 Spot the Clinamen Over on our site in development (wait for it, wait for it), we had an interesting discussion about Scrabble and this year’s British National Champion, the fantastic Mikki Nicholson.
In principle, I like all games until my children start winning. And until recently I was a big fan of Scrabble. So much so that on my shelves I have a copy of Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis. I have this book partly because The Times claims that ‘Stefan Fatsis is the Hunter S. Thompson of Competitive Scrabble’, but also because the book was published by Yellow Jersey Press in the days (2001) when Yellow Jersey published brilliant sports books no-one else would touch.
The story follows US sports-writer Fatsis as his Scrabble Rating rises from zero to 1697, and you’ll have to believe me that 1697 is both unimaginably good but also not quite good enough. Like being British No 3 at tennis.
I remember not quite sharing Stefan’s passion for Scrabble as far as 1697 – I was perhaps rooting for him whole-heartedly as far as about 1501, but nearly ten years later the best way of remembering what I liked about the book is to cite the sentences I marked with pencil in the margins.
‘But this – the money, the pressure, the tension, the egos, the pride, the prestige. This isn’t just about playing a board game. This is about skill and achievement and self-worth.’
‘The distances and location of the premium squares are just right. The game is a carefully choreographed pas-de-deux, a delicate balance between risk and reward.’
‘For Matt, as perhaps for James Murray, William Minor, and Joe Leonard, words are the objective reality of life.’
‘In the Book of John, Pontius Pilate asks Jesus, Quid est veritas? (“What is truth?”). His answer is an anagram: “Est vir qui adest” (“It is the man who is before you”). The word anagram itself anagrams to the Latin ars magna, or great art.’
Scrabblers and cross-worders preserve the cabalistic talent for anagrams that the internet otherwise makes banal – Richard Beard as Drab Hard Rice in a millisecond at http://wordsmith.org/anagram/ However, there comes a stage in every Scrabble player’s development when language turns to maths. The game becomes a riddle of patterns, not meanings.
Maybe this happens in every field, for anyone who thinks long and hard enough, about anything. And everything. The other lesson Scrabble teaches is less exotic: don’t hold out for better letters. Make the best of what you have now.
At least I think that’s true. If not, it may explain why my children beat me – they believe in the luck of the life to come.
 New French Stash I know I keep promising to post up the first pages of J’suis pas plus con, or rather, I promised once and I always keep my promises.
I have, however, been distracted by two issues. Computer malfunctions, which are boring. And stash.
As an ambitious rugby player, I used to have the same hunger for stash as everyone else. ’Stash’ was the stuff that came with selection to a team. Stash is the extras, the perks, the over-and-aboves, and in those days, before the ease of printing onto synthetic materials, stash was expensive and therefore reserved most often for representative teams. It was worth having.
Typical items would be tracksuits, training tops, match shorts, maybe even a team-branded bag. It was the players’ version of been there, done that. Or if you were picked on the bench, been there, haven’t done that, but got some stash so my time wasn’t completely wasted.
Stash in sport is now out of control. There is even a company called Stash, who provide exactly the kind of accessory gear I’m talking about it (as well as this magnificent design for a rugby shirt, as enabled by modern print technology) . Every team in the land, turning their backs on natural fibres, gets personalised stuff because … well, because they can.
What happens to all this gear? It gets used for its original purpose, just out of the packet for the important match. Then it doesn’t get used because you’re dropped from the team, or move regions and don’t want to make enemies. Then it’s worn once more for validation when you’re training juniors, as a reminder of who you once were (both to them and to yourself.)
After that the stash stays in the attic for sentimental reasons until time drains it of meaning. I have a collection of fading sportswear emblazoned with the names of forgotten sponsors, usually local accountants or providers of ‘building services’.
 Those were the days Well this week I was reminded that stash also exists for writers. I’m immensely pleased with the bookmarks and the posters made for the French edition of Dry Bones by In Octavo. Stash for the writer, like stash for the rugby player, is confirmation that the core activity (the writing/playing) doesn’t come anywhere near reflecting the amount of work that goes into even the smallest triumph. Stash is tangible evidence that the effort was intended to create a world that can grow, that is growing, that can generate clothing and stationery and (why not?) cigarette lighters.
