The Exploding Chocolate Brownie

It's a while since I wrote a blog post. Although only six days. Now that I have returned to pre-lockdown life (it honestly took me a while to remember my routine) I am enjoying aspects of Cornish life such as outdoor cafés. While it's still dry and sunny, which I guess won't be for much longer.

I've mentioned before the new Covent Garden of the South West, aka Charlestown Harbour. I've introduced you to the coffee stall of No. 1 Cubs and now I have discovered their pièce de résistance, the exploding chocolate brownie. I have no idea why 'exploding' but I can tell you it is

The. Most. Delicious. Chocolate. Brownie. Ever.

So a daily visit to the stall is (a) the reason for having little blogging time and (b) very bad for my waistline. But hey, life's short. Probably shorter the more exploding brownies you eat. 

Words of the Week

monopolylogues - a word used by comedian Charles Matthews in 1828 to describe his one-man shows in which he played multiple parts. According to Claire Tomalin, the young Charles Dickens saw his performances at Drury Lane.

blamestorming - whose fault is it? Think the (actually any) Opposition.

sassigassity -  made up word by Dickens meaning 'audacity with attitude'. Think Angela Raynor.

carcolepsy - the tendency to fall asleep as soon as the car starts moving. Not in the vocabulary of young children.

destinesia - you get to where you intended to go but forgot why you went there. Think Boris Johnson.

screwgled - can't remember what you wanted to Google? Think the LibDems.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” [Through the Looking Glass]

The Dickens Boy

Thomas Keneally is a prolific writer. A Booker Prize winner for Schindler's Ark, he has published more than 40 books to date. Still writing at the age of 83, he talked to the Guardian two years ago and, when asked to name "the last book that made me cry", he nominated ClaireTomalin’s Charles Dickens: A Life:

She managed to convey the extent to which the genius and silly man was, in lacerating his wife and pursuing a new love, so unwittingly dedicated to his own destruction.

I was recently recommended Keneally's The Dickens Boy and borrowed the book. I thought that the story of a child of Charles Dickens emigrating to Australia was a fictional device but I soon realised that it actually happened. The book is nevertheless a novel but Edward Bulwer Lyttton Dickens, the youngest of Dickens' ten children, did in fact travel to Australia in 1868 at the age of 16 to begin a new life in the country he thought of as "the land of opportunity".

I soon came to the conclusion that I knew next to nothing about the life of Charles Dickens and that The Dickens Boy would make more sense if I read Tomalin's biography first. Which I have now started. More news in due course on both books.

Heading for a change

Footballers are five times more likely to suffer from dementia than the general population. Because they head the ball. This revealed by a Glasgow University study. Already, the English football authorities have issued guidance for mens' and womens' professional and amateur clubs that recommends "a maximum of ten higher force headers are carried out in any training week." [thefa.com] High force headers are "typically headers following a long pass (more than 35m) or from crosses, corners and free kicks."

This represents a huge challenge for the sport of football. The present stance of the authorities can be summarised in one word: prevarication. Tony Cascarino was a striker who played for Ireland in two World Cups. Writing in the Times, Cascarino is scathing about the guidance:

The new guidance on heading in training, issued by the leading bodies in English football, makes no sense. The thinking appears to be that doing less heading in training means fewer impacts and therefore less risk.

First, if there is an issue with heading, why allow it to continue at all? Second, heading is a skill and it requires practice and plenty of repetition. Reducing how much a player can practise reduces their technical ability and means they might suffer more damage because they head the ball poorly in matches.

The issue is damage to the brain which is a sponge in the skeleton that takes impact regularly.

I'm not a medical expert but the evidence of this and other studies appears irrefutable. There is only one question to be answered: is heading so fundamental to football that we are prepared to see footballers suffer brain damage? The answer surely is: no. I frequently get carried away when watching football and my frustration at a team's inability to create scoring opportunities; I will shout something like "get the ball in the box for him to head it". You can hear fans at matches encouraging their teams to do the same, so we definitely need educating.

If you watch teams such as Barcelona and Manchester City playing the beautiful game, they do so without the traditional big, brawny strikers who can score headed goals. Last season's Champions League winners and Premier League winners did so without such players. I remember the late Brian Clough, winner of two European Cups with unfashionable Nottingham Forest, saying "If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he'd have put grass up there". The clue is in the name: football is meant to be played with the feet. I remember a sickening heading collision last season between players of Arsenal and Wolverhampton Wanderers and that made me think seriously about my attitude towards this issue for the first time.

