Commonwealth Games - Sunday Stamps

The XX Commonwealth Games will be held in Glasgow from 23rd July to 3rd August. This will be the third time the Games have been held in Scotland. Edinburgh hosted the previous two.

The name of the Games has changed since the first event in 1930 when it was the British Empire Games. In 1954 it became the British Empire & Commonwealth Games. At Edinburgh in 1970 it changed again.

Great Britain - Ninth British Commonwealth Games

The final name change came in 1978 to the Commonwealth Games.

The Games are said to be the third largest multi-sport event in the world behind the Olympics and the Asian Games.

In 1970 42 countries took part in 121 events covering 9 sports. One of the countries involved was Malawi.

The sports on the 1970 stamps were:

• 5d - Running
• 1/6d - Swimming
• 1/9d - Cycling

For more sporting exercise I suggest you visit the links at Viridian's Sunday-Stamps-178.

This Sporting Life - Sepia Saturday

Until quite recently I've always played one sport or another so this week's prompt struck a chord with me.

I have never grown a moustache and no longer have a singlet like the one he's wearing. However there are still some golfing trophies on the top of my filing cabinet.

Golfing trophies and souvenir golf balls.

The first trophy I won was for the shot put in the U14 age group at Stamford School's sports day in 1950 (I think). I don't remember what it was like or the Fielding Cup for cricket that was to come later when I was in the 1st XI.

I played cricket for many years and was always proud to wear my School Cricket Colour Blazer, long after I left school. Black and white photos don't do it justice at all.

Cricket blazer - Lincoln Lindum Ground, 1950s

Same ground, same blazer accompanied by a girl.

The girl who was to become my wife.

So cricket has a lot to answer for. What you can't see here is that her dress has thin red strips that went with the red in my blazer.

My first job in industry was at Richard Thomas & Baldwins, Redbourn Works in Scunthorpe where I collected the Interdepartmental  Cricket Cup for 1963 on behalf of the Laboratory team.

Who should have combed his hair?

Our children played sport as well and I have managed to find some photos including trophies.

Rachel with her teddy; Andrew with his trophy (1970s)

And later an older Rachel with a tennis trophy of her own.

I played my last games of cricket during the 1980s in Norway. It was there that now aged 50 and too old and slow for hockey that I discovered golf. I never played golf while at St Andrews University at the end of the 1950s - something I'll always regret.

I suppose that brings me back to the trophies in my first picture - the ones I have been allowed to keep. At one time I could have shown off a lot more.

Golfing success in 1989

I guess time has caught up with me so I have only small replicas to admire. However especially for you I have had my photo taken again today.

Bob in that School Cricket Blazer from the 1950s.

I can still wear it as you can see - but it's tight across the shoulders and ...

I can't do the damned thing up!

To see what others have on show this week run across to Sepia-Saturday-205. And you Aussies - no sledging!

Hooked

A-Z Challenge – ‘H’

To succeed as a writer I’ve been told that I need to ‘hook’ my readers in the first paragraph. That may be true but in my life I have been hooked on other things.

As a young boy I went fishing using a bent pin as a hook and never caught a thing. It was only when someone gave me a proper one that I realised the hook was barbed.

Fishing Hooks - by Retama  (CS A-S A licence)

I then found out Hook could be a pirate when I read Peter Pan. His hand was quite scary but nowhere near as frightening as the hook that Abu Hamza has as a hand.

Hooks are all around us in every day life and many we take for granted like the simple hook and eye. I have vague recollections of being given advice by older boys on how to undo them with one hand; the usefulness of this I’d better leave unsaid.

Hooks and Eyes for Fur Clothing - by Kuerschner

There are hooks on coat hangers, and coat hooks of a variety of shapes. In the north England they refer to chapel hat pegs but these are not always the place to hang you hat.

In industry I came across hooks of different shapes and sizes on cranes although the crane fly and sand cranes don’t have hooks at all.

 Hooks of Polish biggest floating crane 'Maja' - by Brosen, Gdansk, Poland 

(CC A-S A 2.5 generic licence)

On the sports field I found it was foul to hook someone’s stick at hockey. Playing cricket a hook was a risky shoot unless you controlled the shot and kept the ball on the ground. As all golfers know a hook appears from nowhere and your ball deviates wildly from your club. I refused to play in the middle of the front row at rugby; there was no way I wanted to be a hooker. If you believe what you read in the press you may hear of sportsmen and celebrities who get involved with hookers of a different type and I don’t mean a one-masted sailing boat.

With this Challenge you could say we are getting hooked-up with one another. By hook or by crook I aim to get to ‘Z.’ I could tell you a joke in the hope that you would fall for it hook, line and sinker. If you have had enough by now there are two solutions open to you:

1. Play hookey.
2. Tell me to sling my hook.