The Virtual Stoa

Hmm, what was I saying the other day about drugs scandals that “inject a bit of life into the cycling soap opera” but which “won’t destabilise the whole event”? Actually, I’m not sure the whole event is destabilised, even with Rasmussen chucked out, and calls for there to be no winner this year, or to scrap the event, or whatever are excessive. The Tour isn’t just bigger than any individual rider; it’s much, much bigger. And it’s far better that it ends this way, tossing the yellow jersey out before Paris, than with the way things turned out last year, in a Tour that still doesn’t have a winner. Anyway, I’ll be on the Champs-Élysées this year — for the fifth time, and the third year running — and I’m still very much looking forward to seeing them all come home. I’m just hoping that (i) Contador turns out to be clean and that (ii) he can hold off against Evans in the time trial…

Over here, or en français.

Not entirely clear why Klöden et al should be pulled from the race, too. Maybe we’ll find out in the hours to come. Anyway: this is just what we want: a drugs angle to inject a bit of life into the cycling soap opera that won’t destabilise the whole event.

While I’m on the subject, do other Stoa-readers agree with me that Vino looks funny when he rides his bike? Especially when he’s being filmed from the front on the breakaway. I can’t really describe it; he looks like some kind of comically stubborn child as the legs pump up and down. The bandaged knee has something to do with it, but I don’t think it’s just the bandage; he’s stockier than the average cyclist, and that has something to do with it, too. Maybe it is just me.

Anyway: it’s been a cracking Tour, and I can breathe easily now that it looks as if Cadel Evans won’t be winning it.

UPDATE: Good piece (as ever) by William Fotheringham in tehgraun.

I’m delighted to say that someone is letting off fireworks in North Oxford, which I am assuming is in honour of Bastille Day. Vive la République!

Today’s the fortieth anniversary of the death of Tommy Simpson, the first (and only?) really great British cyclist, who collapsed and died near the summit of Mont Ventoux in the 1967 Tour de France.

Richard Williams has a good piece in today’s Graun; and do read William Fotheringham’s Put Me Back On My Bike if you get the chance: it’s a cracking book, certainly the best book on cycling that I’ve read, but one that’s not just for the cycling nerds out there. In fact, anyone interested in the social history of postwar Britain in general and the popular culture of the 1960s in particular should enjoy it. And, look, there’s a new edition, too, so it’s bound to be in the shops.

(There’s even been speculation that Bradley Wiggins has gone on the attack in today’s stage from Semur-en-Auxois to Bourg-en-Bresse by way of symbolic tribute to the man; we’ll find out, no doubt, at the end of the day’s racing.)

Here’s a handy blog celebrating the chaps who end up right at the bottom of the CG [via].

I’m quite glad I didn’t see the TV pictures of the last hour or so of today’s stage in the Tour de France. The BBC reported that

1602: It’s race favourite Alexandre Vinokourov’s turn to hit the tarmac, apparently after colliding with a following vehicle. He shakes his fists in frustration and replays show a nasty graze to the right buttock, which looks like it will be exposed for the rest of the stage.

And the Guardian Over-By-Over commentator (or whatever it’s called when it’s cycling rather than cricket) had this:

4.23pm: With 10km to go, Vinokourov is pushing really, really hard to try and re-attach himself to the peloton, which is a minute ahead of him. He had six riders with him, but now he’s on his own and making a huge effort that’s bound to take it out of him as far as future stages are concerned. To make matters worse he has a patch of skin missing from his right buttock that looks about six inches square. He’ll be sitting gingerly at the dinner-table tonight.

Yuck. And Vino never made it back to the peloton, falling from twelfth to eighty-first in the CG. He must be very annoyed.

Thanks to this page, I’ve managed to get live pictures of the Tour de France from Serbian TV onto my computer screen, together with the audio commentary in English from Eurosport (my Serbian’s not too hot). I think this means that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Over here [via]

I mocked Stephen Pollard below for his silly opinions about petitions on the 10 Downing St website, and now I find that perhaps, just perhaps, they can make a difference. I signed the petition against the proposed changes to the Highway Code that would make it an offence not to cycle in the cycle lane, if there was a cycle lane to cycle in, and now I read that the offending sentences have been removed from the new draft code that will come into force into September, all being well.

(In fact, while we’re on the subject of Stephen Pollard and bicycles, perhaps it’s a good time to catch up on his classic column from 2004 about why the Tour de France is boring, “because the team element is missing”.)

Over here:

30th over: West Indies 115-7 (Bravo 18 Taylor 0) Keith Flett rears his hairy head from the Beard Liberation Front’s overgrown bunker long enough to shout: “HIRSUTE ENGLAND INTIMIDATE WEST INDIANS WITH FIERCE APPEARANCE: The BLFront, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with a seam and pace attack of Harmison, Plunkett and Sidebottom amongst the most generally hirsute England bowling sides of recent years, it appears that West Indies batsmen are being intimidated to lose their wickets, rather than losing them to good quality bowling. Pioneered in modern times by Australia’s Merv Hughes the intimidation is quite within the rules of cricket and amounts to little more than looking somewhat fierce and as if you and ought to take wickets.”

My goodness. They’ve been talking about me and boxing in last week’s Observer:

The film [Blue Blood] is effortlessly stolen by a cameo appearance from [Chris] Kavanagh’s philosophy tutor. ‘He asked if I could go and watch him get his face smashed in, but it was short notice and I was busy. Usually am,’ says Chris Brooke, who is also the author of the highly recommended blog Virtual Stoa.

‘Everyone who watches the film thinks he’s absolutely hilarious,’ says Kavanagh, ‘and the sort of person you only really find at Oxford. He’s from this incredibly aristocratic family yet is a socialist. He just wanders around being Chris Brooke. He’s a legend.’

