The world is currently watching in shock at the corruption claims being fired left, right and right in Football’s biggest governing body, fifa’s, direction. These are clearly some very shocking revelations, and I must say, hats off to Fifa for having the ability to keep news stories similar to these currently unfolding, in the dark wilderness for all these years. However, amongst all the shock and shame surrounding Fifa’s existence, the responsibility to stand up and clear the air was weighed upon one man’s shoulders, and of course, that man not only stood up, but stood upon the shoulders of a companion, a trusty Grizzly bear. Oh and how refreshing it was, to hear Vladimir Putin question the FBI’s own code of conduct and suggest they may be framing Fifa, just so Russia would not get to host the World Cup. However, the problem for Russia is that they are a truly inclusive country, maybe too inclusive for their own good. Poor old Vladimir does not realize that the World Cup can never be taken away from Russia, due to their cohesive and inclusive attitude to Global Affairs.
Maybe, that is Putin’s downfall, after all the media attention focused on his conscious coupling with Ukraine, one may think that the media had got it wrong. Putin knows that everybody loves a holiday to Ukraine, and by his method of joining hands with Ukraine, he can reduce holiday prices.
If course though, it was refreshing to hear the good old consistent sound of Putin, tooting away throughout any controversy, just to make everyone feel included. Some say he has small man syndrome, but they are confused, he is only small because he doesn’t want others to feel small. Yet another example of his friendly gracious and equal attitude to life.
On the subject staying consistent through controversy, Nigel Farage has been back to himself this week, having the responsibility to fire himself but having the self confidence to reinstate him as the UKIP leader. This is great trait to have and will inspire many children.
The intro of many John Martyn tunes are melodic, chirpy, masterful, folky and honest. I cannot recreate a literary version of that for this intro as I haven’t had enough lifetime sadness, my heart hasn’t been filled with deep, dark regret, anger and most importantly, I haven’t drunk and smoked to depths that the human body physically can not repair.
It seems that these are the recurring themes of every person behind most of my favourite songs and records personal life, which is a harem of enchanting, haunting and surreal to hear as a young musician looking at their inspirational hero’s for inspirational hero-like idea’s, phrases and events. This is disconcerting as the people that drive you and inspire you do all the things that the people around you and in control of you, say are wrong. Most confusing of all, these musicians seem most proud of it and had their most personal, happiest moments whilst in this state of mind ad physical activity that is too dark in in the depths of emotion, too feverish for any responsible up bringer to encourage.
John himself is the perfect example of this, he was often described as violent , selfish and horrible to be around. People literally couldn’t stand being around him. Yet he is proud to be that kid of person. Not one thriving off sadness but certainly not driving out pain upon impact. John uses the word ‘carthartic’ a lot to describe his music and why he wrote it. He feels it right to experience mental pain and breakdown, and using drink and drugs certainly helped John get to the bottom of his sadness.An direct quote from the documentary was “If he wasn’t drunk or high he was trying to get drunk or high, constantly” This was coming from his first wife Beverly Martyn, another folk singer who was the subject of many an enchanting love song written by John up untill 1980. Then on he had to push Island records to release the dark disturbingly sad and deep records following his break up.
Yet he is proud to be that kid of person, and he has had many bad things happen to him, to name a few: The horrible breakup of his first marriage, the death of his second wife, being horribly drunk and stoned every night, his leg being amputated, death of a child, not aloud to see his many children. These paved the way for some of the greatest, musically most honest, and emotional songs ever written, that i would dream to have the capacity, skill and way with language to write…but I don’t want to ever go through any of those things John has. These songs make John an anti hero because they help others, including himself, to release pain and travel to a mental state of content, happiness, or to simply get lost in the music and feel a spiritual standstill within your whole body, which in my opinion, is why I listen to music.
But I feel music you make isn’t your music if it is not honest. You cannot put on a musical toupee and become someone else for your music. But then how can you judge what is honest? Which brings me back to these exploreable but in no way fully answerable questions:
Do you have to experience physical or mental pain to feel happy and content?
Do you have to experience sadness or pain and suffering to write honest mystical songs?
You can tell more about someone from how they speak than what they say. Words are universal. Anyone can repeat any word or phrase they are given, use any set of words they hear. Whereas, every humans face is different, so everyones facial expressions when talking are different. A happy expression on 1 persons face is hugely different to another’s happy face! You can tell a lot more about how they perceive the words that flow from their mouth, if they are passionate about the words they say, whether they are paticularly disheartned or upset about what their talking about.
