Below Belief

Bursting full of thoughts right now – don’t know why I feel compelled to write, but despite having spent a day in front of a computer, somehow there is something left in my fingers to spell out these words.
On my way home from work tonight I picked blackberries. Every day I cycle past the same spot and over the last couple of weeks I’ve watched as the blackberries in this particular spot (unromantically by the side of a main road) have gradually ripened. My mouth waters every morning.
So tonight I take the opportunity – which no one else seems to have taken – and stop my bike to pick them into a tupperware lunch container. There’s something nice about it – after a day fixing problems, ordering people around, getting bored with meeting after meeting and talking on teleconferences – to find a small space in my day to return, juicy fingered, to the primate part of me which likes picking fruit. Spiking my fingers on the prickly bushes, getting blackberry juice down my hands, my mouth watering as I savour the prospect of these blackberries in a crumble.
And all the while the traffic passes me – each rushing to their home, and perhaps shopping for blackberries at their local Tescos – oblivious to my feast of blackberries from the land – something sustainable and simple and pleasurable.

So our house comes with some nice things:

and some fairly horrible things:

But we went there this morning to measure up properly and take photos of everything for the “before” pictures. But we found some things we weren’t expecting:
Behind this old battered looking cupboard, full of betamax videos:

we found what, at first, we thought was a postbox with the word Lambeth on it,

but turned out to be the original Victoria (or is it Edwardian?) cast-iron range cooker:

which is one period feature we won’t be keeping in the house, but perhaps someone on ebay might want it.
Amazing.
Also, behind this horrible 70′s electric bar fire,

was another original fireplace, in need of some love:

We had a fab weekend – on the north coast of Norfolk.
We stayed here, the Triumphal Arch at Holkham Hall

(if it looks small, that was my first concern but inside on the right and above the arch was an amazingly well designed and actually quite spacious, self-catering hotel room. Much recommended for a thoroughly relaxing weekend away from it all).
and the view from the window was:

(apparently this is the view that in the 1700s wealthy visitors from London would see on their approach to the hall itself – all designed to impress upon them the wealth and gravitas of the the Earl of Leicester)
and the beach looked amazing:

Rob writes about the decline of sport:

Is sport getting worse?
Now I am as obsessed by sport as anyone, but is it gradually becoming rubbish?
Tour de Farce
Decline of West Indian Cricket and too much cricket
Football – suffocating from wealth
Rugby – rich nations stealing from the poor
Tennis – even more boring now than it ever has been
Athletics – best Doctor wins
Racing – fixing
I think I may take up Crown Green Bowling.

I think he’s right – but it’s not just sport. Everything is getting “less good” because of commercialisation. There was a time when “sport” meant “fair, equitable, gentlemanly” in a sort of 1950′s long-football-shorts and handshake kind of a way. Now it seems more likely to equal “sponsorship, TV and adverts”.
Can we get back those “amateur” endeavours and still call them entertainment?

S, this is Clue 4:

S, this is Clue 3:

S, this is Clue 2: