It's Murder, On The Orient Express ....

[Ally]

Oh Ossie....huge congratulations on grandson Henry.

Brilliant read!!!

Thank you.

[Kaz]

Oh, wonderful news, and many congratulations Ossie, to all concerned I love the name Henry

I loved the story of the traffic cones

[cromwell]

Congratulations Os! Glad all went well.
Sturminster Newton - love those names.
They're building in every bl**dy field near us, too.

[JoM]

Congratulations to you and all of the family Ossie!
So...which game are you taking little Henry to first?

[Kaz]

Jo

[TheOstrich]

Not yet awhile, Jo!

Sorry about Ipswich, MM.

13/04 – Last Sunday, we decided to venture “Up The Smoke” to visit Master O, DiL and see H, our grandson. We’d picked Sunday because the train services (when they’re running ) aren’t bad, and you can get parked at the local railway station, which you certainly can’t do any time after 06:30 midweek. However, within 5 minutes of arriving for the 09:54, it had disappeared off the information screen, and the 10:54 was showing as “Delayed” – cue consternation from the (considerable) number of travellers waiting on the platform, and with the booking office not open until 09:30, one intrepid aristocratic lady banged the green Information Help Point button.

“And why isn’t the 09:54 from Gillingham running?”
“ Err – it is, it’s currently between Crewkerne and Yeovil Junction ….” came the bemused reply.

The long-suffering Tony, the guardian of the ticket office arrived.
“ Oh for goodness sake – you can’t trust those electronic displays, they’re always going wrong.”

And the 09:54 indeed arrived on time – and was packed out! I had not imagined Sunday travel to be so popular. Seating was at a premium; with Mrs O settled, I noted one young lady was occupying two seats with her luggage and was (feigning) sleep, wearing an eye-mask. As a polite request elicited no response, rearing up and displaying full plumage, the Ostrich, to her annoyance, loudly and without brooking any nonsense, commandeered the “vacant” seat ….. in the past, I probably wouldn’t have bothered, and just stood, but in these days of full equality, I no longer take prisoners, I’m afraid . Best of it was, two stops further up the line, we were told that if we wanted to alight at Clapham Junction, we’d have to move up the train - so she got "her" seat back!

Mitcham station is only a few minutes’ walk from Master O and DiL’s flat, and he was supposed to meet us there; however, when the Southern train’s doors opened, the first thing we saw was an urban fox haring it down the platform! We alighted, and the fox, having sighted Master O wandering up, promptly hared back past us in the other direction and disappeared off the far end into the lineside undergrowth!

We had a jolly couple of hours (with pizza) with the new family before wending our way back to the deep South West.

One of the advantages of having your kitchen units repainted is that, because you cannot find what you’ve done with cutlery let alone remember where you’ve relocated the plates , there is great incentive to eat out!
The highlight this week was a visit to a pub immortalised in Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbavilles” which you may recall I mentioned in last weekend’s post. Marnhull is the fictional “Marlott” and The Crown is the fictional “Pure Drop In” but in the novel, there’s a second establishment, a disreputable and illegal drinking house run by a widow, Mrs Rolliver, where secret ale drinking groups gathered upstairs. Well that’s now “The Blackmore Vale Inn”!
http://www.marnhullmessenger.org.uk/blackmore-vale-inn/

We dropped in for a pub lunch and were warmly greeted by the landlords and locals alike. We sat in solitary splendour in the dining room until we were joined by a small pit bull terrier who insisted on sitting on the seat at the table next to Mrs O and wouldn’t budge despite entreaties from the owner!

On Friday, the road network in the centre of Gillingham ground to a complete standstill due to numerous temporary traffic lights and road works, and it was reputedly taking 45 minutes to cover a couple of miles. With that in mind, I took a circuitous route out of town the following day before heading south to Dorchester. The town’s rugby club, for which this was the last game of the season, are already relegated so I thought I’d better go see them whilst they are still in Level 7’s Southern Counties South league.