And one who has now been immortalised in, of all things, a boxing movie which, thanks to Riley’s direction and the charm and passion of the contestants, is that rarity - a film set among a privileged elite that does not grate but inspires.

I’m glad I’m keeping people entertained.

There’s a fine moment in the film when I say something incomprehensible, and the camera cuts away to a shot of Chris K rolling his eyes. He can’t have been rolling his eyes at that particular comment, as there was only one camera in the room, but it’s nicely done.

[Thanks to dsquared in comments below for the tip-off.]

Hero of the Stoa.

It’s at times like this that I suddenly recall that my nineteenth-century forebears had names like Kalaugher, Kelly, Driscoll, O’Reilly, McCarthy, MacGuire and McAuly (not to mention plenty of eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish Brookes), and I feel more Irish than I actually am…

… although it looks as if you have to be called O’Brien to play for the Irish cricket team.

(Similarly, one of the minor pleasures of watching Wales beat England is the affinity provided by the knowledge that my great-grandfather Alfred Mathews took the field for Wales against Scotland on 9 January 1886. It was his only cap, and Scotland won on the day, but it’s enough for me. It’s interesting to be diasporic in an almost entirely non-diasporic kind of a way.)

In my world, the letters “TMS” can refer either to Test Match Special or to the Theory of Moral Sentiments. So far the different bits of that world have stayed sufficiently distinct from one another that I don’t think I’ve ever made myself horribly confused, but I’m sure the day will come when I muddle them up (and I’m also confident that the day has become closer now that I’ve become self-conscious about the possibility of that confusion).

Over here.

(Ireland 80-4 off 27 chasing 132.)

It’s half-time during France vs Scotland in Paris, and there’s a distinct possibility that Ireland will end the day Six Nations Champions, if Scotland can hold on, and that the Irish cricketers may beat Pakistan in the World Cup: Pakistan are 73-6 off 22.3 overs. My goodness.

I’m trying not to get excited by the World Cup, because one-day cricket is a silly game (unless it’s 20-20 cricket, which pushes silliness to the limit, and becomes sensible, again, or something), but there’s been a satisfying amount of drama for a competition that’s still only a few days old.

UPDATE [5.15pm]: Bugger. Still, Pakistan are 112 for 8 (34.2 overs).

UPDATE [7.20pm]: Still, I always like it when Wales beats England.

Over here.

(Don’t Ireland get to win by virtue of having lost fewer wickets, or something? Gah!)

Apologies for the silence over the last few days, which means, among other things, that Karl Marx (14 March) got left out of the Dead Socialist Watch on this particular trot through the calendar.

Turned out that what I thought was upper arm cramp last week was in fact a rip in the tendon in one of the rotator cuffs in my left shoulder. I noticed at the week-end that I couldn’t really lift my left arm into even a horizontal position, let alone anything higher; on Sunday night I stopped being able to sleep comfortably; and on Monday and Tuesday it became quite inflamed and produced a lot of pain, so I’ve started doing sensible things like going to the doctor and finding out what’s actually going on in there, and I think everything’s on the mend now, with industrial quantities of ibuprofen working its anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving magic.

As a Boston Red Sox fan, I thought I knew a lot about rotator cuffs — Pedro Martínez’s rotator cuffs were about as familiar to New Englanders as David Beckham’s metatarsals. But whereas Pedro damaged his RCs by striking out lots of New York Yankees (or something similar), I hurt mine through the altogether more sedentary activity of reading Fénelon on the sofa at home. Perhaps it’d be safer if I gave up reading altogether.

Anyway: I still can’t lift my arm above the horizontal, but now it doesn’t hurt anymore, I don’t really mind.

Scotland: (10) 17
Tries: Dewey, Paterson
Cons: Paterson 2
Pens: Paterson

Italy: (24) 37
Tries: Bergamasco, Scanavacca, Robertson, Troncon
Cons: Scanavacca 4
Pens: Scanavacca 3

Over here. And I foolishly decided to stay in the library, thinking that this would be the least interesting match of the afternoon. Good for the Italians.

Einst, o Wunder! entblüht auf meinem Grabe,

Eine Blume der Asche meines Herzens

Deutlich schimmert auf jedem Purpurblättchen:

Adelaide!

Friedrich von Matthisson, made famous by Beethoven, over here.

From tehgraun, earlier this morning:

“This feels like watching England’s footballers take penalty kicks,” says Erik Hogstrom.

They’ve left out Panesar, again. Ho hum.

From tehgraun’s OBO, as the England 2d innings begins:

If Freddie pulls this off, it will be his greatest feat as a captain so far, but then the only competition for that title is his use of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” to motivate the team into coming back to win the final Test in India earlier this year. I wonder what Johnny Cash tune he’ll be playing now? “How high is the water mamma? three feet high and rising” that is the best the man in black has to say about this sorry business.

Readers with long memories will recall that Enkidu became interested in cricket almost immediately, after coming to live with us in the Summer of 2005. Here and here, for example. And now that the Ashes are being contested again, Enkidu’s interest has reawakened.

I’ve been leaving the radio on at night, very quietly, so that I can fall asleep while Justin Langer is scoring runs, wake up while Ricky Ponting is scoring runs, lucky me, and if I drift into consciousness in the middle of the night I can easily register the latest score before drifting back into sleep. And after finding alternative places to sleep for a month or more, Enkidu chose Wednesday night, the first day of the Test Match, to come and settle down at the foot of my bed again: he was there at the start of play and still there at the close, and I don’t think he went anywhere else in between. So that’s a lot of Test Match Special that he got to hear.

He slept on my bed last night, too, though he had pushed off by the time the England batsmen were starting their innings. And here he is, later this morning, watching the highlights being streamed through the BBC website: