SPORTING LIFE

CLIVE GAMMON

Michael Brennan lives in a house near Dungarvan, County Waterford, which has a fine wrought-iron gate surmounted by an image of a greyhound in silhouette. "I've had great cracks," he said, " with strangers just driving by who've seen that and stopped. There's a lot of people in Ireland who like talking about greyhounds." But nobody more than Michael, it was obvious. We were cramming half a dozen year-old pups into the back of his car at the time to take them in a training run. We got in ourselves and they overflowed around our necks and into our laps. " Gerraway onl " he yelled and they melted back sinuously. We travelled a few hundred yards down the main road and left it to cut a thick swathe through somebody's hayfield, stopping under a blackthorn hedge.

"We'll let them go now," he said. "Maybe they'll pick up a fox or a rabbit." I was beginning to see why Ireland, and particularly this part of Ireland, the triangle formed by Dungarvan, Clonmel and Kilkenny, was the sacred heartland of greyhound breeding. It is not just a question of bloodlines and the obsessional devotion to the breed of men like Michael Brennan. It is because there is still in Ireland a vast acreage of rough, open country and a strong conviction amongst the population that there is no such thing as trespass. It is a lot easier to train a greyhound if you live in Dungarvan than if you live in Manchester or Cardiff. There is a lot more available small game in County Waterford, too, and you cannot evade the truth that a greyhound which has been brought up to tear after rabbits is a lot more likely to get enthusiastic about an electric hare than a dog which is exercised around the back streets of a city.

Even so, there are some really sharp greyhounds who discover after a few races that it is all a con and stop trying. There is only one, illegal, thing to do then; to release a live hare to them on a training track and make sure that they catch it. This is called ' blooding ' and there's no doubt that it goes on, though respectable trainers like Brennan disassociate themselves from it. It's the truth also that there is no real way of separating ordinary track greyhound racing from that survival from more savage sporting times, coursing, which thrives in Ireland on a much wider scale than it does in Britain. It is very unlikely that the great tradition of Irish greyhound breeding could survive without the coursing background. Greyhounds are simply highly efficient killers, with the same nervous, beautiful lines as those of hounds you see in mediaeval woodcuts of the chase. No doubt if this instinct was bred out of them, it would be the begin ning of the end of track racing.

Such a thought would be inconceivable to Michael Brennan who spends every waking hour he has free from his ordinary job with them. On this June day in Ireland we walked behind the dogs until we reached the grey mud flats bordering the estuary of the Colligan River. "Watch the little black bitch now," Brennan whispered. She stood tense, her delicate legs sunk inches deep in the mud. Then she was flailing across the glutinous surface in a flurry of splashing, the others following. She'd seen a gull standing five hundred yards away which now flapped ponderously off. "If I thought he'd eat it, I'd buy that bird a herring," said Michael sincerely.

"Why's that?" I asked.

"Don't you see the great gallop he's after giving them?" he said. "And think of the way that mud's cloying their legs, strengthening their muscles." The greyhounds stopped where the gull had taken off, all of them baffled except for the black bitch who'd spotted an oyster catcher. "Another hour of this," said Brennan, "and they won't be able to move a limb for the rest of the day."

While they were resting, though, Brennan and I had business. We were taking a brindled three-year-old, Rommel's Legacy, to race at Waterford. She'd come up first at Shelbourne Park, Dublin, the previous Wednesday and we had great hopes.

She couldn't have put in enough time on the seagulls. "Did you ever notice the way she was bumped and hit on the first corner, though?" said Brennan as we tore up our tickets. We led the innocent, lovely offender back to the car. She lay on the back seat and he scratched her ear. "Some people in Ireland are interested in chickens," he told me, beginning to recover his poise again, "but with me it's greyhounds. Are you all right for Youghal races on Tuesday . .

There's a curious notion that hot or sultry weather implies a loss of appetite — "one doesn't want much, just a salad," say those who begin to complain of the "awful heat" the day the temperature outside rises to that of (civilized) life indoors. Not me. My greed increases with every degree F or C and, much as I appreciate salads, they do not appease more than the mildest hunger pangs. Indeed, the only advantage of the winter in which we pass threequarters of our British year is that it so inhibits my eating that I do not resemble the giant porpoise that I would if able to bask in the sun for months at a stretch.