Another form of understanding the character of a human is the tone of which they communicate. The phrase ”That’s bloody brilliant” for example can be said in several ways. For example someone could be genuinely happy or excited at an happening, that would sound entirely different from someone who said that in a dry, sarcastic tone. This in turn would sound much harsher and be said much slower than someone who was upset and yet being sarcastic.
A final form of finding out more about the speakers personality, is by their hand and body movements. Hands that are moving quickly and sharply can indicate excitement, anger or frustration. This can also signify about if the person is more dramatic. Some people could say the same things and feel the same way, but not move their bodies!
In sport, the main objective is to succeed in what you specialize in. In Amateur sport, the way you do this is often by talent or by pure skill over theirs.In professional sport, however, it’s more about margins of error, the little things you do wrong, but mostly, confrontation. Confrontation, whether this be by sledging an opponent,or by going out of your comfort zone. When being attacked or confronted, the player doing so will always be looking at your strengths and weaknesses as a competitor. In sports like cricket and football, teams pay money for opponents to be analysed, to try and get an upper hand when coming up against them. One example of someone being analysed, would be, a footballer, people like Messi, get analysed all the time! What foot they use, signature tricks, stuff like that.
The one problem for me in this, is that everything gets a little mechanical. Thinking and common sense goes out the window. An example would be, the England cricket team playing South Africa last Summer. At that time, there was a lot of hype going on in the media about it being the no.1 series, as whoever won would go top of the world rankings. As a consequence of this there was a lot of analytical work put in to each South African batsmen about where they we most prone to getting out to, where their comfort areas were. The 1st test was played at the Oval cricket ground in London. The bowlers knew there plans right away, but didn’t make use of the natural resources around them. Great swinging conditions that could of taken the wickets of the under prepared South African batsmen were not utilized as the bowlers bowled in areas that troubled the batsmen in the past in different conditions and different circumstances.
On this occasion the South African batsmen prevailed and England’s hopes of winning the match were left in shatters by Hashim Amla scoring a mammoth 311* as South Africa romped to victory securing the No.1 spot in the world rankings.
One other thing England didn’t take notice of was that the margin of error for some of the targets were very short, and that batsmen can adapt too. A great example of this would be Graeme Smith. Through out his career he has be shown to be tentative outside his off stump. He is a human, and has a brain, so he quickly worked out that he could cut off he angle be moving outside off stump then hitting through leg side. Although these are professional sportsman, they do have some margin for error. An example would be Joe Root, his weakness is just on his legs, but the margin for error is quite high, the angle carries the ball further down the leg side, he can leave it for a wise or easily flick it for 4.
Also, going around the county circuit is this philosophy about comfort zones. The standard philosophy is simple really. The more you come out of your comfort zone, and confront more challenging situations, the more your comfort zone will expand. Another way of putting is your stretch, and skills , your most important is your stretch to expand.
No Henry shall ever pass GO without collecting 200M from the bank
No Henry shall ever see a chicken without licking his lips
No Henry shall ever sleep on the bottom of a bunk bed
No Henry shall ever go to Justin Bieber concert EVER
No Henry shall ever be seen with a Mohican
No Henry shall ever be a Hufflepuff
No Henry shall ever try, they do.
So, I said i would be doing an analysis on a leg spinner. Instead, I’ve done three, well two leggies and a left arm off spinner. This is a video analysis of 3 of Hampshire’s spinners. 2 of which have now left the club. Thus this video is a little old. This was the quarter final of the 2O/2O trophy against Durham in 2O11. Here is said video:
Danny Briggs 1st over
2nd Ball: (1:18-21)
If you pause at 1:2O you can see Briggs’ jump outwards just before he gets in the delivery stride. This jump outwards was supposedly brought in to help give Briggs some natural variation, as, if he didn’t get enough tweak on the ball he could use that angle to his advantage with the ball running on. But i have four problems with this:
1) It’s not a natural repeatable action
2) It’s working against any natural spin he is getting
3) It’s opens up the leg side for a batsmen
4) It’s working against all his momentum gathered previously.
Now, he continues to do all these throughout his two overs. All in all though, you can’t be too harsh on him, he picked up a good haul of wickets. In the end, that is all you really desire , but for me, he needs a little bit on contingency, because as a bowler you want to maximize the number of wickets you take. Briggs’ would have more of a chance of fulfilling this goal, if he played for a longer amount of time. There are parts to his action that may get in his way
1) It’s not a natural repeatable action: All this jerking around is not good for the body! Another reason is that it’s a variable. And in cricket, if there’s any margin for error, it usually get’s exploited! This could be viewed as another natural variation. In my opinion this has been brought on by the frequency on limited overs cricket that is being played. These players have been brought up on doing different things each delivery. Surely before any of this experimentation should occur, you need to have the basics down, being a spinner speaks for itself! You need to able to put revolutions on the ball to impart turn!
