Well today I tested out, possibly to destruction, the theory of “sweating out” a cold. Having been down with a rotten one for a couple of days, I really wasn’t fancying a scheduled cricket game, but since I knew we were already two short I didn’t think I really could pull out – nine is almost a team; eight really isn’t.

So I trotted along, and wasn’t altogether surprised to be asked to keep wicket. Well, I told myself, at least I won’t have to run – just leap up and down and around hundreds of times ….

But in cricketing terms it worked quite well. I was pretty chuffed with how I kept, to one serious quickie and a couple of sometimes wayward medium pacers.

And then happily I didn’t (quite) have to bat as we astonishingly – with the help of a magnificent century – managed to successfully chase a total of 251 in 32 overs.

And I didn’t even get a lot of bruises …

It was only the third time I’ve kept since taking it up again after an 18-year hiatus, and I think I have to thank cycling for the fact that I survived the experience – without the underlying level of fitness it has given me I would never have made it.

And feeling rotten might have even helped in an odd way – it took some of the pressure off feeling like I have to succeed amid an otherwise all-male team.

But as for the sweating-out theory, we’ll see. I’m off to bed for a long sleep … I may be some time.

A fascinating collection of posts on the 18th-century email list has been exploring historic inks. It’s a reminder of how much more complicated everyday living was in the past; how much you had to know about all sorts of things that now happen invisibly, off stage.

I once intended to learn Chinese painting – might even get back to it one of these days, since I love the results – so I have got a lovely stone palettes and ink sticks, which just have to be ground with water.

But in the West these don’t seem to have developed; instead you started from scratch. There are some recipes here. (And if you are wondering about the seemingly essential “gallnuts” they are: “A nutlike swelling produced on an oak or other tree by certain parasitic wasps.”)

But the results, it seems, from the The ink corrosion website – which deals in detail with “major threat to our cultural heritage” – were not always ideal.

This left me musing about modern inks: pen and computer. How durable are they? But then again as librarians often warn, electronic records are certainly worse.

* Women’s eNews today has a commentary on the lack of visibility of prominent women in the media. I found it hopelessly naive and US-centric, but it did remind me I’d been meaning to point to Pratie Place’s post on the Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai. If you were going to write a book on “great women of the modern world” she’d be near the top of the list.

* Research into the death of Christopher Marlowe that looks somewhat better founded than such reports usually are.

* Two Australian journalists face jail for refusing to reveal a source. This was not some issue of “national security”, but a wrangle over veterans’ pensions that embarrassed the government. So sad to think that little more than a decade ago Australia was one of the world’s leaders in human rights. It is getting more like the “Land of the Not-Free” every day – which of course suits John Howard just fine. Still, I suppose it is at least not yet AS bad ….

* Alabama’s use of the death penalty sounds like something out of the 19th century:

All 19 of Alabama’s appellate court judges are white, as are 41 of its 42 elected District Attorneys. Odds are 1 in 3 that your jury will be all white as well. …Though black people account for only 26% of Alabama’s population overall, nearly 63% of its prisoners are black. Of the 23 people executed in Alabama between 1975 and 2001, 70% were black.

So much for the right to life.
(Via Pen-Elayne.)

I’ve been planning it, then drawing back from it, getting excited, then getting cold feet, but I finally handed in my resignation at work yesterday. So soon (well probably in three months – that’s the contract period) I’ll be out on Grub Street, trying to earn a crust with whatever ideas for stories I can dream up (and, hopefully, some time soon, a book contract!)

Wish me luck – I’ll need it.

(The image above is from a Punch cartoon – my source simply dates it as “Victorian”. The text underneath says: Old-fashioned Party (with old-fashioned predjudices). “Ah! Very clever I dare say. But I see it’s written by a lady, and I want a book that my daughters may read. Give me something else!”)

Fearless prediction of the day: Sir Ian Blair, Chief of the Metropolitan Police (London), won’t be in his post in a month. That follows his astonishing inept handling of the aftermath of the shooting of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes.

It probably won’t be the disgraceully hysterical policing that led to the shooting down of an innocent man by police that does for him – though it should. The inquiry will be dragged out long enough, and the water muddied enough (where did those CCTV tapes go?) that the media will have him out before then for his personal actions. (This post* does an excellent job of outlining what went wrong, so I won’t go over this ground again.)

But the man who keeps questioning why “so much fuss” is being made over the police shooting rather than the criminal bombings (Excuse me – you’re the state and you killed one of your own citizens for no reason at all) and who makes an unbelievable joke of his response when told – he says 24 hours after the shooting on learning of the mistake he thought “Houston, we have a problem” – is sure to keep making so many errors that the politicians already emerging like football chairmen to express “total confidence in the manager” will soon be changing their tune.

There’s only one thing I’m worried about. I’m agreeing with Tim Hames. That’s never happened before.

* Found on Britblog Roundup No 27, in which yours truly also has a humble part.