That Tingling Feeling

How To Order A Tingling Catch

I had hoped to do a full past about A Tingling Catch, the newly-published anthology of New Zealand cricket poems edited by Mark Pirie, but time has slipped away. I still hope to write that post next week, but in the meantime, I can let you know that A Tingling Catch is an excellent collection which libraries and cricket fans alike should make sure they have.

A Tingling Catch has its own blog, and Mark has now put up a post on How Do I Order A Tingling Catch? It’s worth checking out.

Helen Lowe’s Aus/NZ F&SF Author Series

To celebrate the Aus/NZ publication of her new novel The Heir of Night, Helen Lowe asked a number of Australian and New Zealand fantasy and science fiction authors (plus Julie Czerneda, a Canadian author with strong Aus/NZ connections) to contribute to a series of guest posts on her blog on why they love fantasy and/or SF.

The series as a whole makes fascinating reading. My own contribution, on J. G. Ballard, Kim Stanley Robinson and pitching a tent in the wide space between, was picked up and republished on the big US blog io9, which was a nice bonus for both Helen and myself.

Tuesday Poem: The Fasting Season, by Tishani Doshi (video)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4-KZtnrIOM&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&w=480&h=385]

Tim says:This poem comes from the collection Countries of the Body, which won Tishani Doshi the 2006 Forward Poetry Prize. Her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers, drawing on her own experience as a person of Indian and Welsh heritage, was published in 2010. And, as if all that wasn’t marvellous enough, she also blogs about cricket.

Diary of a New Zealand Cricket Fan

12 November 2008: New Zealand Cricket announce that, due to scheduling conflicts, the previously-announced international cricket tours by the West Indies and India in Summer 2008/09 will not proceed. They are to be replaced respectively by the Turks and Caicos Islands and Bhutan.

14 November 2008: New Zealand Cricket announces that, following detailed research on weather patterns which shows that the east of the country had the best weather leading up to Christmas, all pre-Christmas international matches will be scheduled in the Chatham Islands, 750 km to the east of mainland New Zealand, and all post-Christmas matches at Milford Sound.

22 November 2008
: Diarist takes son out for first cricket practice of the year. They work on batting, bowling, and retrieving ball from small, angry dog.

2 December 2008
: New Zealand cricket announces creation of a full-time motivational speaker position as part of Black Caps infrastructure, to join psychologist, phrenologist, psephologist, garbologist, and escapologist. Batting coach position remains vacant.

6 December 2008
: Tony Robbins, well known for his late-night infomercials, appointed to NZ Cricket motivational speaker position.

7 December 2008: Turks and Caicos Islands arrive for pre-Christmas tour.

9 December 2008: Announcement in Goa that, in additional to the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the Indian Cricket League (ICL), a Goa Outstation League (GOL), featuring eight teams of domestic and international players, will be formed to contest a Twenty20 competition beginning in 2009. GOL immediately begins recruiting New Zealand test players, ex-players and fringe players not already signed up to the IPL and ICL.

10 December 2008: Unnamed New Zealand U-19 player accidentally signs to IPL, ICL and GOL on same day. Lawyers briefed.

11 December 2008: First Test between New Zealand and Turks and Caicos begins in Waitangi, Chatham Islands. Rain stops play after 3 balls.

15 December 2008: Test ends in draw. Scoreboard: NZ 0/0 (0.3 overs)

18-22 December 2008: Second Test also ends in draw. Scoreboard: Turks and Caicos 0/0 (0.2 overs). “We can take a lot of positives from this series”, says New Zealand coach Tony Robbins.

Late December, early January: Christmas, one day matches, etc. Diarist takes son out for second cricket practice. They work on cutting grass, mowing pitch, and remedies for heat exhaustion.

8 January 2009: Kevin Pietersen resigns, and Peter Moores is sacked, as England cricket captain and coach, due to musical and personal differences.

8 January 2009 (p.m.): Diarist woken by surprise phone call from a “Colonel Mustard” of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), sounding out diarist’s availability to take over as England cricket coach. Caller explains that he is investigating option of appointing Grimsby-born one-test England veteran Darren Pattinson as the new England captain, and that as both Darren Pattinson and your diarist were born in Grimsby, diarist was therefore logical choice as coach. Diarist says that he will think about it.