The club play at Coburg Road, which turned out to be a rather large sports complex bordering the ring road, although they have their own enclosed ground and (rather grandiose) two-storey clubhouse, dating from 1990, which turned out to be not as spacious as it looked. No food was on offer, and the bar somewhat cramped, so I spent most of my time pre-match wandering around the locality.

Dorchester had vowed they were going to end their disastrous season on a high; that looked unlikely when their opponents, mid-table Swindon College Old Boys went straight down the middle from the kick off and scored a try, by my stopwatch, in just 32 seconds! By the third minute, SCOB were 0-14 up and motoring as the Dorchester defence floundered. The home team did eventually get on the score board but were 14-31 down at the interval.

However just after the interval, Dorchester scored a third try and at 21-31, the SCOB captain decided he needed to give his side an inspired motivational team talk. This apparently involved gathering the team into a huddle and bellowing the F-word as loudly as possible! It didn’t work, and suddenly Dorchester were right back in it at 28-31. However, a famous last victory was not to be; SCOB forced over a further try and despite a couple of promising moves, Dorchester didn’t have the wherewithal to yet again come back from the dead.

To get out of Dorchester and back onto the A35 ring road, I took a trip past the now well-established dormer village of Poundbury. Whatever you think of HRH, it’s certainly an architectural talking point, and to my untrained eye, even a little bit reminiscent of the Italianate village of Portmeirion.

Southern Counties South (Level 7): Dorchester RFC 28 Swindon College OB’s RFC 36
Admission: £2 with quite a decent programme.
Refreshments: 80p for an extremely salty bag of crisps in the bar, and £3.82 for a large hunk of “proper” Dorset Blue Vinny from the village shop in Buckland Newton on the way home.
Attendance: 77

[Kaz]

Another great read Ossie FWIW I loved Portmierion when we visited North Wales two Easters ago xx

[cromwell]

You live in a beautiful part of the world Os. As Kaz says, another great read.
I was a bit worried about you when Saturday came and went with no report - I had a theory that your train had broken down and you had been stuck at Clapham junction for 24 hours!

[TheOstrich]

I had a theory that your train had broken down and you had been stuck at Clapham junction for 24 hours!

Horrifying - don't even think it !!

[TheOstrich]

20/04 – “Tutaj idziemy, tutaj idziemy tutaj idziemy!! ” chanted the Ostrich, proudly waving a large red and white flag out of the car window. “Contain yourself, you silly bird ,” I said crossly, “and let me concentrate on finding this flippin’ place”. Not the easiest of journeys on Tuesday evening, involving as it did a lengthy detour because Melbury Abbas, the self-styled “Village of The Jammed” is still closed to through traffic despite three months of Dorset Highways trying to implement various high-tech measures to allow only one juggernaut at a time to pass through its narrow roadways, and that was the way we needed to go to access Pimperne, just north of Blandford Forum where Dorset’s team of Polish emigres, FC Boscombe Polonia, ply their trade.

I eventually located the Priory Field, Old Bakery Close, at the southern end of the village just off the main A350 trunk road. Looking a bit run down, the small clubhouse seemed mainly given over to a pre-school playgroup, and it all looked pretty chaotic inside. It was also totally deserted but when I emerged from a brief exploration, I was accosted by the home club manager and had to convince him I’d come to watch the football match, not burgle the place!

The opposition, Hamworthy Recreation FC’s “A” team (basically the Reserves) duly rolled up, and after circumnavigating the field of play, I opted to sit on an abandoned tractor tyre (as one does! ) handily placed by the rusty corrugated iron dugouts, in which the referee, Pete Hofmann was having an animated conversation with the away team’s trainer. The subject was colour perception, and that hoary old argument of whether we see colours in the same way – for example, is what one person sees and identifies as green the same as another person sees and identifies as green. You may recall a few years back there was that picture of a dress on social media which some folk saw as gold and white, and others as blue and black; all to do with how an individual’s brain “interprets” light from the background to the object as well as from the object itself.

Of course, the Ostrich had to put his oar in.

“So,” says Ossie, “if you show me a red card then, what happens if I genuinely perceive it as being only a yellow?”
“I know what red is – and what I say goes!” laughed the referee.

