Art Sport

The Long Grass of Empire: Notes Toward a Cricketing Aesthetic

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The Long Grass of Empire: Notes Toward a Cricketing Aesthetic

by ex St David’s Second Eleven Opening Bat Charnel Kookaburra

“Cricket is the finest training for disappointment ever devised”

One enters the ground (never a stadium) as one might enter a cathedral. The light falls obliquely, as it always has on village greens wherever Englishmen congregate; the smell is linseed oil, old leather, and rain. Cricket, the curators insist, correctly, triumphantly, is not a game. It is an argument conducted over five days, a philosophy rendered in flannel, an imperial sonnet written in chalk dust and willow.

The players’ bats are arranged in the dressing rooms like reliquaries, each a scar, a footnote in history. One reads the labels and understands at once that this is war, writ small and large at the same time. Small, because it concerns a ball and a man and a patch of earth no wider than a dining table; large, because entire nations have learned to love and hate themselves by what happened between tea and stumps. Clausewitz, had he lived to see a cover drive, might have revised himself: war is the continuation of cricket by other means.

An apocryphal quotation, beautifully lettered, suspiciously perfect, is attributed to Pitt the Younger: “I mistrust any statesman who cannot leave a ball outside off stump.” A sketch by an unnamed Bloomsbury hand depicts Virginia Woolf gazing across Lord’s, allegedly murmuring, “In cricket, time does not pass; it eddies.” Whether she said it matters less than that she should have said it. Cricket has always been hospitable to the plausible lie, the ennobling exaggeration.

Cricket is generous with its heroes. Here is W.G. Grace, bearded as a prophet, batting not so much against bowlers as against mortality itself. Here is Learie Constantine, sprinting out of Trinidad and into English law books, proving that a forward defensive could be an act of jurisprudence. There is a cabinet devoted to prime ministers who knew their averages: Nehru with his whites folded like a manifesto; Churchill, who allegedly remarked after a long afternoon in the slips, “Cricket is the finest training for disappointment ever devised.” One doubts the remark. One hopes it is true.

Artists, too, make their inevitable appearance. A modernist canvas reduces a Test match to geometry: the pitch a pale axis mundi, fieldsmen scattered like anxious thoughts. A sculptor has rendered a spinner’s fingers in bronze, contorted into what looks alarmingly like a blessing. The accompanying text suggests, without apology, that cricket is the only sport suitable for models and geniuses, for those whose bodies are exemplary and those whose minds require five days to reach a conclusion.

Politics, naturally, keeps slipping in. How could it not? Empires rose and fell to the rhythm of overs; independence movements learned patience by watching rain delays. To understand the Commonwealth, one must first understand the follow-on. Cricket taught restraint to conquerors and audacity to the conquered, often in the same afternoon. A wall text notes, with dry understatement, that many revolutions began with men who had learned, on the boundary, how to wait.

And then there is the Ashes. Englishmen treat it with the solemnity usually reserved for religious schism. A glass case contains a tiny urn, absurdly small for such an outsized obsession. The text explains, again, correctly, that for many well-educated gentlemen in England, beating Australia at cricket is not merely desirable but metaphysically necessary. Governments may fall, currencies may wobble, but if England retain the Ashes, the universe remains in moral alignment. One hears, echoing through the gallery, the invented lament of a Victorian don: “I can forgive Australia anything except winning at Lord’s.”

At the end of the season there is quiet. A film might play of a match dissolving into dusk, the ball a pale moth, the players silhouettes against a long English evening. The commentator, famous and omniscient, offers his thesis: cricket is the best thing in life there is to do because it teaches one how to live. It rewards patience without guaranteeing justice, celebrates beauty without promising victory, and allows, gloriously, for the draw.

All serious thought eventually arrives here, at the crease. History is a long innings, politics a change of bowling, and art an attempt to explain why a well-timed stroke through the covers can feel, for a moment, like truth itself.

Did Leonardo da Vinci Invent BASE Jumping?

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Did Leonardo da Vinci Invent BASE Jumping?