My X 20 Zippo cigarette lighter, the brainchild of Harper Collins, remains the best bit of writer’s stash I’ve ever had.
 'no-frills' I was due to go on holiday tomorrow, and the first part of the journey involves a ‘no-frills’ airline. ‘No-frills’ means ‘no service’, so I was concerned that my crocked leg, permanently braced at a constant zero degrees, would count as a frill (i.e it might require some service).
I found this on the Easyjet website, under Carrier’s Regulations:
‘Adult passengers travelling with lower limbs in cast, waist and/or full leg plaster, must purchase three seats in total, per journey, to travel.’
British Airways require only one extra seat, presumably because the seats are wider. Prof Shiro Yamamoto (who once made a 2-day trip from Tokyo to London to buy a violin), tells me one extra seat is also necessary per cello.
But two seats. That’ll cost ya.
The insurance company was helpful – the extra seats are cheaper than a cancelled holiday for five, so I bought the extra seats. My body now has one reserved seat, my leg has two. Never in my life have I pampered a limb quite so shamelessly. The body goes coach and the leg goes business – or even better, I have a first class leg.
I wish I’d thought of this earlier. I’ve always taken my legs for granted, on an epic scale. In the next few months alone I had plans to tour the Pyrennees on foot with Bruno, and to cycle up the Tourmalet in early October with Virtual Tom. I’m also open to impromtu displays of leg negligence, and would love to have taken part in an August Alpine ultra-marathon like this (for an excellent cause, please give generously).
Even then, I wouldn’t have said thankyou. Until now. I’ve offered my damaged leg two seats of its own on a plane. The other leg is getting jealous - I can feel the tendon tightening, plotting revenge. I make a point of thanking it for standing me up. It seems to help.
Bad workmen blame their tools.
In South Africa there have been three major goalkeeping howlers after four days of matches. England, Algeria and Paraguay have all seen their keepers bamboozled by what most people would think was a familiar sight to the man in goal: an approaching round object known as a ball.
Apparently the official 2010 World Cup ball, the ‘Jabulani’, deviates unpredictably in the air. Some have blamed the manufacture, others the effect of altitude at some of the South African stadiums. A football is not a technologically tricksy idea. There is only so much that can go wrong, and most people have rightly assumed that the complaining goalkeepers have other ‘issues’. Like not being very good at keeping goal.
Or so I thought, until I looked at this picture in today’s Guardian. This Jabulani ball does not look round. It is round, and our eyes adjust to make it round like a football. But look at it closely. The illustrative design on the ball has created the optical illusion of a shape more like an egg.
This is a sensational discovery. Eggs don’t have a centre, as a ball does. If kicked, an egg would wobble.
When a goalkeeper is aiming to get his body behind the ball his eyes and instinct search for the centre of the ball as his target. The ‘centre’ of the Jabulani may be unclear because of an optical illusion caused by the branded decoration on the ball itself. This means that goalkeepers, especially under pressure, are more likely to misjudge the flight of the Jabulani and make mistakes.
This is the answer. Someone should be told.
 Blow Your Own The noise, the noise. Oh, the blowing of trumpets. In the front row of the Internet orchestra are those blowing their own, but these are easily outnumbered by those modelling their brass on John Knox’s The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558).
Every internet rant is a blast that wants to be first, and ranting is such a natural fit to the form that the temptation ought to be resisted. Over the past month I have resisted ranting about Ryanair, automated sales calls, and two more subjects that are so rantishly scrawled on a scrap of paper I have no idea what they were. Paddles, apparently, and errors in tenant paranoia. Whatever was hurting, the pain has passed. Maybe I wanted to rant about bad handwriting. I hate that.
I prefer blogs that follow the example of the Angels. Write down five good things that happened today. Add those to the base-notes of indignation, merge them with the sound of own-blown trumpets and out comes the true sound of the Internet, the Fanfare for the Common Man.
That’s the noise the Internet makes.
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About Me
About Richard Beard
I'm a novelist and non-fiction writer, and Director of The National Academy of Writing in London. As time goes by I'm gradually transferring the material from the old site (stories, articles, squibs) into the categories tabbed above. There's information on each of my books, with summaries and reviews, and now that I'm permanently back in the country I'm available for events and readings. Email me using Contact, below. I'll get back to you.
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