pete langman

Hands off?

Pete Langman — Thu, 16 May 2013 23:35:07 +0000

Parkinson’s is a funny old thing. One of the difficulties of living with it, as with other chronic conditions, is summed up by that hoary old piece of advice: don’t let it define you. The irony is that the more you try to take it on, to resist that definition, the seemingly inevitable slide that follows on from that moment when, on diagnosis, you move from suffering to suffferer: that is, you become no longer a person with this wrong or that wrong with you, but a neatly pigeonholeable nameable condition. I have written about Parkinson’s, raised money to help both myself and others with Parkinson’s spoken on webinars and on the radio, all in order both to make sense of my condition and to help others with it. In doing so, I increasingly associate myself with the disease.

I am the cricketer with Parkinson’s (a mantle I inherited from Jon Stamford), I am a speaker on Parkinson’s. Increasingly, I am being contacted by people thanking me for the book and talking about the various topics covered in the book and invariably talk of a cure rears its head, and I find myself strangely uneasy. This disease, this shitty, horrible disease, has, in amongst the stuff it’s taken away, actually provided me with a smattering of focus and, dare I say it? some measure of specialness. The truth of the matter is that I gain extra points for being ill, I become more worthy. In fact, to many, I might seem to have the perfect balance of disease in potential and opportunity. This will change, of course, as the disease progresses.

But I am left with the uncomfortable feeling that, in the short term at least, PD may well work in my favour. And that’s a dreadful thing to admit to.

It’s making it very hard to write, however.

Enough already …

Pete Langman — Wed, 15 May 2013 07:18:36 +0000

I wrote recently about my disillusionment with the modern way of giving, noting en passant that sponsorable feats are ‘subject to worthiness inflation, that is, to justify sponsorship you must come up with ever more wacky or onerous tasks. It won’t be long before there’s a charitable foundation for the children of people who’ve died on fund-raising trips’. Well, this may have been a joke of sorts even though it was based on observation of people doing frankly stupid things for charity, but today I discover that one American, Richard Swanson, died after being hit by a truck while attempting to dribble a football to Brazil for the opening of the World Cup, to benefit a football charity.
The Guardian article reads like it’s April 1st, with lines like ‘Swanson spent Monday night in Lincoln City, where he was able to soak in a hot tub and eat a gourmet breakfast’, and ‘Police said Palmer’s soccer ball was recovered’. But it’s this that really says it all:

Friends were talking about creating a foundation in Swanson’s memory and sending his two sons to Brazil for the World Cup, Schwesinger said. “The hardest thing is he was so young,” he said. “Just today we were planning his surprise birthday party for Sunday. He was so young, so full of life, so excited by the journey he was on. To be taken from us so soon is really heartbreaking.”

I don’t want to sit down and count the people who’ve died or damaged themselves raising money, but I do want to note that it’s getting silly. More than one friend has said that simply running a marathon isn’t enough – and I know of one friend of a friend who set himself the task of running 30 marathons in 35 days. Now that’s simply not healthy.
It seems as if charity has fallen foul of the great debilitating myth of capitalism: if the increase in profits isn’t increasing, you’re making a loss. Exponential growth in a finite system can only be achieved temporarily, and at the cost of destroying the system by exhausting it of resources. When the system’s resources are individuals, we have a problem.
Doing stupid things for charity uses up a phenomenal amount of energy, and is increasingly often ending in disaster. Being hit by a truck while dribbling a football along a road is, I’m afraid to say, a really pointless waste of a life. If it were a twelve-year old who’d died like this, we’d be saying ‘stupid child’ (though we’d say it quietly, because people would get upset), and ‘what were his parents thinking’?
Doing dangerous things is our right as adults, because it’s our life, our body we put on the line, but when the danger is there to attract publicity, to attract funding, then one has to wonder at the ethics of encouraging this behaviour through sponsorship.
People? Find another way.