But I do sympathise with those who have rushes of themselves to the feet and who, while hospitable, would rather be outside than in the kitchen for hours when they have guests. The cliches of vichyssoise, salmon mayonnaise and chicken salad do pall, so here are a few variations: Chilled crab or scampi soup. The tinned varieties are excellent, but I recommend a squeeze of lemon stirred into each portion, plus a very little medium sherry (as sherry shipper Alejandro Cassinello, who serves admirable but simple dinners, says, "If ,1 can taste it, there's too much there.") Salad Sichel — named for the late Allan Sichel (whose Penguin Book of Wings is about to be published in revised fthin), because he and his wife' loved both mush, rooms and avocadoes: Shake mushrooms in butter until they just soften, dress with a little salt, paprika and lemon juice. Cut avocadoes into chunks and dress with salt, black pepper and spring onion and parsley, plus sesame salt (Goma Sio in health fodd shops) and lemon juice. Mix the two only just before serving and accompany with thickly buttered slices of pumpernickel. Salmon kedgeree: This is simply kedgeree made with fresh salmon — looks pretty and is easy to prepare in advance of luncheon or supper. A little salmon goes a longish way, but don't be stingy with the cream.

Cold omelettes: I think the Spanish kind, with potato, is almost the best, but you can use diced chicken, chopped bacon, spinach, onions and cream cheese (perhaps plus a few crumbled walnuts), prawns and fresh beans, and so on. Either make two biggish omelettes and clap one on top of the filling while the bottom one is still warm, or else fold the single omelette just once over the filling.

Cold scrambled egg plus almost anything — didn't you go for the bridge rolls filled with it at children's parties? Slivers of smoked salmon, tiny fresh peas, salted peanuts and cottage cheese, miniature pork sausages, already cooked and put on top, potted shrimps, or apple and cooked beetroot, folded in just before you take the eggs off the heat.

For more explicit and creative ideas, a cookery book is called for — and at my call there are two good new ones. The Wholefood Cookery Book by Ursula M. Cavanagh (Faber E1.75) is a complement to the admirable work done by the Wholefood shops and other health food suppliers. Maybe there are some banalities, but there are many ideas, including those for sandwich fillings (the trouble about ' real ' bread, though, is that one has to over-eat on it). I hope that the author will write another book soon about the general use and versatility of the natural foods she knows so well; it is true they are not cheap — but what price flavour and nutrition? As an addict, I admit I'd rather worry about my weight than the unplacidity of my inside.

The late Joy Rainbird was one of those people who are as unassumingly charming as she was good and kind. The wife of the Chairman of the International Wine and Food Society, she could so easily have been a superficial, show-off, self-vaunted connoisseur. But she knew a great deal about food because of her personal concern for it and she was a very good cook, whether she used the superb produce of her west country garden, or the sparser resources of a Mediterranean holiday island home. Cooking with Joy, by Joy Rainbird, with a preface by the late Andre Simon (Michael Joseph, £2) is a collection of her own recipes, with notes on many as to where they came from and how she used them. There is a section on menus, which gives the wines (why didn't they get this properly proof-read?) and which shows the way in which fine meals can be planned, not necessarily imposing the same way of thinking. I don't like the front jacket, which seems to me to epitomize everything that good and appetising food is not, but let's hope in a subsequent edition they will have Joy's picture on the front instead of at the back — her guests loved her and those who cook according to Joy deserve to see her smile as they begin.

Anybody who still needs convincing about the fabulous properties of London life has only to visit Lord's and then any municipal or private club ground on a weekend and make a comparativp survey of the attendance figures. I have been present at one or the other of the two great London professional grounds on more than one occasion when I have found myself so alone in the vast amphitheatre as to wonder whether I had an acute case of halitosis. And yet the kind of semi-farcical games in which I appear at weekends are often attended by as many as eighty or a hundred people, which is the kind of statistic to evoke the .envy of many a county club treasurer. The truth of this statement is not affected by the fact that many of the spectators at our games have come along only in the hope of seeing one of us do himself a permanent injury.