When most people think of Leonardo da Vinci, they imagine oil paintings of ethereal women with ambiguous smiles, or notebooks brimming with half-sketched helicopters, tanks, and improbable siege weapons. What few realize, however, is that the Renaissance master may also deserve credit for inventing the world’s most extreme sport: BASE jumping.

The Parachute Sketch: A 15th-Century Wingsuit?

In 1485, Leonardo famously sketched a pyramid-shaped parachute, writing beneath it:

“If a man have a tent made of linen, of which the apertures have been stopped up, and it be twelve braccia across and twelve in height, he may throw himself down from any great height without suffering any great injury.”

This sounds suspiciously like the pitch line for a GoPro commercial. Leonardo wasn’t simply doodling a safety device,he was describing the first controlled freefall. His design, essentially a Renaissance wingsuit, wasn’t intended for soldiers or messengers. It was clearly for thrill-seekers with too much disposable Florentine wealth and not enough hobbies.

Da Vinci’s Secret Jumps?

Historians insist that there’s no evidence Leonardo ever tested his parachute personally. Yet this is the same man who dissected cadavers in secret, sketched important war machines, and was perpetually funded by suspiciously indulgent patrons. Is it so hard to imagine him climbing the Duomo in Florence, muttering “per la scienza,” before leaping off with a linen contraption strapped to his back?

If true, this would make da Vinci not only the father of the Mona Lisa but also the first BASE jumper, centuries before daredevils began hurling themselves off cliffs in Norway or TV towers in Nevada.

Why He Would Have Been the Perfect BASE Jumper

• Obsession with flight: Leonardo sketched over 500 drawings of flying machines. BASE jumping is just a more direct way to achieve flight.

• Engineering mindset: His parachute wasn’t just a crude cloth sheet,it was an elegant, mathematically considered pyramid.

• Dramatic flair: This is the man who staged pageants with mechanical lions that spat flowers. A rooftop leap in Florence would have been right on brand.

Modern Recognition (or Lack Thereof)

In 2000, British daredevil Adrian Nicholas actually built Leonardo’s parachute to spec and jumped from 10,000 feet. It worked perfectly. Nicholas survived, and more importantly, proved that Leonardo’s design wasn’t just whimsical scribbling.

And yet,BASE jumping history books rarely mention da Vinci. Instead, they credit a handful of twentieth-century adrenaline junkies. Surely, if anyone deserves the title of “Godfather of BASE,” it’s the guy who wore tights, carried notebooks full of flying machines, and likely terrified pigeons from Italian bell towers.

Conclusion

So, did Leonardo da Vinci invent BASE jumping? If you are the sort of person who likes things like definite evidence then you’ll probably say no. But, oh how wrong you might be. The next time you see someone hurl themselves off a cliff with only a parachute for company, remember: they’re just following in the linen-stitched footsteps of the original Renaissance adrenaline addict.

The History of the English Pell Mell Club: Chapter 3

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The History of the English Pell Mell Club: Chapter 3

Chapter III: Wars, Interruptions, and Hannibal

The English Pell Mell Club, like so many venerable institutions, has always insisted that it exists above the fray of politics and war. Unfortunately, politics and war have never quite returned the courtesy. Over the past two centuries, the Club’s history has been punctuated by interruptions ranging from the inconvenient to the cataclysmic , though, remarkably, the game itself has proved as stubbornly indestructible as the Pimlico Wilde Cup.

The Napoleonic Afterglow

Although the official founding date of the Club post-dates the Napoleonic Wars, there remains a persistent legend that Pell Mell was played in secret during the Congress of Vienna. According to a particularly florid entry in the Club archives, Lord Basingthorpe, acting in some unspecified diplomatic capacity, organised “informal rounds” between rival statesmen as a means of brokering peace. The Russian delegation reportedly refused to play after Metternich accused their mallets of being “overbalanced,” while the Austrian team insisted on using a ball the size of a cannon shot.

No reliable evidence exists for these matches, but the tale remains popular, in part because it allows members to imagine Pell Mell as the quiet hand behind nineteenth-century European stability , a theory unsupported by historians but vigorously defended over brandy.

