roads of stone

It was the greatest shot I have ever seen, in any major championship.

In telling you that Padraig Harrington’s second to the seventeeth hole in the final round of this year’s British Open at Royal Birkdale eclipsed even Tiger Woods’ remarkable chip-in on the sixteenth at Augusta in 2005, I’m setting the bar high, but there’s no doubt in my mind.
(more…)

A police car and a screaming siren
Pneumatic drill and ripped-up concrete
- The Jam: That’s Entertainment, 1981

Better stop dreaming of the quiet life
‘Cos it’s the one we’ll never know
- The Jam: A Town Called Malice, 1982

Gritty urban realism. Recession.

That’s how it was then, and this is how it sounded. The Jam captured the mood of Britain at the start of the eighties. The loss of hope and the mindlessly brutal banality of an existence with no glimpse of economic rescue or absolution.
(more…)

“Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground”
- The Tempest, Act 1, Sc.1

“Full fathom five thy father lies” - The Tempest, Act 1, Sc. 2

The sky is falling all around me as the winter afternoon is fading. Down, down we glide, towards the North Atlantic. Three thousand miles of unforgiving sea are all behind us and ahead lies just a pinprick of green holding out against the blue-grey vastness of the ocean.

The rain lashes against the windows as our wings bank on the approach, the landing lights looming nearer in the dusk. A rugged landfall, but now we’re safe.

Outside the airport and across the causeway, a deluge is raging in sheets across the road, the palm trees swaying wildly in the storm. The evening washes itself wet and windswept upon the shore. (more…)

So. Farewell then
Barack Hussein Obama
The Audacity of Hope

For five January days
We believed
The world could change

And then New Hampshire
Told you
They’d changed their minds
Instead.

With apologies to EJ Thribb (17 ½)

* * * * *

Coming soon:
To mark the start of USA 2008 this column is taking temporary residence deep in the snows of New Hampshire.

Please see From Scratch for a specially syndicated Roads of Stone, reporting on the US primaries.

: : : : : : : : : :

Related articles:
84. Election Special
110. The hands that built America - Houston skylines
148. Farewell to Tony Blair
4. GO British ! Chicago Marathon 2002
17. It’s puzzling - a letter on Iraq, to Tony Blair
71. How the West Was Won - Iraq implodes

The BBC reported yesterday that Jane Tomlinson had finally lost her fight against breast cancer.

I don’t agree.

It was an unequal battle, certainly.

But the cancer never stood a chance.

(more…)

It’s been a long wait, and so long overdue. In the eight years since Paul Lawrie’s victory, we’d almost forgotten that a European golfer could win a major championship.

Sixty years after the last Irishman won the British Open, yesterday evening Padraig Harrington became the first player from the Republic to lift the famous Claret Jug.

It was an immensely exciting championship, with the result facing as many twists as the Barrie Burn which winds its way across Carnoustie’s closing holes.

In the week that Severiano Ballesteros retired from competitive golf, it would have been marvellous for another ‘young Spaniard’ to follow in his footsteps as an Open winner.

Sergio García’s day will surely come. A day when the cellophane bridge above the hole will be far kinder to his ball than yesterday.

But it just wasn’t to be. As Sergio found out, it’s desperately hard to lead a major, wire to wire, and bring it home.
(more…)

Vous n’êtes pas loin.

‘Not far to go now,’ cried the marshall in the Dorney Dash 10 km last month, a pleasant, friendly run beside the rowing lake – the sparkling new facility where oarsmen, kayakers and canoeists will race for their London Olympic golds, five years from now.

It was just before the halfway mark, beside the lavish Eton College boathouse with its sleek new carbon shells, that we spotted the strangely lumbering-looking rowing boat, parked up incongruously in an empty field. A boat built for a racecourse far longer than this one.

Two kilometres were left to run as we rounded the final turn towards that voice. Kindly thoughts, warmly offered, despite the lashing rain – the sentiments of so many spectators at a running race, yet so often the words you don’t want to hear.

Twentytwo miles down in a marathon, and ‘only’ four more to go ? Just forget the idea – because the physical and mental effort required for that short distance will be far greater than for all the miles which went before.

So much, and so little, I know of the balance between motivation and suffering. I think back to the tiny boat laid up beside the course, and try to imagine hearing the same encouragement, somewhere just east of the Azores, with nearly 2 000 miles behind, and ‘only’ 600 miles of the North Atlantic still in front.
(more…)

The streets of London deserted … except for a million people lining the roads.

A Brit leading the Tour de France halfway through Kent, and pulling on the King of the Mountains jersey, later that same evening.

The best weather of the summer.

The Tour de France - in London, for the first time ever.

Truly, the weekend of a lifetime. And we were there, too.

On Saturday afternoon, we wandered happily from Green Park to the Serpentine, watching the cyclists flash by. The speed of the racers was simply unbelievable - Hyde Park Corner hasn’t seen traffic moving so quickly for many a long year.
(more…)