the Times was labouring under some delusion. It had omitted some element from its calculations, sufficient to distort the whole history of the struggle. The story, to use its own words, was “a mystery and a marvel;” it was a mystery and a marvel simply because the Times was not in possession of the one clue which led through the labyrinth. A foreigner looking on at a cricket-match is apt to think the evolutions of the players mysterious; and they will be enveloped in sevenfold mystery if he has a firmly preconceived prejudice that the ball has nothing whatever to do with the game. At every new movement, he must invent a new theory to show that the apparent eagerness to pick up the ball is a mere pretext; that no one really wants to hit it, or to catch it, or to throw it at the wickets; and that its constant appearance is due to a mere accident. He will be very lucky if some of his theories do not upset each other.

As, in my opinion, the root of all the errors of the Times may be found in its views about slavery…

From “The Times on the war: a historical study“, by Leslie Stephen (London: William Ridgway, 1865), pp. 18-19.

The window of the local Oxfam bookshop, just now.

[Cue jokes about how it was never about the bike.]

Me, over at Comment is Free.

I’m writing this post as the Tour sweeps onto the Rue de Rivoli for the first time, and I’m in a very good mood about this year’s Tour de France.

I’ve loved the Tour for twenty years now. It flickered on my radar screen in 1987, with the gripping duel between Stephen Roche and Pedro Delgado, and then again in 1989, when I watched Greg Lemond pipping Laurent Fignon to the post in that final time trial, but the race permanently captured my imagination in 1992, specifically on the occasion of Claudio Chiappucci’s epic solo ride into Sestrières.

Those twenty years, of course, were mostly very heavily doped up indeed. For a long time I wasn’t really bothered by the doping, and treated it as part of the soap opera. That attitude more or less survived the 2007 Tour–one I particularly enjoyed, being in Hyde Park for the Prologue and on the Champs-Elysées for the finale–when Michael Rasmussen was thrown off the race while wearing the maillot jaune. But it took a big knock the following year, when Riccardo Riccò was kicked out, shortly after winning a stage in tremendous fashion. That was, I think, when it was brought home to me just how intimate the connection was between the doping, on the one hand, and the kind of riding that make for the most exciting television, on the other.

So while Bradley Wiggins hasn’t won the Tour in the most exciting fashion this year–he’s copied the Indurain method of dominating the time trials and defending in the mountains–I find that this doesn’t really get in the way of my appreciation of his achievement. There doesn’t seem to be terribly good reason to think that he’s doped (and there seems to be quite good circumstantial evidence to suggest that the race isn’t as doped as it once was), and I find myself warming to the man himself. He comes across (to me, at least) as a very civilised champion, and it’s gratifying to read that the French public are learning to appreciate him. I’m almost feeling patriotic.

Allez Wiggo! Vive le Tour!

Here’s Severine Dupelloux singing the French national anthem to open the Winter Olympics at Albertville in 1992:

The link popped up in my twitterstream this morning, and I was very pleased to see it, not only because of the (sort of) appropriate Bastille Day / Olympics mash-up effect, but also because this was the legendary performance–a sweet ten-year old French girl from the Savoie singing unaccompanied before the TV cameras of the world–that inspired Danielle Mitterrand and others to embark on their ludicrous campaign (le Comité pour une Marseillaise de la Fraternité, no less) to rewrite the words of the Marseillaise to make them a little less bloodthirsty. Happily, nothing came of it, and the French continue to enjoy the finest national anthem in the world.

Other Stoa Marseillaise links, some possibly still functional, over here.

[It was somewhat appropriate to have a British cyclist win--David Millar--win yesterday's stage of the Tour de France, on the 45th anniversary of Tom Simpson's death on Mont Ventoux. (If you haven't read it already, William Fotheringham's book about Simpson's death, Put Me Back on my Bike, is marvellous.) But today, it should be turn of a Frenchman.]

My brother’s chickens–Pearl, Queenie, Vi, and Ida–attempt to predict the result of this afternoon’s Wimbledon men’s singles final. (Full discussion here.)

In matters of football
The fault of the Dutch
Is scoring too little
And fouling too much.

– With apologies to George Canning.

Just seen him on telly, and there’s a definite (if slight) resemblance. Maybe this helps to explain the booing.

This week has been a fantastic week for Gordon Brown’s “Britishness” agenda, as two events have united the people of Britain as almost never before.

First, the people of Britain came together to support Barcelona in the final of the Champions League (with the exception of a small handful in the Northwest of England). Second, we are (almost) all of us delighted to welcome a dozen Norwegian beavers into the wild (with the exception of a small handful within fifty miles or so of the beaver-reintroduction zone in Scotland).

I’m feeling fairly patriotic this week, at any rate, certainly much more than usual.

The annual intercollegiate tortoise race was held yesterday here at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Blue Peter showed up to cover the race, bringing the official Blue Peter tortoise. And, after being placed in the middle of the race circle, one of the tortoises successfully mounted one of the other tortoises.

“Six” = “DLF Maximum!”

“Cheerleaders” = “Boundary Dancers”

If the Indian Premier League comes to England then we will all need to attach ourselves to teams on a more or less  arbitrary basis. Stoa-readers! Whom will you support? Your choices are between the Mumbai Indians, the Royal Challengers Bangalore, the Hyderabad Deccan Chargers, the Chennai Super Kings, the Delhi Daredevils, the Kings XI Punjab, the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Rajasthan Royals. (Some relevant links over here.)

UPDATE [2pm, 24/3]: Boo, hiss, it’s going to South Africa.

From the Ruskin School website:

The film director Stevan Riley will be coming to Oxford at 4.30pm on Friday 27 February to screen his brilliant documentary Blue Blood in the auditorium at Magdalen College.

Blue Blood follows a group of Oxford students in the run-up to the Varsity boxing match and stars ex-Ruskin School undergraduate Charles Ogilvie.

Stevan will introduce the film and he, Charlie and others will contribute to a round-table discussion immediately afterwards.

Variety described it as one of the better sports movies in recent memory, but Blue Blood is also a wonderful story about obsession and the search for personal identity.

Admission free.

If you just want the final ball, start at five minutes in; Benaud is onscreen from about 7’40″. [via]

From the TMS blog, on the late Bill Frindall:

All our thoughts are obviously with his widow Debbie and his family. But Aggers [= BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew] said to me: “You know Bill would always delight in telling us he was born on the first day of the famous “timeless Test” – the longest ever match between England and South Africa in Durban in 1939 which lasted 10 days.

“Well,” continued Aggers “it just had to be the case that Bill’s funeral was held on the day of the shortest ever Test.”

I think Bill would rather have liked that.

I like that, too.

Over here. And so we will have to wait to see how the post-Bell England cricket team performs…