8 January 2009 (p.m., later, after restorative brandy)
: Diarist makes return call to ECB to decline coaching job, instead recommending Arjuna Ranatunga as coach and Douglas Jardine as captain.

9 January 2009
: Unnamed source within ECB leaks details of late-night call offering coaching position. Diarist described as “tired and emotional” in English cricketing media. Lawyers briefed.

16 January 2009
: In cascade of developments, Tony Robbins appointed as new England cricket coach, John Major as captain, and George W. Bush as motivational speaker. In simultaneous announcement, residency requirements relaxed so that Kevin Pietersen can be appointed as New Zealand cricket captain and Peter Moores as New Zealand coach.

22 January 2009
: Bhutan arrives for three-test, one Twenty20 International (T20I), seventeen One-Day International tour. Coincidentally, formation of new Bhutan Royal League (BRL) announced at special meeting of New Zealand Cricket Players’ Association.

25 January 2009
: Diarist takes son out for third cricket practice, aiming to teach son to play cut shot. Diarist then bowls series of leg-side long-hops which are deposited by son into gorse bush, storm drain, nearby supermarket carpark, etc. Diarist eventually convinces son to take guard two feet outside leg stump, and completes session on satisfactory note by bowling son with knee-high full toss. Diarist reaffirms that he will buy pads for son before next cricket season.

Feb, March 2009
: First two tests against Bhutan, entire ODI series, and only T20I rained out without a ball being bowled.

3 April 2009
: Third and deciding NZ-Bhutan test begins on time at Milford Sound during unexpected summer. New Zealand win toss and opt to bowl.

7 April 2009: Third and deciding NZ-Bhutan test ends in thrilling fashion. Set 27 to win, NZ reach 25 without incident before succumbing to fast, hostile inswinging yorkers from Bhutanese pace bowler W Younis (no relation). Bhutan celebrate one-run victory. “We can take a lot of positives from the first 25 runs,” says Moores.

8 April 2009
: Diarist sounded out for motivational speaker position with Bhutanese side.

Fifty Yards from Middle Earth

A flashback to 2000, and the filming of The Lord of the Rings in Wellington …

I first beheld Arwen Undómiel at the test cricket. It wasn’t quite the depths of Mordor, but the weather in March 2000 would have done justice to the dead marshes at Sauron’s gates. A thin cold air was blowing across the Basin Reserve, the main cricket ground in Wellington, New Zealand, the city where Peter Jackson was busy filming the three books that make up The Lord of the Rings.

It was New Zealand versus Australia in the test, and New Zealand was in trouble. I took my seat at the northern end, well rugged up and prepared for disappointment, and settled back to watch the play. After a few minutes, I noticed a steady stream of young girls making their way to a cloaked figure seated a few rows below me and asking her for autographs. “Do you know who that is?” I asked the man sitting nearest to me. “We’ve been wondering the same thing ourselves,” he replied. “We think it might be Anna Paquin.”

But I wasn’t convinced. Anna Paquin, Wellington-born star of The Piano, X-Men etc., was living in the US if my mental showbiz map was up to date. “I think it might be Liv Tyler,” I whispered back. For once, I was right. Accompanied by her British boyfriend, and Bernard Hill who plays Theoden, the woman who would give up her immortality to marry Aragorn was spending an afternoon at the cricket.

She picked a good day for it, too, despite the weather: after the usual clatter of New Zealand wickets, Chris Cairns, he of the flowing locks and mighty thews, smote the Australian bowling hither and yon on his way to a rapid century. It made no difference to the result, but even in bitter defeat the memories were glorious.

By the time I left the ground, Arwen Evenstar and her party had already departed, leaving behind only empty chip pottles, Coke cans, and blessed memories of Elvenhome.

I live five minutes’ walk from the Basin Reserve, so I probably have more opportunities to watch cricket than Liv Tyler does. More to the point, it’s a 50-yard walk from our house in Ellice St to the Wellington Town Belt, where several scenes in The Lord of the Rings were filmed.