One for the scorebook

Pete Langman — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:44:41 +0000

The scorebook is something of a sacred object in cricket, a fetish, even. It records without prejudice the bare facts of an innings, its degree of accuracy dependant entirely on the skill and attention to detail of the scorer who wields the pencil. Many club scorers are women, imitating early modern publishers’ wives such as Sarah Griffin who kept the order books spic and span while their less literate husbands got on with the messy grunt of moveable type. The Stationers’ Company was one of those that allowed them to take over the business on the occasion of the husband’s death – Sarah Griffin was one such wife though she, like most in her situation, found it advantageous to hook up with a male publisher relatively soon after acquiring her widow’s weeds. Later publishers, such as John Newbery, were plainly better off in the hands of the female of the line (in this case, Elizabeth Newbery, wife of the late John Newbery’s nephew). So the sacred scorebook.
Many a male scorer has looked aghast at the detail with which their female counterparts note down each ball faced by each batsman, colour-coded to avoid confusion, with every possible piece of information supplied such that the game may be reconstructed ball-by-ball to uncover those tiny confusions created by the imperfect semaphore employed by each umpire. Such books are a joy to behold, as in them one can trace the push and pull of each spell, how each batsman is ground down or freed by each bowler. It allowed me to analyse an innings of 66 balls, in which I batted left-handed for the first 53, scoring 19 runs before switching to right-handed and hitting 25 runs off the next 13 balls.
Boys, men and women alike, when watching cricket, fill in their official scorecard as the game progresses, creating a uniquely personal take on the game itself – simultaneously demonstrating much about their own thought-processes and personality as they go.
Much as it can reveal a personality, the scorebook is also the ultimate arbiter, the great objective truth of the game. When a batter swishes, edges, the ball evades the slip cordon and the fielders heckle, he states simply: ‘look in the scorebook. It says “four”.’ When the bowler gets the opposition’s gun batsman out with a long hop or a filthy full toss, the scorebook doesn’t read ‘shit ball, worse shot’, it reads OUT! And so the scorebook records, as I said, without prejudice.
Yesterday, I joined the Authors CC for a game against the Thespian Thunderers, a rather damp affair littered with moments of class and a smattering of farce. It sort of petered out as the result became increasingly foregone. Still, it might have been worse. The scorebook records the early clatter of wickets, my rather long, boycottian innings of 2 runs off twelve overs as I dug in to save us from utter humiliation at the hands of a yoga-inspired team of Thesps, and our ultimate demolition. But it’s not a great piece of scorebookery.
Early in the day, a what one might safely term a homeless lady, and more cruelly a bag lady, shuffled into the light with her wheeled shopping basket and shopping bag shoes, taking root on the boundary, leant up against the fence, she looked somewhat out of place. There was nothing offensive about her or her presence, but one did wonder what she was doing. Then someone noted an important detail. She was bloody scoring the game. No scorecard, just a system of presumably her own invention. While I took some of these photographs, I also noted that she applauded one over, semi-shouting ‘good over’. It must have been my imagination but I could swear her voice had a touch of the Lilian Bellamies about it.
I got some images of her method. I’m willing to bet she can read her scorecard and reverse-engineer the game better than those of us who played it.
The moral of the story? Fuck knows. But it does suggest that appearances can be deceptive.

Tweet it, and they will come

Pete Langman — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:14:35 +0000

Last night was the ‘official’ launch of my book, Slender Threads, and a jolly fine evening it was too.
In Macawberish terms, it ought to have been miserable, but to see a roomful of people most of whom are connected only by me (or think they are, as it turned out), is fascinating. And yet, several of the guests met me for the first time on the night. It’s interesting to note how people still make a differentiation between the internet and the ‘real’ world, but there were at least four guests who I knew purely from the virtual world. Meeting with the twitterati can be awkward if, like me, you have an avatar rather than a photograph, but it’s testament to the power of twitter, and of our own powers of discernment, that we can glean enough to know that we wish to bother. In fact, if you count the people I met online in one way or another, it starts to get rather interesting.
It was a varied bunch, including authors, agents, union men, retired anaesthetists, sub-editors, radio journalists, film makers, musicians, academics, intellectual property lawyers, accountants, compliance specialists, cricketers, even a freelance expert in fungi, edible or otherwise. And that’s ignoring those who couldn’t make it or I forgot to invite.
Yes, a book launch is a little like a wedding, and yes, no-one actually wants to hear the author thank his agent, the goddess of online publishing, or his cat, before launching into an interminable reading of a book everyone’s either already got or will buy on the night anyway … but tweet it, and they will come. And they will connect.
And connect they did. E. M. Forster had it right all along, it seems. Well, apart from the only bit. Eat, drink and connect.
Thank you all for making it such a splendid evening.

