Creeping Up

You will be pleased to know that Ipswich Town are gradually creeping up the League One table.

Since getting relegated from the Premier League in 2002, the team meandered up and down the Championship table with finishing positions ranging from 3rd to 15th - including two unsuccessful play off campaigns - before a further relegation to League One in 2019. Going through nine permanent (sic) managers and six caretakers, as well as financial administration, during that period.

I have no knowledge of the financial constraints within which managers worked under the ownership of Marcus Evans after he purchased the club in 2007 but there were clear indications with tiny transfer budgets and a number of different loan players coming in each season. Not exactly conducive to long term development. In April last year Evans sold the club to an American consortium Gamechangers 2020, who own Phoenix Rising FC, a second tier soccer club in the US. They claim they will "invest heavily" and "are committed to restoring ITFC to its former glory ".

What this means remains to be seen but on the face of it a return to the glory days of winning the First Division (1962), the FA Cup (1978) and UEFA Cup (1981) for this small town club is completely impossible. There are, and have been, small town clubs in the Premier League (Bournemouth, Burnley, Norwich, Swansea and others) but their stay has often been short term and characterised by permanent relegation battles. Still, we fans would take that, at the same time knowing that, without a wholesale restructuring of English football, it is not possible for a club with a stadium capacity of 30,000 to compete financially with clubs with 60,000+ stadium capacity, worldwide marketing presence and owned by sovereign wealth funds and hugely rich Russians, Americans and the like.

Manager Paul Cook was recruited on 2 March 2021. A month later the club was under new ownership; they finished 9th at the end of the season and in the summer there was a huge overhaul of the playing staff. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the difficulty of effectively building a new team, the new season started very badly, with no wins after six games and the club in the relegation places. By early December we were in 11th place and the owners decided a further managerial change was necessary. Cook was sacked and replaced by Kieran McKenna, who had been a first team coach at Manchester United but has no experience as a manager. Improvements were slow in coming but the Tractor Boys are now 8th in League One and only 5 points off the play off places, with 4 wins from the last 5 matches.

I may be delusional in detecting hopes of a revival and my new found hope may prove short lived. We've tried all sorts of managers from Roy Keane to Mick McCarthy to ex Town captain Jim Magilton and none have brought the hoped for revival of fortunes, so maybe going for an unknown manager isn't any more of a gamble than they were. Ultimately though, all the managers were working under severe financial constraints. Even so, there have been plenty of clubs that have managed to achieve spectacular success by successive promotions without large amounts of money - Wigan and Bournemouth come to mind. I'm afraid Ipswich Town has not been a well-run club for years. I'm just hoping the Gamechangers will live up to their name.

I'm sad that the club rarely appears on TV and I live 360 miles from Ipswich so am unable to visually assess their performances. But I live in hope of doing so in the future, if they can just kick start a return to ... well, not glory days but at least as competitive a position as this historic club should be.

A Setback

I had some work done in my lounge. "We'll have to move this ... and this .. and ..." Whoa! Be super careful of that round table which, underneath a protective sheet, houses the most difficult jigsaw puzzle known to humankind. I say. Very much an incomplete puzzle, a work in (slow) progress.

The building work (removal and disposal of asbestos, since you ask) finished, they offer to restore all items of furniture to their original positions. But I exclude the puzzle table from that, preferring to take care of it myself. Carefully remove the sheet ... oh my! There are pieces all over the place, including the floor. Disaster! What's more, this Star Wars jigsaw is double sided and the colour of the reverse side - i.e. the more difficult side which I understandably chose to leave until the second run through - is uncannily similar to that of my lounge carpet.  Much hunting on my (sore) knees ensued and this morning I began to process of retro fitting all the loose pieces.

I'm most of the way there but have discovered a potential problem: there appears to be a piece missing. 😭 More scrabbling around on the floor. The covering sheet, meanwhile, has been through the washing machine and the tumble drier so I put my head inside those to check, also retracing the route from the lounge to the utility room. Nothing. Maybe the piece is on the puzzle table somewhere. I'll keep you informed.

On the bright side, when I got the sheet out to cover the puzzle, I found one of my lost socks (see 22 Jan). Although it no longer matters as there is now no such thing as a pair.