The Hannibal Theory Emerges

The First World War was the first genuine interruption to organised Pell Mell in London. With the Club’s ground requisitioned for military purposes (it was turned into a vehicle depot), and its members scattered to various services. It was during the war’s quieter moments that the so-called “Hannibal Theory” emerged.

In 1917, club historian Sir Peveril Grange published his now-infamous pamphlet, Elephants at the Hoop: A Carthaginian Precedent for Pell Mell. In it, Grange argued , with a confidence frankly untroubled by facts , that Hannibal’s generals played a form of Pell Mell during the Second Punic War, using elephant tusks as mallets and polished stones as balls. His central “evidence” was a fragmentary Roman mosaic showing three men with sticks in an oval enclosure, which every actual archaeologist agreed was probably a wrestling match.

The Hannibal Theory was swiftly debunked by the British Museum, which called it “a work of imaginative fiction with illustrations.” Nevertheless, it was embraced by the Club’s more romantic members and remains a cornerstone of official toasts, with visiting dignitaries often baffled by the cry of “To Hannibal!” before the first stroke of every match.

Pell Mell in the Colonies

The interwar years also saw the spread of Pell Mell to the far reaches of the Empire. British colonial officers, eager to display refinement, introduced the game to places as far-flung as Ceylon, the Gold Coast, and New South Wales. Reports survive of Pell Mell being played on palace lawns in Delhi, in front of bemused maharajas, and in the gardens of Singapore’s Raffles Hotel, where the heat forced matches to be played at dawn.

Not all adaptations were considered orthodox. In Nairobi, for instance, local conditions inspired a variant involving hollowed gourds as balls, producing a wildly unpredictable bounce; in the Caribbean, mallets were occasionally replaced by sugarcane stalks. The London Committee dutifully sent polite letters acknowledging these innovations while privately agreeing that “colonial rules” were not to be recognised at home.

The Second World War and “The Underground Years”

The outbreak of the Second World War once again put a halt to formal competition. This time, however, several members conspired to keep the game alive in unconventional settings. The most famous of these was the so-called “Underground League” , matches held in unused sections of the London Tube, lit by hurricane lamps and timed to avoid air raids. Balls, it turns out, roll unusually well on smooth concrete platforms, though the occasional passing rat proved a unique hazard.

After the Wars: Myth and Memory

By 1946, the Club’s court off Pall Mall was restored, and Pell Mell returned to its peacetime rhythms. The war years, however, had left their mark , and their myths. Stories of desert matches in North Africa (balls rolling endlessly down dunes), impromptu games aboard troopships (masts serving as hoops), and a supposed exhibition match in liberated Paris (with Charles de Gaulle himself taking a ceremonial first stroke) circulated freely.

Whether any of these events happened is ultimately irrelevant. In the world of the English Pell Mell Club, evidence has never been a prerequisite for tradition. And so, to this day, when the Pimlico Wilde Cup is held aloft, someone will inevitably mutter, “Hannibal would have approved.”

The History of the English Pell Mell Club: Chapter 2

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The History of the English Pell Mell Club: Chapter 2

Chapter II

The Early Years and the Continental Influence

If Chapter I was the birth of the Club, Chapter II may be considered its adolescence , a period of enthusiasm, experimentation, and the occasional international incident. Having established a home just off Pall Mall, the founding members soon discovered a pressing need for variety. This was not because they had tired of playing against each other (though some had – Lord “Cheater” Harris was finding it harder and harder to get a game), but because London society of the 1820s was obsessed with the idea of foreign travel as a means of collecting both unusual hobbies, unusual souvenirs and unusual illnesses.

It was Lord Basingthorpe , never one to shy away from adventure or a suspiciously aromatic cheese , who proposed that the Club should “test our mettle upon the Continent.” The term “tour” was used, though in truth the first such expedition in 1827 consisted of three matches, one half-match (abandoned due to a dispute over the correct interpretation of “through the hoop”), and a great many hours spent in cafés explaining the game to bemused locals.

The French Encounter

The Club’s earliest foray into European soil was a much-romanticised engagement with the Société Parisienne de Mail, an organisation that, as it turned out, did not actually exist until a fortnight after the Englishmen arrived in Paris. Undeterred, the Club cobbled together a match against a team of aristocratic dilettantes, half of whom believed they were being taught cricket.