Which brings me onto my next point…………………….
2) It’s working against any natural spin he is getting! You see, as the action of the left arm spinner is turning away from the right-hander, going wide of the crease would increase the angle going into the batsmen, whereas Danny Briggs is trying to turn it away from him. This means that any amount of spin wouldn’t be as significant as the angle and trajectory of the ball would be working against it. This means that a ball that would straighten for him going wide would actually turn a little , thus casing the batsmen more trouble when playing straight.
3) It’s opens up the leg side for a batsmen! The angle of the ball will be going down the leg side and so will the ball, so the batsmen can open up and play through there, in 2O/2O that’s a bread and butter slog really. This means that Danny Briggs is being more defensive than he ought to be, and that is why in my opinion he doesn’t find as much success as his potential fills in the longer format.
4) Lastly….It’s working against all his momentum gathered previously! There are five Key Points that any spinner should be getting his/her momentum from:
1) Run/meander up: You need this to start everything off, to get some kinetic energy behind you
2) Explosive jump forward: to get you into your bowling position, to get you moving
3) Hips pivot: this is used to gather spin from your movement, and to get you in a follow through position
4) front thigh: This is thrust forward to get your head and momentum going forward over your front foot.
5) Shoulders/fingers/wrist: Where you impart your spin as well as gain that last push.
This is not letting him get his momentum going forward because his run up momentum is going sideways with the jump. His Jump isn’t explosive in the right way, as it doesn’t go forward enough, this makes it harder for him to pivot which because he has more to do in less time. This is another reason for Briggs’ lack of spin and purchase. The jump means he is side on, i.e. the front thigh is out of the equation!
What this means is that his shoulders and fingers are taking the most damage! If continued he will carry on to lack contingency with his action!
Overall Danny is a good young bowler, and although has a lot of potential, needs to work hard to fulfill it!
This is the paragraph said by Romeo just before he dies:
ROMEO:
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death! Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! Here’s to my love
Some notes:
In the beginning line Romeo is personifying his eyes and telling them to look at the world while they can.He is also saying he is fatigued and so is his skin from the world.
He is continuing to personify his body and telling his arms that this hug with Juliet will be there last, then he begins to say about his lips, which for me, his language looks like he thinks they are his best quality.
Romeo says to his lips that this kiss with Juliet will be there last and to remember it, he says the great doors of breath, because breath is right, will close with a kiss which is the right thing to do, ( and i think it has something to do with death and performing the last rights/rites at a funeral).
Next he says his last thing he does is see the “engrossing death” which he is making out to be a bargain that he doesn’t want, a fruitless bargain you could say. Then in the next line he beckons for death to come and describes what he does as bitter. Then in my opinion he leads onto that God made death and is feeling disdain for god.
He says God is desperate and that god is the pilot who actually steers him to the harbor which is his destiny, which is death. He says now run into the danger and the heartbreak of the rocks and the wild sea that pounds against them.
Romeo compares life to the sea and uses the metaphor I am sea-sick which translates into i am sick of life and i want it to stop. He then says he is doing this for his love.
The main metaphor’s are at the end when he is referring to the sea and the pilot.
What Romeo is really saying is that… fate won,that he has been trying and trying to run away from his fate, he has been trying to fight it, he has been trying to steer it away from there, he can’t. Romeo has given up. Romeo has made some mistakes and referred to it earlier by saying he was “fortunes fool”. His tone is suicidal. This stanza is one of the most significant, as he is putting up his hands up, this is also viewed as tragic as the audience knows that Juliet isn’t really dead, and a few more minutes she would be awake. Juliet dying subsequently kills Romeo… dramatic irony is… She is not dead.
An earlier example of this him reliseing that fate was in play, was him saying: “He that hath steerage of my course, direct my sail”. This final passage in many ways is a end to what has been a “great game.” You could compare it a bit to the movie where the main charachter is always being filmed for his own 24 hour T.V show and he knows nothing, then he begins to find and figure out, the one difference would be : He wins the battle V fate. Like most media, there is usually a happy ending, but in Romeo and Julie, fate is the only winner.
MY PEE PARAGRAPH
Shakespeare is known for his fabulous plays but his writing had a lot deeper meaning than what is blatantly reveals. He uses many metaphors like
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
What this means is that Romeo says god is the man steering him to his destiny of death, this he refers to as ” The dashing rocks ” and he says he is sea sick, he means that he is sick of life. I hope this proves my point that Shakespeare wasn’t just a great action writer, he also put a lot of thought into writing his marvelous plays.