Notebook
The Test matches are becoming a bit ridiculous. England have done it again — Mike Brearley has once more worked his Houdini act, as several cricket correspondents have put it — and that is wonderful news. The Royal Wedding was nicely placed between the third and fourth Tests, so that, with flags continuously waving in the sun, our national morale has been shored up for two weeks. But what has happened to the game of cricket? In the Edgbaston Test no batsman reached 50 in any of the four innings, on a wicket which was judged to be so good that the Australian captain, Kim Hughes, thought England should have made 800 in their first innings. The last time no one made 50 in a completed Test match — I suppose that Mr Bill Frindall of Radio 3 was able to recall this without a moment's hesitation — was in the first Test between the West Indies and England in 1934 (played on a wet pitch in Barbados, if you want to know). In the last two Tests five of our recognised batsmen — Brearley, Gower, Gooch, Gatting, Willey — have made less than a total of 100 runs; the Australians have done even worse. Various 'technical' reasons have been given for this shameful performance by some of the best batsmen in the world. Sir Len Hutton says that they were 'bowled round their legs'; and the tactics of the one-day game have undoubtedly had their effect. (The Guardian suggested, without being completely serious, that both matches went exactly according to Brearley's carefully laid and brilliantly executed plans.) I think, rather, that psychological forces have been at work, and they have affected both sides. At several stages in the last two Test matches almost all the batsmen were seized by panic which they were unable to check. At the same time there was plenty of hostility between some of the players (does Lillee have to make his contempt for Brearley quite so obvious?) which worked to Eng land's advantage. Willis and Botham were clearly able to control and harness their anger much more effectively than the Australians. Perhaps the Australians spend so much of their time being angry — I heard Rodney Marsh at Lord's tell a spectator that he would 'break your f...ing teeth' — that they cannot direct and restrain their emotions when it matters most.
As a collector of useless information I can warmly recommend, in these dog days, a booklet entitled The Facts about Sleep and Rest' which has just been published by the BUPA Medical Centre. There are apparently two phases to sleep, known as Non-Rapid Eye Movement and Rapid Eye Movement, which last about an hour and a half and are repeated four or five times during the night. 'If these patterns are disturbed or for some reason cut short, the loss of REM sleep is most important and the individual may rapidly suffer sleep debt.' So that is why I haven't been sleeping very well lately: I had put it down to the weather. However, I am not quite sure what to do about it. The booklet contains a lot of advice on how to get into a restful sleep — a brisk walk before bedtime, a hot bath, a drink (but not brandy or coffee, which will stimulate you), the correct positioning of the pillow — and detailed instructions on how to yawn yourself to sleep. At about this point I yawned quite naturally and had a 'cat nap', which I discovered when I woke up is 'the third commonest sleep pattern', affecting about 15 per cent of the population. I read on in a desultory way to learn that women go to bed later than men and awake feeling sluggish. When men, having retired earlier, wake up after about seven hours, 'alertness returns quickly and they are up easily'. (Unfortunately the opposite is true for myself and my wife.) There is a frightening paragraph about 'the anxiety tension state', when 'night clothes become rucked up or tight, sounds become louder, a sizzling pulse is heard in the ear. Floor boards creak, water pipes rumble, the clock ticks.' These tensions can be relieved by practising relaxation at work: lying on the floor of the office for a few minutes every day is apparently helpful. But the most alarming advice is contained in the hints on relaxing while driving: 'Allow yourself to ride in the car and over oncoming incidents.' When I do that, I only hope that all those involved in the oncoming incident will be able to get BUPA to pay for the treatment of their injuries.
Tt was generous, though surely otiose, of 1. a gentleman from the Chateau Mouton Rothschild to say that the thieves who stole 1,500 bottles of the 1975 vintage from the chateau last weekend would be 'committing a second crime if they drink the wine within five years'. Anyone taking the trouble to select the '75 (in preference to the inferior '74 or the lighter, but promising '76) would not only know its value but also when to start drinking it. However, I doubt whether the stolen wine will be easily sold, as the Baron Philippe de Rothschild — uniquely, I think, among the producers of first-growth clarets — marks every one of his bottles with a number on the label. If the thieves are therefore obliged to keep the wine to escape detection, they may care to know that, in the opinion of Mr Michael Broadbent, Master of Wine and director of Christie's wine department, it is 'a dry, very hard, concentrated, fruity wine . . . a long laster.' It should remain very drinkable until about 2020.
Earlier this year a girl student with a £300 overdraft at the Midland Bank was locked in a branch office of the bank and then detained in a police cell before being prosecuted for obtaining money by deception. The judge directed that she be acquitted, and the bank was roundly rebuked for having failed to 'listen' to her in the spirit of its appalling television commercials, to which we have been subjected for so many months. Last week a judge criticised the Midland for its 'disgraceful attitude to young customers' and for using the police 'as a kind of threat' when another client of the bank was charged with deception, after running up an overdraft which had not been approved. It is, of course, enjoyable to hear once again that the Midland may not be behaving exactly according to its televised image. But there is another point of association between these two cases: both were heard in the Crown Court at Snaresbrook in Essex. Is it possible that the manager of the Snaresbrook branch is trying to express his contempt for the Midland's advertising campaign? Or is it that the judge, haunted by the dreadful jingle about the listening bank, is getting his revenge?
4 Beans Can Kill', according to a head line in a recent issue of Garden News. I was aware that a surfeit of spinach can make you seriously ill, that someone had died from an overdose of carrot juice, and that a whole nutmeg can give you dangerous hallucinations; but this warning is much more disturbing. I have been a fairly regular consumer of beans — kidney, butter, runner and broad — for many years without any apparent ill effects. However, Dr Arnold Bender, head of the Department of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, London, says that all pulses — the word already begins to make them sound less attractive — contain lectin in their raw state. This is the same stuff which was injected from the point of an umbrella into the body of the Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov, with fatal results. Dr Bender states that dried beans are the most dangerous; the poison is present when they are uncooked, and when cooked slowly in casseroles. It only disintegrates and becomes harmless if the beans are boiled for at least ten minutes. So are we to eat no more beans in salads, no more cassoulets? What worries me most is that after ten minutes' boiling the beans would be uneatable.
As I sit in the garden listening to the live murmur of a summer's day, and watching the butterflies which appeared in great numbers last weekend (but, sadly, .1 have not seen one ladybird), I find it difficult to get very concerned about whether or not the recession has come to an end. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says it has; Lord Thorneycroft and Mr Pym say it hasn't. Then Sir Geoffrey Howe says there is 'absolutely no difference' between the three of them. Ah, well, I suppose the answer to this problem will just have to wait until the autumn.
Simon Courtauld
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