The French style was, even in this embryonic stage, distinctly flamboyant: strokes were delivered with theatrical pauses, shots were applauded whether successful or not, and there was an alarming tendency to break for oysters between hoops. The English won narrowly, though later analysis suggested that the French had been unclear on the scoring system and believed they were winning. Two duels were fought during the game; as no substitutes were allowed, the Rev Bill Charston was forced to play on despite having sustained a severe blunderbuss injury to the upper chestal region in the second duel. This did little for his ongoing health, in fact some medical men present suggested it may have been the cause of him collapsing and sadly dying on the pitch, for which England was docked two points. A plaque in his memory was mooted, but never got made.

The Italian Episode

From Paris, the Club proceeded to Florence, lured by reports of a game called pallamaglio played in the Boboli Gardens. This “match” was, in fact, more of an afternoon promenade during which the players stopped periodically to push a ball with a stick while discussing sculpture. Nevertheless, the Club returned with what it declared to be an “Italian variation” of the sport , involving lighter balls, narrower mallets, and the occasional requirement to play from atop a garden bench.

It was during this trip that the infamous “Bench Incident” occurred, in which Captain Smythe, attempting a daring elevated shot, lost his footing and landed in the lap of the Marchesa di Montelupo. Contemporary accounts differ on whether this was accidental; what is certain is that the Marchesa sent Smythe a mallet with a ribbon the following Christmas and three years later they were married.

The German Campaign

No account of the early years of the English Pell Mell Club would be complete without mention of Herr Doktor von Hammerstein, the first foreign member of the Club. A man of impeccable moustache and impenetrable accent, von Hammerstein insisted on wearing a ceremonial Pickelhaube during play. His 1832 invitation to bring the Club to Berlin was accepted with enthusiasm, only to result in a match against what turned out to be a Prussian Guards team, who had misunderstood the rules and were not only mounted on large steeds, but were using rifles for mallets. They were also using live ammunition which led to the first and only time the English Pell Mell team has ever retired from the field of play, although in retrospect it seems only sensible – 7/8s of the team had been injured or killed. The captain Sir Hercules Patt shot himself later that day, so ashamed was he of the retirement and an incident that happened later involving a hoop, a cavalry horse, and the German Minister for Culture.

Continental Legacy

From these scattered European encounters, the English Pell Mell Club absorbed a patchwork of foreign influences. The French contributed the notion that style could trump substance (a philosophy the Bond Street Raveners would later embrace with gusto). The Italians introduced the idea that play could be improved by the presence of fine art and light refreshments. The Germans, unintentionally, reinforced the value of a robust insurance policy.

Back in London, these lessons were distilled into the evolving rules of the game , now allowing for optional flourish, mandatory pauses for conversation, and the codified ban on mounted play, a regulation still read aloud at the start of every annual meeting in memory of Berlin 1832.

A Two-Century Chronicle of the English Pell Mell Club

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A Two-Century Chronicle of the English Pell Mell Club

Readers, it is your lucky day. Next year a new Chronicle of the English Pell Mell Club will be published in a small limited edition. However you can read the chapters here as they appear.

Published by the Committee of the English Pell Mell Club

With the Gracious Patronage of Pimlico Wilde, Fine Art Dealers and Trophy Custodians

Foreword by the Current Club President

“When one joins the Pell Mell Club, one does not simply pick up a mallet. One assumes the weight of history, the burden of etiquette, and, occasionally, the Pimlico Wilde Cup , which is heavier than it looks, especially after a post-match port.”

CHAPTER ONE

The Founding of the English Pell Mell Club
(1825 , Or Thereabouts, Depending on Who You Believe)

To speak of the English Pell Mell Club’s founding is to enter a fog of polite contradiction, apocryphal diaries, and minutes written in handwriting so elaborate that even the National Archives have declined to decipher them. The official record, maintained by the current Committee with an admirable commitment to consistency and accuracy, states plainly that the Club was founded in 1825. However, a small but vocal faction of members argue for a much earlier origin , some citing 1799, others insisting it dates to the Restoration, and one particularly determined gentleman who maintains that a proto-form of Pell Mell was played by the Romans on a field somewhere in Kent, using the skulls of Picts.

