Election Watch had to be suspended here as the campaign got underway. My paid employment in a civil service department means I, like everyone else there, enter a period of purdah during which I should do nothing to prejudice the outcome of the vote. After reminders were issued to that effect, I thought I'd better comply. Many postings here are have a readership well into double figures and sometimes might make three figures and, in a closer contest, you can see how a remark here might swing the whole thing and decide the make up of the next government.So perhaps I'll share some thoughts at 10 pm next Thursday.
--
It was back to the more volatile edition of Ronnie O'Sullivan in this year's World Snooker Championships. Firstly playing without his new, painful shoes and then borrowing a pair from an official, then a petulant whack of the cue on the table after missing a shot when 2-0 before taking the next five frames and then an incident in which he placed the chalk on the table which he should have known is not allowed. Just when one might have thought he was all sorted out and could go on and be champion for several more years, he then announces the changing of the guard and the arrival of the new young turks. Except that Stuart Bingham is 39.
It is a tribute to his unique genius that in between all kinds of crises, he has still been champion five times but after his loss to Mark Selby last year, well, it has to come to an end eventually. Which will be a great shame. I won't watch much snooker once he's gone. I watched hardly any football this season, certainly nothing like a whole match and I've already missed Notts at the Rose Bowl this cricket season. I can get involved in a bike race if I feel like it but, really, it looks like my once burgeoning portfolio of sports interests is almost reduced to horse racing alone.
I've watched as much Scottish football as any this year, with the Alba channel showing Premiership action with commentary in Gaelic. Well played, St. Mirren, last week.
--
The theme for next week's Portsmouth Poetry Society meeting is 'A poet's partner speaks'. I don't know if I posted this before, at the time of writing, but it is a sonnet with the rhyme scheme AAAAAAAAAAAAAA,
taken from Roddy Lumsden's much superior An Older Woman, that I've always been a big admirer of.
Mrs. David Green
You told me you wrote poems when we met.
It’s something I’m unlikely to forget.
I was expecting at least a sonnet
A week from you but, what is it I get?
An each way tip for a horse at Market
Rasen or a copy of a booklet
Of poems, I might say, by an as yet
Not the least bit famous, scruffy poet
Once in a blue moon. It’s my fault I set
My eyes on you and, possibly, peut etre,
I sometimes do think I could have done bet-
ter. But, though we aren’t rich, we’re not in debt
either and when we have a tête a tête,
the fact I don’t exist I don’t regret.
--And, if she is still a regular reader like she once said she was, Congratulations to Gillian Rimmer, 4 hours 27 minutes in the London Marathon.
Tremendous effort.