The Town Belt is a narrow but quite convincing strip of forest clinging to either side of the long ridge that slopes down from Mt Victoria to the north, and runs all the way to the southern coast at Island Bay. Some of the forest is regenerating New Zealand bush, some is introduced pine forest planted in the mid-20th century. It is gloomy beneath the pines, and when the wind blows the treetops whisper together of ancient wrongs. Something has made tracks, but they start and stop unexpectedly, and it takes a steady head and a stout heart to follow their many twists and turns without becoming hopelessly lost.

Even better, there’s a quarry above the top of Ellice St. Not a Blake’s 7-style gravel pit, but a real hard rock quarry, abandoned about the same time the trees were planted, with towering walls clad here in twisted bramble, there in flowering creeper, and trees overhanging the top and sides. What with the forest, the quarry, and some judicious post-production, you could film a movie up there, and Peter Jackson was faced with filming three movies back to back.

Jackson, the Wellington film director who first came to fame with the low budget (NZ $30,000) splatter-comedy film Bad Taste, was the director chosen by New Line Cinema to take on the daunting task of directing a film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Unlike Ralph Bakshi’s disappointing 1978 version, which used rotoscoping over live actors to produce a crude form of animation, the Peter Jackson production combines live action with the state-of-the-art effects developed over the years by Jackson and his cohorts at Weta Workshop.

And, with the whole of the country to choose from, filming started in the forest near our quarry and ended a year later, in December 2000, in the quarry itself. In between, sets were built and filming done all over New Zealand — inland Canterbury for Edoras, the rolling hills of the Waikato for Hobbiton, the North Island volcanic plateau for Mordor, another quarry in Lower Hutt for Helm’s Deep.

In contrast to the saturation coverage given to the announcement of the project and the arrival of its stars in Wellington, the actual filming was characterised by a secrecy bordering on paranoia. My son Gareth and I realised that filming had started when we went for a walk to the top of the ridge above the quarry and discovered that tracks normally reserved for walkers had been scoured by ATVs (all-terrain vehicles — take a motorbike and give it four wheels, and you’ve got the general idea). Three portaloos had been installed next to Alexandra Road, which runs along the ridgeline through the Town Belt. The game was afoot.

The Evening Post newspaper gave us the official word that filming had started a few days later, but by then we’d also seen the horse-droppings, and were not surprised to learn that a small party of hobbits had been fleeing Black Riders through the twisted foliage, take after take after take. Peter Jackson likes to get things right.

In the next twelve months, Lord of the Rings was everywhere. Stars buying houses for the duration of the shoot pushed up house prices in the eastern suburbs to ridiculous levels. Sir Ian McKellen, who plays Gandalf, was a judge for Mr Gay Wellington. A couple of the hobbits were refused entry to a nightclub because they were underage. The original Aragorn was sacked and a replacement, the multi-talented Mr Viggo Mortensen, was announced. The Evening Post was banned from the film’s set for being too curious and began to collaborate with various unofficial LoTR websites to ferret out unauthorised information.

For a couple of days in mid-shoot, the floor of the Ellice St. quarry was dotted with dead branches and clumps of tussock grass, and used for some second-unit shots. If you watch The Fellowship of the Ring, you’ll get a glimpse of the Black Riders crossing the Ellice St quarry floor as they advance on Weathertop.

Just before filming was scheduled to finish we got a notice in our mailbox to say that Jackson’s Three Foot Six Limited film company would be filming in the quarry for three days in late December 2000, and that our cooperation as affected residents would be appreciated. Based on others’ experiences, I didn’t think this would lead to great viewing opportunities. Gareth was attending morning kindergarten, and on the Monday, apart from asking a truck to move so I could get the car out, filming had little impact on us. On the Tuesday, when we got home from the kindy, Gareth said he wanted to go and look at the movie being made. “I’m sure they won’t let us see anything,” I said, but we walked to the top of the street anyway.

To be met by a guard. I was all ready to turn away when he said “Would you and the little boy like to see the filming?” We said we would, and he led us up to the quarry floor. A trench had been cut in it, and the riders of Rohan were riding their horses down the trench, around a tent, and then back up onto the quarry floor. They did it once. They did it again. We watched them do it several times, then we went home, happy and surprised.