Being one of those many thousands of men who persist in deliberately confusing the joys of cricket with the joys of their own lost youth, I have arranged my affairs so that there is no professional or social engagement so pressing that it cannot be staved off for the sake of the game, and the one thing I have learned about the type of match which breaks out like a rash across the face of the capital every summer Sunday is that nonody feels himself obliged to impersonate either a Gentleman or a Player. There is apparent in our games none of that comical cant about a cricket field being, in the words of that old-time pantheistic looney Lord Harris, "God's classroom." On the contrary, if his lordship must have theological terminology, it might be more accurate to describe our home ground as a devil's cauldron. Only last month we played a side that fielded twelve men against us without asking permission, a breach of etiquette Which was not punished until tea, when we got to the table first, grabbed all the tomato-and-cucumber sandwiches and left our unsporting opponents to make what they could of the fishpaste.

The person who gets the clearest glimpses of the romance of London casual cricket is the fixtures secretary, who each year tries to arrange matches with the same opponents on the palpably false premise that life in London is constant and that people go on forever. In fact what happens is that a factory gets moved out to the west country and bang goes one of your best fixtures. The Government either nationalizes something or denationalizes something and one of the service industries suffers so much that the small firm you have been playing for the last fifteen years becomes nothing more than a fond memory. This spring we tried to arrange a fixture with a club at Chiswick only to be told by their secretary that their side had been disbanded owing to a misdemeanour.' Only after persistent inquiry did we learn that late last season, this club's wicketkeeper, exasperated boyond endurance by a succession of umpire's decisions, had suddenly rooted a stump out of the ground, waddled up to the unsuspecting batsman and poleaxed him with a sharp crack across the side of the head. Are you listening up there, Lord Harris?

London cricket is, of course, quite a different game from cricket anywhere else, partly owing to the fact that the city is the filthiest, deadliest, foulest urban growth in the history of civilization. In the old days, when I was no more than a stripling, there were no smokeless zones in London, and this meant that whenever you were doing badly, you could always appeal against the light no matter what time it was. In the days I speak of our home ground was over at Walthamstow, and there were two features about it which utterly contradicted each other, a groundsman's lodge, and mineral deposits in the pitches which proved that nobody had tended the turf for at least twenty years. Sir Neville Cardus has described how in 1901 at Old Trafford, "C. B. Fry one day extracted some pebbles or minerals from the wicket, and they were later exhibited in the window of Johnny Tyldesley's shop in Deansgate. People would look at them for hours, like students going the rounds of a museum of geology." I can only say that if we had done the same at Walthamstow, we would have had to hire Selfridges to accommodate all our exhibits.

There were other useful amenities of this ground. Between the pitches were deep trenches overgrown with long grasses, so that the other side's long-on, racing to save a boundary, and not being familiar with the terrain, might with any luck overshoot the boundary, disappear down one of the trenches and not be heard of again for several hours. Also recalled with fond affection is the narrow but surprisingly clear stream which flowed along the western extremity of the ground. There was, of course, no wild life in the water, unless one might include the occasional teenage cricketer who turned up for the Sunday joust still drunk from Saturday night, but there was in the bed of this river a valuable residue of old cricket boots, stumps, bails, balls, protective cups, pads and bat handles which could easily be fished out, dried in the sun and utilized in an emergency.

As to the actual standard of our game, let us say that what we lacked in native ability we made up for in sheer stupidity. I have before me the club scorebook for 1943, which tells me we played at Walthamstow, Fulham, Regent's Park and Boston Manor, that we fielded a full side on fewer than three occasions, that the phrase ' Retired Hurt' was used fourteen times in May alone, and that one of our batsmen achieved a mathematical breakthrough by scoring eight runs in thirteen innings, a feat so baffling to whoever it was worked out the season's averages that it finally came out as 61.5. Not a very good recommendation for God's classroom.