The Days Of Vinyl

If you're a serious hifi fan, you'll eschew digital renditions of musical classics - whether Beethoven or Woody Guthrie - in favour of classic vinyl recordings.

My earliest records were vinyl records. LPs (Long Play): 33⅓, EPs (Extended Play): 45 and Singles: 78 revolutions per minute - rpm. 12 inch, 10 inch, 7 inch.

Remember?

Anyway, I am now a vinyl. An old 78.

Matchmaking

I entertained various friends and family over Christmas with my "lost socks" tale. Sorting out my sock drawer in preparation for festive visiting, I discovered eight unmatched socks. Weird.

I know, not at all entertaining. Dunno why I blathered on about my socks, as though anybody would be interested. Turned out that someone actually listened and, on my recent birthday, I received these:

Yesterday I wore two of these:

At the same time. Not a pair.

Now I understand. I was brought up to regard wearing non-matching socks as a Crime Of Fashion. No longer; it's the New Normal of Fashion. And I've gained eight (previously useless) socks.

Nicknames answers

• the Desert Foxes are Algeria
• the Eagles of Carthage are Tunisia
• the Lions of Teranga are Senegal
• the Falcons of Jediane are Sudan
• the Elephants are Ivory Coast
• the Lions of Chinguetti are Mauritania
• the Scorpions are Gambia
• the Blue Sharks are Cape Verde

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The Power of the Dog

This movie, a dramatisation of a novel by Thomas Savage, is already receiving a number of award nominations. For me it's an art film, by which I mean that it's more than just a visual narrative; it embraces various art forms. From amazing Montana landscapes to a modernistic score performed by what seems to be a string quartet with occasional piano, with authentic 1930s paraphernalia such as motor cars, clearly numbered acts and a very wide screen, the movie begins with an impressive cattle drive which defines the central location of the story.

The title is taken from Psalm 22:20: “Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog.” Director Jane Campion (of Top of the Lake) has said "The power of the dog is all those urges, all those deep, uncontrollable urges that can come and destroy us". It also felt to me to have a sense of the "black dog" of depression.

I mulled over how much to tell of the whole story or to avoid spoilers for you. I have tried to follow a middle path, to tell enough to encourage you to watch the movie but not to make it a fruitless exercise. I might not succeed so you may want to watch it before reading further.

Phil and George Burbank own a ranch and the film centres on their relationship. They are shown as very different siblings; Phil is the practical, physical rancher and George the manager. They don't really much like each other. Both are lonely but deal with that differently: Phil relishes being on his own whereas George seeks to alleviate his loneliness by marrying local inn owner Rose, whom Phil takes an instant dislike to and calls a "suicide widow". There's a scene where George says to Rose "how nice it is not to be alone". Rose has a son Peter who is mocked by Phil and the ranch hands for his effeminate ways.

These are the four characters whose journeys we follow. There are hidden depths to Phil and Peter; eventually Phil comes to see great worth in the young boy and helps him develop ranchers' skills, particularly when he discovers that Peter saw his father hang himself and now his mother is deteriorating into alcoholism. Peter responds, growing surprisingly self confident and determined.

George and Rose are frankly less interesting and become peripheral to the narrative.

Phil himself has hidden depths. In one scene the Governor, visiting the ranch, reveals Phil was "Phi Beta Kappa in Classics at Yale". This is my main reservation about the film: none of Phil's background is explored or explained - how did this educated and cultured man end up as a cattle herder? - and I wanted there to be more to this character, less of it hidden. He helps Peter to grow but doesn't do so himself.

In Top of the Lake, Campion has a clear feminine focus, so strong that "men are bad, women good" pretty much sums up the theme. Here she hints at effeminate male sexuality with some homoerotic scenes and suggestions - but no more than that, it's subtle suggestion, nothing more. I'm not sure it adds anything to the film but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a second reservation for me.

My final issue is that the strong, wide visuals and excellent musical score really mean that I wished I had seen it in the cinema to get the full experience. This may be a reservation about my TV rather than the film. Overall I believe this a worthwhile film, it's pace is near perfect, the acting is excellent and the characters well-defined and well contrasted. If you watch it, let me know whether your thoughts are different from mine.