Great Summer of Sport

I missed the greatest tennis match of our time. I was standing in pouring rain trying to get excited about K.T.Tunstall. Granted she was doing a fabulous job trying to whip up some fun from the crowd of corporate umbrellas - "everyone with stripped umbrellas raise yours up high..." - but it was pretty hard to ignore the 46th consecutive hour of rain at Cornbury. I felt most for my mate Anthony who loves tennis and was getting ball by ball text commentary during the show from Andrew. I think Anthony earnt some big credits that night! He hates most music bar Meatloaf.

Having decided in February that it would be great fun to camp most of my family responded with a quick call to a local luxury hotel as back-up. My wife and two children did one night and then decamped - my middle daughter and I did both nights and wrapped it all up with a tent deconstruction in driving rain on Monday morning.

Most of the music was a disappointment to be honest, notably Paul Simon who played everything at one pace and totally screwed up all the Simon & Garfunkel classics ( copyright Bob Dylan).

I did enjoy Carbon/Silicon, the new band of Mick Jones and Tony James. They looked like they were past it and didn't care one jot. I especially like Mick Jones' inter-song chat on the disappointments of modern politics and the first song, Magic Suitcase. They were followed by Nick Lowe who also took the diminished status of The Word stage with grace. The Word sponsored this second stage and had a tent nearby selling magazines. When I was at the counter one 60 year old guy with a Grateful Dead haircut came up and asked them when they were going to do a piece on Donovan. "He was very big" he said, "Yes" said the girl. " He still is ", said the deadhead. Let the shipwrecks of others be your landmarks as Hancock
once said.

I did get in some good sport, notably some excellent Nadal matches at Queens and a thrilling one day international at the Oval that came down to the last ball. England lost because they forgot to hit the bails and New Zealand ran twice to clinch it! Not much gumption our boys. Talking of absent friends, I also enjoyed the Euros more than for a long time - the Spanish were superb passers of the ball and the Turks were a fairytale in adidas.