Poems

 I was sitting in the yard with my book when Nikisha appeared at the wall with a couple of pieces of paper in her hand.

"What are those?"

"Nothing. Just poems. I wrote them in school. Would you like to read them?"

One was about the holocaust (with a picture of Hitler at the bottom). The other was about a child hiding in the rubble of a bombed-out town.

Doodling Between Overs

I'm following the Test Match via the Guardian's over by over live coverage- which is almost as good as watching it. The rhubarbing that goes on to fill in dead time is comparable to the cake-talk on the BBC. Flies go buzzing by and I mentally waft  them towards the open window. There are a lot of flies this`year. The humidity disagrees with my arthritis. We had a shower earlier. I'd welcome a good heavy rain storm just so long as it missed Trent Bridge. 

Penn And Teller: Fool Us

I've always liked magic shows. Penn and Teller: Fool Us (awkward title)  is a magic show with a touch of the X Factor. Aspiring performers strut their stuff and if Penn and Teller can't tell how they worked a particular trick they get booked for Penn and Teller's Las Vegas show. The only thing I don't like about it is the compering of Jonathan Ross- who combines tastelessness (two jokes about wanking last night) with a grovelling need to be loved. Great comics never ingratiate.  Penn and Teller (who would still be a great double act without the magic) don't ingratiate. Penn is a blaggardy loud-mouth and Teller is a cunning imp. Paul Daniels (great British magician who used to be big on TV) was saying in an interview I read yesterday that he advises young magicians to learn from non-magic acts. Magic isn't enough. You've got to entertain around the tricks. Daniels himself took Bruce Forsyth as his model. With Penn and Teller you've got the classic big man/little man dynamic. They've learned from Laurel and Hardy, from the Marx Brothers, from the Three Stooges. They're dangerous.  They're unstable.  At any time Penn could explode with wrath or bombast or Teller do something really sneaky and mean.