Two contrasting views of organisational aesthetics from this weekend, both still very much works in progress.The completion of the hotel/conference facility as part of the scenic backdrop to the Ageas Bowl hardly warrants being called an atrocity because it's not even that. It is the dull, mercantile, commercial image of corporacy that provides the dumb spirit of a place ostensibly designed to play a traditional English game in that reduces it to a branding exercise that sells something to people who think they want it except it is gradually being removed from them as they watch while a poor, routine surrogate product is surreptitiously put in its place. Cricket never used to have much in common with brutalist architecture or the Bauhaus but here Hampshire County Cricket Club are selling themselves to anybody for their faceless sponsorship.
The Bowl, once called the Rose Bowl, is really set in a very pleasant woodland area with views for miles into the countryside in the other direction but once the playing area is eventually completely surrounded by concrete and glass, the cricket will have been detached from any of its original rural origins and corporate logos, advertising and overpriced beer and merchandising is all that one will see. There may still be some entertainment from time to time. One can't have any complaints about a 50 by Marcus Trescothick and a day ending on 310 for 6 which is exactly what one would expect to see but since every other saleable idea is commodified to the ultimate degree, whether it be pop music, poetry or going for a walk, there is no reason to think that cricket should be left behind.
Whereas the purchase of two fine bookcases from a charity shop, delivered here yesterday, organizes my sublime collection of CD's and books in a manner they've not been used to for many years as they have expanded in number to outgrow my capacity to store them nicely and ended up in ramshackle piles.I would have made a terrible librarian. Unless I'm organizing a 10 syllable line, I'm not of a naturally orderly disposition but I like a sense of some decorum even if that only reflects the tenuous connections I make between things.
The bookcases are nowhere near properly populated yet but the classical CD's look gorgeously tidy in some sort of chronological order on the top three shelves, then we have a few DVD's on one side, George Eliot on the other with a gap for sundry items in the middle, below those are the Shakespeare biographical books and pop music will be put into a bottom section with some further storage (for exceptional items like The Magnetic Fields, T. Rex, Gregory Isaacs, Lindisfarne) to one side. It's already a joy to look at.
The second bookcase in the back room might yet be filled with rows of Thom Gunn and Larkin, maybe a sweeping vista of Murakami novels, a set of poet's biographies (Wyatt, Eliot, Donne, Keats, Marvell, etc.) or the Maggi Hambling books might come down from upstairs. Hard to say yet but it's a project to relish.
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The Tour de France prospects this year are the most unfathomable they've been for a long time, possibly the most wide open they've been in some memories. Cycling has expanded so rapidly in recent years in this country that many keen followers don't have much heritage in the sport.
Paddy Power have shortened Chris Froome into 13/8 following his impressive showing in the Dauphine. Nibali had put in a good ride on the Friday there but then faded, or was he just 'foxing' like he did last year in the prep race. I feel sorry for the Dauphine, a proper classic race by any other standard but, due to its place in the calendar, now an event in which Tour contenders either issue a show of strength or hide their best hand and save themselves and you can't always tell what is what. I'd be reluctant to use it as a literal form guide.
Contador won the Giro convincingly enough but had a bad last couple of days. Perhaps the demands of a Giro's profile are genuinely more tiring than a Tour in which the mountains come in two easily identified packages.The Astana team might have worked him over to greater effect had they worked more in concert and the question over Contador is how well he will have recovered. I read that he beat Quintana, otherwise the most specifically specialist climber, up a big climb this week and so possibly he has recovered. That would tempt me to back Contador for the Tour but then I see you can help yourself to 9/2.
I've backed out of bets before because I thought the price on offer was too generous to be true but in cycling, I wonder if bookmakers really know enough about it yet and are reading the form too literally.
The winner of the Tour might be the one who has the best team around him and that might not be Froome. I don't think I'll speculate on an overall winner until I've seen them go up a mountain in earnest in the real event. Meanwhile Romain Bardet, at 25/1, makes some appeal for the King of the Mountains title, for which he will be able to accumulate points on mountains in leading groups without competing for the overall classification. And so a small interest in Bardet @ 25/1 KOM is the only advice I have for now.