Posted by Send your pictures of cricket bats and other cricket stuff in unusual places to king@kingcricket.co.uk. Feel free to put the cricket thing in the unusual place yourself.
Daisy writes:
Ged and I visited one of the holiest places in the Shingoan Buddhist world; the beautiful pilgrimage town of Koyasan in Japan. Ged encapsulated the journey from Kyoto to Mount Koya in the form of ten haikus.
Ironically, Ged was reading the book Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket while we were staying in that town. A fittingly mindful book at such a spiritual retreat, I felt, so I was motivated to capture that charming juxtaposition in the front of the Ekoin monastery’s beautiful temple.
Ah, The Land Of The Rising Sun.
To paraphrase John Arlott, “the sun is still rising slowly in the east. And if it should start to rise anywhere else, I’ll be the first to let you know”.
This is a first. Is this a first? Are there any other ways of arrange those four words in a sentence? Without invoking Yoda?
Cool story, Daisy (our profound commiserations, of course, for, you know). Did you leave the book there as an offering to the monks? I’d like to think that in a hundred years the concepts in that book had become intertwined into Japanese Buddhism. Maybe a mantra about knocking the top off a thistle with a walking stick. Statues of a reclining Swanton?
I’m off to suggest to Mrs Bert that she writes a piece now, maybe on how much she enjoys listening to me talking about cricket. Sometimes she becomes so focussed on what I’m saying, she closes her eyes and goes into a trance-like state.
Likewise, Bert, please do pass on my deepest sympathy to Mrs Bert.
Yes, I have mastered the practice of mindfully meditating while Ged is discussing cricket. In fact, to such a level, that I might one day, like Kobo Daishi himself, enter a state of eternal meditation while thus listening. On occasion, I have been known to lose the will to do anything other than that.
In the far distance, has Rob Key ascended his golden throne?
I know what you lot are all thinking. You’re wondering how such a journey could possibly be justified as “essential” during lockdown.
Well, I assure you that we acted responsibly and legally.
Anyway, it’s not about what you guys think.