Category: Rugby

Summer in the City.

A steaming hot day in London was the order of the day yesterday. we kicked it off with street food in Camden Market, followed by a walk up the Regents canal- a bohemian, arty area in parts that was fascinating to walk.

The start of the canal walk is right by the market, over the bridge. The path along the Grand Union Canal takes you along the northern edge of Regent’s Park, right through London Zoo, where the wild dogs and bird cages line the walk for a short way.

The canal opens out into the Grand Union Canal in Little Venice.


So how did Little Venice get it’s name. Two theories abound. One is that when Robert Browning’s wife, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, died in 1861, he returned from Italy and moved to Warwick Crescent. Local history has it that Browning referred to
this area as “little Venice’. Another theory has it that Lord Byron
named it as a joke – no one knows for sure. Victorian writer Anne Thackeray Ritchie, a friend
of Browning’s described the canal as
“touched by some indefinite romance, cool and deep’. I certainly like to believe so. Although I wouldn’t want to walk there after dark. A bit spooky and unsettling.

While we were in the area we took a quick glance at Warwick Avenue…

‘When I get to Warwick Avenue Meet me by the entrance of the tube’

Also Lords Cricket Ground.

There’s a breathless hush in the close to-night Ten to make and the match to win A bumping pitch and a blinding light, An hour to play, and the last man in. And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat. Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame, But his captain’s hand on his shoulder smote “Play up! Play up! And play the game!”

Sir Henry Newbolt

We said a brief ‘hello’ to Eros- the Greek god of erotic love-in Piccadilly Square.

Had a drink in The Nags Head in Covent Garden .

And finished the evening off at Kinky Boots the concert, showing at The Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

Last train home saw us getting back to the South Coast at 2am, tired but having had a great day in, in my opinion, the greatest city in the world .

The Guinness Six Nations 2020.

Today sees the start of the Guinness Six Nations 2020. This will be the 21st Six Nations Championship, the annual rugby union competition contested by the national teams of England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Wales. As Wales meets Italy in the first match of the Championship I am reminded of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’:

If

by Rudyard Kipling

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

So come on England!