Words and Books
Some say that seven is a lucky number… they must be joking! My seventh season at the helm of Yorkshire County Cricket Club promised so much but ultimately provided so little. We started both white-ball formats well only to finish bottom and when second or at least third place seemed an almost certainty in the […]
Cricket Captain 2020 – Season Seven — Silly Point Cricket
copyright Leofwine Tanner 2019
For years my only love was Marmite, in the yeast extract stakes, at any rate.
And then one day, not too long ago, I decided to get some – horror of horrors – Vegemite! Naturally I’d heard the name before, even heard it in some 1980s Australian rock song, but being a bit of a traditionalist and a stick-in-the-mud, I’d never taken the plunge into that particular version of yeast extract.
What’s more, to be fittingly topical, it’s The Ashes (England versus Australia at cricket) again this summer, that battle between leather and willow, weather permitting; a tense battle of minds, of whether to sledge, or not to sledge. So what about comparing dear old Blighty’s version with the Antipodean?
Well, to settle an argument with myself, I decided to compare the two makes side by side, in one sitting, if you will. And my findings were surprising.
I’m not an expert on taste, I just know what I like. Sticking to tradition to start with, I plumped for Marmite first. Fine, lovely, just how I like it. Then came the Vegemite and… wait a minute! You know, it wasn’t the same. Did I detect, I mean was there just a little trace of a taste of… chocolate? Dark chocolate at that. OK, it was somehow different, a bit.
Either way, I sat down with a cup of tea to wash it all down and collect my thoughts. And whether I could taste chocolate or not, I came away with the startling, unpatriotic conclusion that I preferred the Australian! Yes, Vegemite won by a nose, the tip of a tongue.
I just hope that England can do better this summer.
Summer was once ices poles and living
on bikes; we were free like swifts
screaming circles in the air. Greens
were for football and teams twenty a side,
roads for playing cricket, where cars
were stalling aberrations. We lay
on lawns watching clouds, minds unfettered
in those zenith blues; guilt
and care belonged to
some other world and school
might well have been
beyond the moon.
Only later came guitars with boys’ awakenings;
serenading neighbours
sunbathing in the yard, or the shock
of full moons rising late in the day. We really
thought we had credence, like southern
Skynyrd boys, singing in that
sultry heat with school coming at us
like banks of cloud, the football season
begun and cricket nearing its end,
watching shadows gathering
where the sun once shone
poem © copyright David F. Barker 2012
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