Just a little picture …

Pete Langman — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:18:49 +0000

Cricket, charity, and stepping up to the plate

Pete Langman — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:42:25 +0000

I’m not particularly comfortable with, or good at, asking people for money. Last year, when I switched to batting left-handed and asked for sponsorship, the smart money was on a very small runs tally. The smart money doesn’t always win. It began unravelling for my various sponsors during my first innings, in which I scored 40 not out. Though the next few languished in single figures, the die was cast, and this, coupled with an insane quantity of games played, meant that the amount pledged racked up. Naturally, an amount failed to be given in, but this was due to my refusing to accept money until the season’s runs were scored.
Modern sponsorship is front-end loaded. You say you’re going to do something, you open a justgiving or virginmoney page and … people donate. There’s no need to carry out the ‘feat’ (which in itself is subject to worthiness inflation, that is, to justify sponsorship you must come up with ever more wacky or onerous tasks. It won’t be long before there’s a charitable foundation for the children of people who’ve died on fund-raising trips), merely to state one’s intention so to do. In some ways, it’s the perfect way in which to encourage giving, as it is all a matter of faith. We assume that the individual will do what they say they will, in an interesting reversal of how it used to be, those days in which the sponsor rather than the sponsee was the one who made the ‘if …’ promise. I wonder if anyone has ever asked for their money back from one of these donation sites on the grounds that the sponsee failed to deliver as promised. I doubt it, but then we’re starting to enter the realms of emotional blackmail – do you want to be seen as the one who was so small-minded as to ask for a return due to non-fulfillment of an expressed contract? Sponsorship is simply giving, in the same way that lending money to a friend in need is giving, too: you must consider it a gift, and not worry about getting it back.
Charities also seem to have forgotten how difficult things can be for a fundraiser. The modern way to support a charity involves using their branding as a mark of authentification. You as fundraiser use the charity branding to help show people what you’re doing with their money. There is, of course, a problem with the more unscrupulous using a charity brand to take money from people when they have no intention of giving the money to the charity in question. It is this which leads to the rather odd situation of having to effectively buy a license to use this branding, the fee being the projected donation.
I dislike this front-loading of giving, this businessification of charity, and yet this is exactly what I, in my new project, am doing. Last year I raised almost £3,000 for Parkinson’s UK, stipulating that it was to be directed to my local support group. The reason for this is that money raised tends to vanish into coffers, and I thought if it was going to do that, it may as well go directly to help people locally even if I couldn’t stipulate on what it was going to be spent on. Imagine my surprise when I’m told that my local group policy is now to send as much to head office as I can … or, in other words, we’re using your cash to, er, appear on our budget sheets. So. This year, I thought I’d do what I keep telling myself I’ll do when batting: think process, not outcome.
The process of raising money for charity is getting silly, as I’ve said. What if there were a better way? A way of making money that also was itself a ‘good thing’? I read an interesting book by Tim Quelch called Bent Arms and Dodgy Wickets that, if it didn’t actually provided my answer, at least convinced my that what I intended was viable. An interesting account of the state of English test cricket during the fifties, mixing political comment with cricketing analysis, it is a book written to benefit Parkinson’s UK, to whom its profits are directed. This convinced me that I was right. Write it and they will read, to colonize a quotation.
So. I purposed to write a book. Well, more produce one, to be fair. The Country House Cricketer.
And hence the front-end loading I am so uncomfortable with. I have been raising money to pay for the book to be written. This is more difficult than simple sponsorship, as you can’t in all conscience simply ask for cash – you need to earn it. Hence raffles, wine tastings … and who knows what next? What I can say is that the support I’ve had, both from those directly involved with the project, who are giving their help for free, such as Carla ter Maart, Stuart, Jack and the team at Eastweb, Henry and Cassie from Butlers Wine cellars, Trevor and Kevin at Sussex CCC, Clere and Rebecca at Warsop Cricket and various others, and from those attending events, has been overwhelmingly positive.
What I intend to produce will stand alone as a piece of work. It will, barring acts of god (such as continuous inclemency), be a beautiful thing which people will want to own for its own sake – the fact that each purchase will earn money for research into Parkinson’s a mere bonus, even if it is the whole point of the exercise, the final cause, as Aristotle would have termed it. So. Money will be raised, and every time a copy of The Country House Cricketer is opened, awareness will be increased.
It’s truly a win/win. Both buyer of book and recipient of funds, the two customers, will benefit. The middleman, me, both customer and client, will benefit – I’ll get to produce something beautiful, while simultaneously raising money to help people with Parkinson’s. Perhaps I’m being disingenuous when I suggest that I’m donating my writer’s royalties to research: I’m really giving them to my future.
Now I simply need to deliver. It’d really help if it would stop raining.

In my shoes

Pete Langman — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:43:20 +0000

Cricket is a passion, and these are my as-yet unworn ‘season of 2013′ shoes. In these I will be travelling the country, playing cricket in country houses to write The Country House Cricketer, the proceeds of which will go directly to funding research into Parkinson’s. Parkinson’s is already affecting my game, but that just forces me to think of new ways to get round it, to frustrate this most frustrating of conditions. It’ll win, yes … but I’ll give it a damn good run for its money.

Phrasing with modes pt 4

Pete Langman — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:28:07 +0000

The final part of a four-part series designed to help not only explain how to use them new-fangled sounding mode thingies, but also to provide some real hands-on intensive work on phrasing … including explaining what it is …

Now then, get thee to the woodshed …

Phrasing with modes pt 3

Pete Langman — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:24:29 +0000

Part three of a four-part series designed to help not only explain how to use them new-fangled sounding mode thingies, but also to provide some real hands-on intensive work on phrasing … including explaining what it is …

Now then, get thee to part 4 …

Phrasing with modes pt 2

Pete Langman — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:20:09 +0000

Part two of four-part series designed to help not only explain how to use them new-fangled sounding mode thingies, but also to provide some real hands-on intensive work on phrasing … including explaining what it is …

Now then, get thee to part 3 …