I find it hard to relate to you, dear reader, just how depraved and corrupt a pornographic little tome is the Little Red School Book. If ever there was a case for the suppression of revolutionary muck, this Is it. For ex ample, in a section labelled 'Sex', we read; "people go to bed with one another for many reasons. They may lack security and seek it through sex. They may use sex as a way of exploring their own identity. They may have deep feelings for each other and perhaps want to have children. Se may or may not involve strong feelings. Strong feelings may or may not involve sex. People who warn you against both strong feelings and sex are as a rule afraid of both. They haven't dared to do very much themselves, so they don't know enough about it. Or their own experiences of sex may have been bad. Judge for yourself, from your experiences." Now I want you to be quite clear that the garbage that you have just been reading has been adjudged fit only for dirty old men in long mackintoshes. And strictly speaking, what you have actually been doing is commit an illegal act since these words and others like them have been banned by the magistrate, Mr J. D. Purcell of Clerkenwell, and their publisher, Richard Handyside, fined £50 and told to pay £110 costs. Quite right too. In fact, if I'd had my way, he would have been sent to prison for at least fifty years so that he be prevented from spreading such salacious sewage ever again. And the hairy young man (a hippy, I wouldn't doubt) who shouted at the magistrate "You obscene old man!" after he had pronounced sentence, should be flogged. Handyside, incidentally, is a wellknown peddler of porn who doubtless got his training at that school of cultural debauchery, Cambridge University. He has said that the decision will make him bankrupt. Well, that will be no loss; and as for the Secretary of the National Council for Civil Liberties, Tony Smythe, who said that the verdict was an "absolutely sickening decision. This is one of the gravest blows to freedom in Britain which has been experienced for a very long time," I don't think I need tell you what Mrs Whitehouse could do for him. At the risk of tempting you further along the paths of unrighteousness, let me quote for you another section of this forbidden document. You will readily see, I know, how such immorality should not be, and will never be, as long as Britain remains great, allowed. You will also note that the subject matter is — once more — sex. "There are many other forms of family life apart from marriage between one man and one woman. People can have group marriages or live together in a group as a commune. But in law our society still only recognizes one kind of family — marriage between one man and one woman. People use the word 'abnormal' to mean many things. They may mean something which doesn't fit in with their particular standards; they may simply mean something of which they themselves are afraid. 'Abnormal' is a very dangerous word. It's often used as an excuse for the prosecution and repression of some people by others. It's particularly misused in the sexual context." This obvious deference to Mrs Whitehouse Is so insulting and so ungracious that, If I were her, I would sue immediately. Are there no manners left? And when that sneering, leering defence Q.C., John Mortimer (a well known pervert and father of five), made his closing speech at the trial, slobbering as he did over every sexual innuendo in the pathetic and transparent and pathetically transparent disguise of a plea for some sort of wishy-washy liberalism, you could tell where he was at; it wasn't somewhere you or I or Mrs Whitehouse would care to be. "Most legal cases deal with hard facts," lne I began. "This case differs from them in that it deals not with facts, but with opinions," (a likely story). "No one (in this case) will ever be able to establish a danger of corruption or depravity. The Little Red School Book cannot In any common usage of the word be described as pornography. No-one could possibly be titillated by it for purposes of erotic enjoyment. It is part of a continuing argument between those who think children should judge for themselves, and the Prosecution which says that children are best not told the truth when the truth might be 'dangerous'. Sex, they say, should have a sense bf guilt, and then people will be discouraged from unwise experimentation. The defence witnesses "(and a real old rag-bag of do-gooders they were)" put forward an opposing theory; they say that feelings of guilt give rise to obsession, which gives rise to exaggerated interest in sex. They say that to deal with sex in a practical, matter-of-fact way, may help young people find sex less obsessive, It is significant, in a way, that the prosecution has chosen to single out twenty-three pages from a total of 208 — it is characteristic of those seeking censorship to concentrate on sex. Men may do more harm by being wicked politically than ever they will do sexually. Hitler did far more harm than Casanova ever achieved. The attention of the prosecution zones in on twenty three pages dealing with sex"; (quite right too); "our exaggerated interest in that is a symptom of the mystery and clouds that have hung over this matter for years. The book is preaching honesty, concern and judging from one's own experience. Surely this is the opposite effect from 'depraving and corrupting.' This Court will reduce itself to absurdity if it accedes to the prosecution's request." But, thank God, it did and the book was banned. It was rumoured that John Mortimer was so discouraged by the verdict that he was considering giving up the Bar. And good riddance. We could do with fewer meddling lawyers like him. Surely we have had enough of books like this which question authority. Sex education has got to stop if we are ever going to get into the Common Market. If trash like The Little Red School Book (not the Communist overtones) and that other depraved journal, OZ, are allowed to get away with it, the Obscene Publications Squad will go out of business. And we've got enough enemployment as it is. Hurah for Mrs Whitehouse! She and her gang have scored a notable victory and I hope she's proud of it. That toady Frostie (the well-known breakfast cereal) is reported to be planning a victory TV Special The Frost Report on Filth' And I'm sure they'll live happier ever after. Because now that Godfrey's gone and Michael Miles and Billy Cotton Snr. — there are so few of us left.