On Wednesday, the last scheduled day of filming, it rained all day. Thursday dawned fine, and Gareth and I decided that we’d walk home together from his kindy — a half-hour walk up the far side of the ridge and down the Mt Victoria side, past the quarry, to our house. Quite a walk for a four-year-old, but he has strong legs.

Walking over to the kindy to get him, I saw activity at the quarry, but assumed it was preparations to dismantle the set. Forty-five minutes later, however, as Gareth and I descended homewards past the quarry, it was plain that filming was continuing. Still, we needed to get home, and I didn’t intend to take the long way round. I said as much to the first security guard we saw, and he assured me we wouldn’t have to. “Just walk quietly, please.” So we did, and stopped when the action started, and saw a bearded gentleman — I won’t be sure who till I see The Return of the King — stare straight at us and say “Six thousand spears — it’s not enough.” “It’ll do fine,” I wanted to tell him, but I kept my mouth shut.

That was almost it. They did pack up the next day, and dismantled the artificial forest they’d made under the quarry walls, and eventually filled in the trench and reseeded the grass so that the quarry floor could resume its former role as a dog exercise area and occasional venue for family cricket games. Filming was over, and the stars went home. Neither my wife Kay nor I were invited to the premiere of The Fellowship of the Ring, but we’ve each seen it twice. Gareth’s a bit young to see it on the big screen. He’ll have to wait till the video comes out.

Gareth and I still walk in the Town Belt. The droppings has been trampled underfoot by now, and the paths have mostly resumed their former shape, but there are still one or two places where the scouring of the land is obvious. One day, I expect, we’ll see a glint of gold. Bending down, we’ll find a little ring, the least of rings, lying forsaken by the path. We’ll drive out to Seatoun and drop it off at Peter Jackson’s studios, if the guard will let us through the gate.

An earlier version of this article was printed as “‘Twas in the Depths of Mordor” in the fanzine Head, edited by Christina Lake and Douglas Bell. In its present form, it first appeared on the (now defunct) Silveroak Books website.

Book Review: Mark Pirie, Slips (ESAW, 2008)

I discovered cricket in 1969. At the time, we lived in Otatara, south of Invercargill. The only access I had to test cricket (for the uninitiated, this means five-day games between nations) was via radio: 4YC out of Dunedin were broadcasting commentaries on that summer’s tests between New Zealand and the West Indies. It wasn’t a powerful station, and the only way I could get reception in our house was to put my radio on top of the metal toilet cistern, which amplified the signal. (It’s possible this was inconvenient to other occupants of the house.)

Cricket is an old game which has developed a massive literature: not just the primary literature of statistics and match reports, but a secondary literature of fiction, poetry and plays. Mark Pirie has recently made a welcome addition to this literature with Slips, which is No. 21 in the Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop’s excellent mini-series of poem booklets. Slips is dedicated to Harry Ricketts, another cricketing poet (and biographer), thus acknowledging its place in this literary tradition.

Mark knows whereof he speaks. My cricketing days are well past me, but my son played junior cricket up to the 2006/07 season, and several times, just as his team were packing up for the day, Mark would turn up with his senior team. The cover of Slips shows Mark poised to take a slips catch (again, for US readers, the slips are like extra shortstops who stand behind the batter and take catches off what in baseball would be fouls).

All the poems inside are about, or at least allude to, cricket. These allusions range from the glancing to the highly statistical: “Legacies and Cold Stats” and “Fiery Fred” would delight any cricket historian, while the longest poem, “11 Ways of Being Dismissed”, is based on a Cricinfo article about eleven unusual dismissals.

My two favourite poems in the book aren’t so stats-heavy. “Brown’s Bay” is a beautiful love lyric, while “The Pavilion”, following a long literary tradition, uses cricket as a metaphor for life.

This book displays many of the virtues of Mark Pirie’s poetry: humour, moving writing about grief and loss, and some classic last lines. I particularly like the final line of “Joe”, about a gentleman who starts distracting the scorer:

I watch his words aeroplane up and down his breath.

Whether or not you know your doosra from your googly, Slips is worth catching.