Both teams served up a cracker of a game, with the lead constantly changing hands. The Boscombe Polonia players, shirts neatly turned out with red and white squares (which confusingly was identical to Croatia’s national football team strip, not Poland’s ) looked a fairly hefty bunch but proved to be very skilful. Hamworthy took the lead on 6m when Tom Jarvis got free on the left wing and was able to pick his spot, and the game then, after a cautious start, opened up, with the home side equalising and then taking the lead with a spectacular dull-length diving header from their no.14.

It was 2-2 at the interval but Boscombe quickly regained the initiative just after the restart when their no.19 ran through the defence unchallenged, only for Hamworthy’s Richard Preston and Jon Risbridger to turn the game on its head again and make it 3-4 with two close range goals. Boscombe by now were shooting on sight (mainly over the bar) but sheer pressure gave them two goals in the last 10 minutes of the game and a 5-4 lead. It would have been a travesty if either side had last this highly entertaining encounter, and lo, Sam Carr-Brown rocketed home a 15 yard shot in extra time to claim the draw.

Liga Dorset Division 1 (Krok 9): Boscome Polonia 5 Hamworthy Recreation ‘A’ 5
Bez opłat, bez programu
Napoje: brak. Not even a smoked sausage!
Obecności: 9

Following that 10 goal festival, I decided to stay with the same division on Easter Saturday and have a second crack at visiting Stalbridge, where two weeks ago my journey proved abortive as the opposition had been unable to raise a team. An easy journey down the A30 with hardly any traffic, and on arrival in the village, a visit to the famous Dike’s of Stalbridge grocery store. This has been going since 1851 and remains independent and run by the same family, but if you’re thinking it’s something like Arkwright’s corner shop in “Open All Hours”, you’d be very wrong, it’s as big as a Sainsbury’s , has a superb deli and café, and even offers online shopping and home deliveries.

At the ground, I was pleased to find the nets up and the flags in, confirmation the game was on, although most of the Swanage and Herston didn’t turn up until half an hour before kick-off. The Recreation Ground has both cricket and football pitches, (the cricket team were out training today) and a brand new kiddies play area. The pavilion had no particular facilities that I could see, and the soccer pitch was some way distant, on the far side of the cricket pitch. However, walking across to it was a revelation because as I crested the rise, a beautiful panorama of the Blackmore Vale opened out; green fields, yellow fields (rape in full bloom), three or four clusters of farm buildings in the distance, cattle and horses grazing …. Idyllic in the hot Easter sunshine. I decided to sit on the grass rather than stand, although the crest in the ground meant I viewed the game from roughly periscope level, and I had to pull off a few decent diving saves from wayward cross-field passes.

Stalbridge’s no.7 put an early chance over the bar in the first minute before Swanage’s no.9, who looked a cut above the rest of his teammates, joyfully thumped in the first goal. 0-1 was as good as it got for Swanage; they were 2-1 down by the 30 minute mark, at which point the players appealed to the referee for a water break, not an unreasonable suggestion on the day. The referee, Mark Chinnock, was having none of that sort of nonsense , however, and made them play on - what happened next was a rather unprecedented six goals in 15 minutes as the home side advanced the score to 7-2!

Halftime saw the unusual sight of the normally flightless Ostrich positively haring it across the pitch back to the clubhouse as a Mr. Whippy van, belching exhaust fumes, had rolled into in the carpark! On the resumption of play, Stalbridge quickly scored two further goals before declaring; Swanage, still trying gamely, managed to pull a final goal back. So, 12 goals to bring my tally this week to an unexpected 22, and a brilliant afternoon out lazing in the sunshine. Just a shame about the ‘orse flies ….

Dorset League Division 1 (step 9: Stalbridge 9 Swanage Town & Herston Reserves Reserves 3
No admission, no programme
Refreshments: A Ginster’s chicken and mushroom slice from Dikes for a quid, and a “Kitkat” chocolate lolly on a stick from the ice cream van, which left Ossie with a slightly sour aftertaste, for £2.95
Attendance: 11