CAROL WRIGHT

Sun, sea and sand are said to be the lures for a Briton's summer holiday. Local colour and character is less important and faded to a sickly cult of folklore; bored village maidens waving scarfs and skirts in the air while tourists sit over local champagne after dinner. "I don't know where we went, we flew" is unhappily an all too believable approach to holdiays. The travel trade increase this lack of foreign identity with concrete block hotels, nightly filing boxes, twinned in every resort.

In Europe , vie are lucky to be nearer sources of escape from modern resort living. One ' country that carries its past with pride and presents it for the visitor to enjoy is Portugal The medieval end of the known world, cut off and almost smothered by the size of Spain, Portugal has remained remarkably isolated and unspoilt. Modern hotel blocks do exist to mar horizons — Estoril Sol, a particularly horrid example — and the Algarve has become an English suburbia; but on the whole Portugal has avoided some of the worst tourism excrescences.

She has retained much of the comforts and stateliness of the past to pamper her guests. Palaces at Bucaco and Sintra are gracious hotels; old castles as the Sao Felipe at Setubal south of Lisbon become fine inns; while the Count of Milfontes keeps a delightful family hotel in his mini drawbridged castle at Milfontes on the road south from Lisbon to the Algarve. The Count presides over the meals at the end of the long refectory table recounting acidly witty stories in excellent English. In the Arrabida area, cliff-set and secretive of beaches south of Lisbon, a seventeenth century castle at Portinho becomes a charm, ing summer hotel with bedrooms in the pepper pot turrets and meals on the vineclad ramparts. A few miles inland at Azeitao, the wine and cheese village, is the Quinta das Torres an eighteenth century manor house squared round a large ornamental pond and rOmantic with candlelight (electricity is provided though not preferred) and four poster beds. Olive wood fires burn in the stone grates downstairs and there is always the comfort of the substantial tea, the Portuguese love of fresh scones, and ' English ' cake (called Madeira' by us).

The thoughtfulness for the visitor shows In the provision of pousadas for the motorist, Way back in the 'thirties when tourism was a pioneering pleasure the Portuguese government sponsored a chain of hotels situated in spots of fascination to the foreigner but which were not likely to support resort hotels. Stern towered Braganza is one such isolated spot. Where available mellowed castles, convents and manor houses have been cinderellad with modern comforts into comfortable inns. Where no suitable ruin existed boldly modern buildings have been created architecturally at home with the surroundings, as at Valenca on the Minho border with Spain; grey granite snugged into the Vaubanesque ramparts snarled at Spain. The twelve rooms here are typically fitted with dark, handcarved wooden bedposts, white drawn thread covers, polished tiled floors with soft rugs, lamps, and local antique ornaments. I had a meal served in my room when I stayed here, and the care with which the maids set the table so I should get the best view while eating was characteristic of the pousada welcome. Old local crafts marry well with modern plumbing comforts in these pousadas. The prices too are blessedly old fashioned in their reasonable lowness. A car is essential to enjoy the pousada chain of accommodation and stays are limited to five days.

Portugal is a small enough country with good uncrowded roads to tempt the touring motorist, but until now this delight has been dulled by the long approach drive through France and Spain.

From this month, however, a new direct car ferry from Southampton to Lisbon will ease this chore at a price. Run by Southern Ferries Limited, Eagle will take two days to reach Lisbon and then will continue to Tangier. The fares include meals and all cabins have shower and toilet. The ship also has swimming pool, shopping centre, children's room, dance floor and cinema. Fares Southampton-Lisbon cost from E40 single in a two berth cabin and cars from £7 single (under eight foot long). The company have announced that from October to the end of March they will be running a weekly service to Lisbon and Tangier for winter motoring holidays.