A win for Raducanu and a loss for Last Night of the Proms

We have always watched Last Night of the Proms, generally from the inertia of habit, but also to celebrate something uniquely English. In my student youth, I even got tickets for two Last Nights, standing with the other Promenaders close to the front rail. I even managed a surreptitious photo of Colin Davis conducting the Last Night festooned with paper streamers fired from the audience. In contrast, I am not a tennis fan. Unlike Ann, I never even played the game as a child, and have never watched finals at Wimbledon or other great rackets. But following the headline trail of Emma Raducanu from rank outsider to finalist at the US Open, I determined that this should be the one tennis match I would watch, even sacrificing the Last Night to do so. And boy was it worth it! That woman was a wonder to behold, turning me into an instant fan with each amazing stroke. She even seized her moment of luck when it was most needed on the last set, turning a fall and bleeding cut to her advantage to regain composure while her opponent, the plucky Leylah Fernandez, was growing more visibly frustrated and dispirited each moment of waiting. Finally came that wondrous ace, with game set and match. This will surely be ranked among the all-time great matches. You, dear reader, will note I am quick to learn the lingo, though I did keep referring to the start as the kick off and the court as the pitch. 

Let no one call me Brainless

On Saturday, I received the CD I had requested showing my brain scans.  They make a fascinating sequence of cross sections which can be run through like a movie, starting from one side and emerging at the opposite. It's not a view of oneself one normally sees - but quite amazing to be suddenly presented with this new aspect of one's inner being. The head is a three-dimensional construction, shey represent the three possible ways of sectioning it, Coronal, Transverse and Sagittal in the jargon. Other specialities have their own jargon. I had to do Technical Drawing at school, a subject now as obsolete as doing history from the viewpoint of the English conquerors, and we called them Front Elevation, Side Elevation and Plan. Sailing has latitude and longitude, the third dimension, radius, being fixed, but specified an aeronautics as altitude. In astronomy they are Declination and Right Ascension. The third dimension is then distance to the star either from the sun, or from the centre of the galaxy.

I also took two more boxes of books to the church. They seemed very grateful to get them, and so they should be, for turning the corner into the church yard I scraped the side of the car on a high kerb and will have to get it resprayed or repainted. Perhaps I should be called brainless after all, the number of times I seem to scrape the car. I may have to exchange it for an old builder's truck, if my driving deteriorates much further.

Terry Barton is a lively, interesting man who works in the next village out of an old barn behind one of the farms. I drove in to see him this morning, and he came out to greet me like an old friend with, "I haven't seen you for a while". He does the best repairs to car damage for miles around, and for considerably less than a Jaguar dealership would charge. His barn is filled with cars and motorcycles in various states of being stripped and repainted, some hanging from the ceiling, other lying on their roof upside down with wheels in the air. He chatted for a while about his two daughters, one at and the other about to start at university, then came out to look at my efforts to remould the car's looks.

Terry's barn

He admired the new car as he assessed the damage, and admitted that, following repairs to my previous Jag, he too had bought one. His back has been bad for years - not a good thing in his trade - and the Jag is the most comfortable car he has found for it. Also, he likes to drive round with the heated seat on even in summer to give him some ease. The poor fellow had a stroke when he was only 30, so is on anticoagulants and can't take many common painkillers. He crawled underneath for a fuller assessment, but emerged shaking his head. The strip was in two colours, blue and black, but had split at one point. If I don't mind driving round with an embarrassing gap, he will take it off and see what he can do short of having to order a new moulding from Jag, and then I will get the quote. I can't wait.