Reading Prospects and other stories

 My recent aberrant excursion into Jacob Rees-Mogg has prompted an unhealthy appetite for bad books, like a burlesque reading habit.

Of course, I wouldn't spend money on such books but the library service is a tremendous resource. Sadly, they don't yet have What Was Shakespeare Really Like by Stanley Wells in which he sets out, yet again, what he'd like to think he was like. I'll be monitoring the situation on that.

They are awaiting The Plot by Nadine Dorries but, from what the review in The Times says, I'm not sure I'd appreciate how bonkers it is. There was a novel by Boris Johnson. I haven't looked that up. I don't know if I dare. There must be a limit beyond which one can't go.

So, I'm back to the waiting pile, it looks like, for more Stevie Smith, re-reading those Kundera's I bought or take up with Vasari again.

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I heard on the wireless that 'binge drinking' is 6 small drinks (e.g. half pints or small glasses of wine), more than once a month.

Isn't that like saying that a Christian is someone who knows most of The Lord's Prayer or the tune to All Things Bright and Beautiful. I thought you just were best advised to have a day or two off in between.

I'm aware that most of my circumspect acquaintances probably don't have three pints or a bottle of wine much more than once a month but I don't mix with so many of the fastest young guns these days. The name of the part-time cricketer I vaguely knew who always had cans of lager in his coat pockets and, on being advised to cut down, went from 7 days a week to 5, won't be revealed here.

But, what can you do.

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And I am indebted to my father who sent me an item from Cycling Weekly reporting the further demise of the beloved 12 Hour discipline. It says there were only three such events run last season and that was nearly only two until the Welsh edition was saved just in time.

In the 1990's, when I raised myself to such levels of fitness to take part, there were twelve or maybe thirteen but even up and until the Western District event was glorified into being the National Championship in 2003, it was in decline, the resources needed to run it outnumbering those who wanted to take part which makes it a bit unweildy and that was it's last hurrah.

Certainly, it takes far more officials and ballboys and girls to administer a Wimbledon Singles Final than there are in it but there's a paying crowd of people paying plenty to watch it to finance that. 

And so, soon, like the venerable 24 Hour, it will depend on one annual race to keep the very idea of it going. And, what else could there be if not enough riders want to do it. So be it. Test match cricket, which also seemed to be the classic format of the game 50 years ago, is also rapidly losing ground to short forms where something, even if it is of less value, is made to happen to facilitate the requirement for quick, cheaper thrills.

Never mind. Nothing lasts forever and nothing stays the same. In a way, I'd like to live long enough to have, however briefly, been a devotee of an event that has become obsolete than one that has only become more obscure than it ever was.