UEFA - the governing body for European football - has guidance for young people playing football. It includes recommendations and advice on specific aspects such as ball size and pressure, the need for neck-strengthening exercises, and detection of potential concussion symptoms. FIFA - the world governing body - is, as far as I can discover, silent on the issue.

I believe that it is inevitable that, within ten to twenty years, heading will be banned in the laws of the game, exactly as handling the ball is. The authorities would do well to take the kind of initiatives used by climate change activists, by setting a fixed end date to achieve the change and establishing realistic waypoints. Something like the following:

• by 2040, the laws of football will be amended to ban heading the ball, punishable in the same way as handling the ball already is
• by 2035, headed 'goals' will not count as goals scored
• by 2030, free kicks and corners in a football match must be played along the ground
• by 2025, all football goal-scoring statistics and honours (such as 'Golden Boots') will exclude headed goals
• by 2023 the laws of the game will include a definition of 'head' in the laws, as there are currently of hands and arms

1966 World Cup hero Nobby Stiles died last year after suffering from dementia. His son John, a former footballer himself, is campaigning with the Head for Change charity who helped organise a match at Spennymoor Town a week ago, in which heading was banned. A noble cause and well intended, but high level influence is needed to effect change.

There will be those that believe that this will destroy football as we know it - which it will and, in my opinion, for the better - and others who believe such a timetable is too long. The debate should be started and it should not be left to charities to do so.

National Grandparents Day

The problem with blogging about annual events such as National Grandparents Day is: how do you avoid repetition?

This year it's today, October 3rd. Last year was October 4th. We are getting younger. Or perhaps ageing more slowly. I believe it's always on the first Sunday in October. The same as the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, the premier European horse race, the peak of the flat racing season. At Longchamp today. 3:05 BST.

Anyway, here's what my grandkids can do for me today:

• read your grandfather's blog
• comment on some posts in your grandfather's blog (you have a choice of 303)
• check out your grandfather's Twitter feed @usedtobecroque1 and send me a tweet
• post links to your grandfather's blog on your TikTok accounts
• wear a @usedtobecroque1 T shirt
• make a "I love my Grandpa" web site
• take your mum and dad breakfast in bed

Not much to ask really; I'm always asking my grandchildren for birthday and Christmas lists so I thought I'd preempt their requests for today. Just in case.

October 3rd is also National Boyfriend Day in the USA. I don't have one of those - unless I take Tony as a boy and a friend - so I'll stick with checking my blog for grandson comments. Expect there will probably be none.😭

Butchers and referees

Everything is now viewed through a 'shortage' lens. Today's Times reports that "Britain is facing a shortage of butchers amid warnings that pigs in blankets, hams and party foods will be scarce this Christmas". And in the sports pages, "it has become a weekly scramble to find [referees] to take charge of matches, largely around London". "If he knows the rules and has a whistle, we'll take him" said someone from the Amateur Football Alliance. If only I didn't live 300 miles away ...

The solution is obvious: find some areas of surplus, too many people doing things that are at best useless at worst unnecessary. Start with the House of Lords. Here's your challenge for today, dear reader: locate your nearest member of that esteemed body, give him a lorry, her a cleaver and a dead cow, it a whistle [we're gender-inclusive here] and they can drive to the slaughterhouse, chop up the cow, deliver the meat to the butcher's shop, pick up and deliver some dirty diesel to the petrol station forecourts every Monday through Friday then, on Saturdays, referee Local United v Nearby Wanderers. Sundays, go and collect their attendance allowance at the House of Lords. There are 788 of them, for heaven's sake!  Make them useful.

No doubt my erudite readers will have suggestions for other surplus professions; let's hear them!

My guess is the government will be storing up all these apparent problems for a month and then, at the UN Climate Change Conference Cop26 in Glasgow, announcing "great strides by the United Kingdom towards achieving our carbon neutral goals by:

• reducing the number of lorries on our roads
• reducing the number of petrol and diesel cars on our roads
• reducing the numbers of cows and pigs eaten by our people
• nominating the 25th of December as "vegetarian Christmas Day"
• improving the health of our nation with a pilot scheme in which 788 extremely old people [of all genders] 'volunteered' to take part in a trial of the new 'Saturday running about and blowing a whistle' scheme"

What a dramatic announcement this would be! The whole world will be applauding ... until they realise that, if you don't eat the cows and pigs, they'll all be carrying on doing what they do, which is producing tons and tons of methane. "It has been estimated that methane gas from cows is 23x more damaging to our climate than the carbon dioxide produced by cars": check out cows v cars at ourfuture.energy.

Start stockpiling those pigs and blankets, people.