Posts by Rob Hosking
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My memory may be faulty, but were they REALLY that much of an underdog? I can't find the pre-tournament bookie odds for SA to win (surely as good an indicator as any.) From what I can recall, they'd re-entered the rugby scene, and acquitted themselves rather well in the years leading up to the 1995 tournament.
They'd toured here the previous year and were fairly comprehensively outplayed by a rather patchy AB side (two wins to the ABs and a draw - and the ABs should have won the drawn match at Eden Park, even though it was a very messy game.) The ABs had just been beaten twice in a row at home by France - a first, I think - so the Boks weren't rated that highly.
Against that, of course, they were on home turf. At least the refs were neutral, this time. [Mutter mutter 1976 mutter mutter Bruce Robertson penalty try mutter mutter crook refs....]
My memory is the two teams rated high going into the tournament were England and Australia. Aussie seemed to be missing a gear when the tournament started - there were rumours of internal problems.
England were beaten by South Africa in the first pool game of the tournament, and of course we all know what happened when England met NZ. [LOMU!! Oh!! Ohh!! ]
As for the fillum itself...haven't seen it yet, but when I heard the casting I had an 'of course' response to Freeman as Mandela - hell, Freeman has been channelling Mandela since at least the Shawshank Redemption.
But Matt Damon as a Springbok captain? Some things just feel wrong, and this is one of them.
On a completely different note: my favourite sports fillum of all time.
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Quite liked this take on it
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This is about the fourth recommendation of Hilary Mantel I've come across this month.
And at least one of the others was from someone else who is generally hard to please.
My literary discovery of the holidays - years and years late - is William Golding.
I'd read Lord of the Flies as a teenager - my English class didn't study it (we did the One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest as the modern lit novel that year) but one of the other English classes did and it sounded intriguing.
It was - and I'm sure I'd get more out of it now.
But I picked up a biography of William Golding with some of my Christmas book vouchers.
The life itself is a bit boring - writers by and large just sit at desks and write - but the discussion of his work has sent me looking at some of his other books.
I just started 'The Inheritors' which I'm really enjoying, in a somewhat mordant way.
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...and Happiness.
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It's a real pity that tosser Mick Hucknall covered 'If You Don't Know Me By Now', too, because the original is so glorious.
Heard the original on the radio yesterday and it wasn't the Simply Red version which popped into my head - it was this one:
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But some of you will have come across the Auckland-based journalist and author Chris Bell, who used to play bass for Freur live.
wow. Didn't know that either. Never met Chris in the flesh but have had numerous online exchanges with him. On tax policy and Alvin Stardust, though not in the same discussion....
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@Sacha: Doot Doot didn't make it to number one (I looked it up to win an argument on this very issue last year) but did make the top 10.
It was there for ages. It seemed.
And I think it was a hit in some other countries as well. Canada springs to mind, for some unknown reason.
They were Welsh, from memory. I like to picture the entire stadium at Cardiff Arms Park, instead of singing 'Land of My Fathers' et al, warbling
'And now we go Doot
Doot Doot
WHIRRRRrrrrrrrr....... -
It was the way they were laced with shotgun pellets which sticks in my mind.
"Leave it on the side of your plate!" we were told when we complained about our teeth hitting little lead pellets.
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On one level, as we follow idealistic Em and hedonistic Dex through the nineties and into the new millennium, this is a swift and funny Hornby-esque novel of manners. If you're roughly that age yourself, prepare to cringe and/or giggle in recognition at many points in the book. On another level, it's a meditation on love and life and what we want out of them. It rattles breezily along, and you gradually figure out where it’s going, by which point it’s too late not to care about the characters and where they’re headed.
...The novel is a light read, except for the bits when it very much isn’t. Don’t read it if you’re feeling the least bit emotional. Or perhaps don’t read it unless you want to feel emotional.Got One Day and, Jolisa, it was everything you said it was.
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Ah visits to the library as a child... Friday evenings after school - we were allowed three books each, the first of which I would be halfway through by the time we got home.
Snap re: the Friday evening library visit thing - only in my case it was every second Friday.
It was a small town and there were two librarians - the nice one let me look in the adult section: the horrible one didn't. They worked alternating Fridays.
It wasn't as if I was looking for novels with rude bits - I was mostly after non fiction. History, politics, etc.
The library was very small: it would fit twice fit into Arty Bees and there would probably still be room for the lav. But I discovered this wonderful thing called Interloan, where you could order books that weren't even in the library.
So I'd come in on Friday and the nice librarian - Mrs Rattray - would get this massive ledger out from under the desk and ask me what I was ordering this week. I can still hear the thump of the ledger as she dumped it on the desktop. The things that stick in your mind...
But people like Mrs Rattray are godsends to bored bookish kids with unusual interests, aren't they?
I think I just decided who my Christmas Eve toast will be to....