Following in the footsteps of Beefy

Fantasy Bob has been hindered from posting in this blog type thingy due to the extended fixture schedule of Carlton Cricket Club.  This has taken up his limited creativity. Suggestions have been made that his avid readership - both of them - have been conspiring to add fixtures to the schedule to keep the match reports coming.  Judge for yourself whether their conspiracy has been worth the effort - the reports (which are the usual old rubbish) can be found in the usual place. 

But despite this, attention turns slowly to other things.  Last week Fantasy Bob was taken out of the thrift laden world he inhabits daily, by way of a golf outing to the opulence of Archerfield.  You may wonder how to define opulence in these days of material indulgence, but when the pile in the carpet in the changing room is thick enough to lose a ball in, you're probably getting near.

Now, Fantasy Bob is living proof that the techniques of cricket and golf don't necessarily mix well.   Of course, he has no technique in either.  But his long career of cover drives deep into the gorse demonstrates that while having the hands ahead of the ball in cricket can help keep the ball on the deck, in golf it simply keeps it in the crap.  So it was with limited expectations that he teed up.  Those expectations were fulfilled.   But golf reporters throughout the world were forced to record a personal best in that Bob retained his ball until the 17th hole when unaccountably it decided to bury itself in the bushes some distance from its intended line of flight.

But thankfully Archerfield is not a wholly cricket free environment and Fantasy Bob's self pity as he noted his score after only 4 holes would be higher than his batting average this season, was assuaged by the fact that among Archerfield's membership is none other than Sir Ian Botham - Beefy himself.  It is of course Beefy who has been Fantasy Bob's cricketing inspiration throughout his career in his self styled genuine all rounder persona.  Unfortunately, fewer of Fantasy Bob's long hops have returned top Test batsmen to the pavilion and his hard hitting middle order batting has frequently delivered the 00 without the 1 to precede.   But, but, but a man needs his heroes and Beefy is firmly up there in FB's pantheon.

Also up there is Ludwig van Beethoven, unjustly overlooked by the selectors but a significant opening bowler in his day.  Outside his performances on the pre-Romantic cricket fields of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Beethoven was of course something of a musician.  Celebrated during his early career in Vienna for his astounding improvisational skills (which so reports have it was also a feature of his batting) he was regularly bashing the ivories for assorted companies of toffs.  On one occasion, so the story goes, he was generating some heat from the keyboard but the sussuration of toff talk in the room became just a bit too much for him to bear.  Getting to his feet he slammed the lid of the keyboard shut and stomped to the door declaring 'Gentlemen, there are many of you, but there is only one Beethoven................'  Now that's what I call style.

Well - will the Pope really visit Grange Loan this week?  Someone has planted a rumour...............