What is beyond dispute is that by the early 1820s, London society had developed an appetite for structured leisure , pursuits that combined fresh air, physical exertion, and the ability to wear an expensive hat without risk of it being knocked askew. Cricket was too dusty, fencing too direct, and croquet (at that time) too unrefined and too French. The stage was set for the arrival, or perhaps the rediscovery, of Pell Mell.

The foundational meeting, according to the most widely accepted account, took place in the drawing room of the Duke of Witherstone’s townhouse in Mayfair. The Duke , a man of means and titles, with the best sideburns in London , had recently returned from the Continent with an armful of sketches depicting a curious lawn game played in the gardens of Firenze. He invited a handful of acquaintances to inspect these illustrations over a decanter or seven of port. The invitees included:

• Lord Basingthorpe, the only man to have fought a duel over the proper way to serve syllabub, (apart from the fellow he killed)

• Sir Jasper Bickerton, a naval officer with a limp, a monocle, and an ability to misremember his own war stories with increasing grandeur.

• The Reverend Cyril Plumleigh, whose sermons were said by the Archbishop to be “longer than necessary, which is hard to correct.”

• Captain Smythe (Ret.), whose past remained both mysterious and loudly discussed, and who was known to arrive at social functions via the upstairs window.

The evening reportedly began with polite conversation and ended with chairs pushed aside, candlesticks serving as makeshift mallets, and a priceless Sevres vase employed as an impromptu hoop. The game itself was, by most accounts, chaotic , at one point the Duke’s brother-in-law was struck on the shin and insisted on being carried from the room “as if mortally wounded.”

Nevertheless, something about the contest captured the collective imagination. Here was a sport that demanded accuracy but allowed for style, that rewarded cunning as much as athleticism, and , most crucially , could be played within sight of the refreshment table. By dawn, the gentlemen had declared themselves the founding members of a new institution: The English Pell Mell Club.

The first formal court was established on a parcel of ground just off what is now called Pall Mall, chosen for its proximity to both the gentlemen’s clubs of St James’s and the haberdasheries of Jermyn Street. This location, “historically perfect” as one member put it, allowed players to take the air without straying too far from civilisation.

The Club’s earliest rules were scrawled on a single sheet of paper now preserved in the archives. These initial regulations were notable for their brevity and eccentricity:

1. Gentlemen to bring their own mallets (and no mallet to be sharpened without prior warning).

2. No play to be undertaken during rain, snow, or the opening of Parliament.

3. Any dispute to be resolved by majority vote, or failing that, by a contest of hat-doffing grace.

From these beginnings, the Club began to take shape , a curious blend of sport, social ritual, and light absurdity, which has, remarkably, persisted for over two centuries.

The English Pell Mell Club: Preparing for the Only Derby That Matters

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The English Pell Mell Club: Preparing for the Only Derby That Matters

Just off Pall Mall lies the home of the English Pell Mell Club. The ground is not so much a sports venue as it is a small fragment of another century, preserved between stuccoed façades like a pressed flower between the pages of a Roman history book.

It is here that a select band of devotees practice a game so ancient, so fiercely traditional, and so wilfully obscure that historians are still arguing whether its origins lie in the manicured lawns of 17th-century St James’s, the windswept courts of Renaissance Italy, the languid gardens of Versailles or the siege camps of Hannibal, who – if one enthusiastic club archivist is to be believed – would unwind from a day of elephant manoeuvres by playing Pell Mell to the death with his generals.

The English Pell Mell Club survives in the modern age not through gate receipts (these would not cover the annual candle budget), but through the generosity of its patron, Pimlico Wilde, art dealers of some clout and great discretion. Their sponsorship has elevated the sport’s image , replacing fraying sashes with silk, supplying champagne in place of tepid ginger beer, and, most famously, commissioning the Pimlico Wilde Cup itself.

The Cup is the object of every season’s toil: a gleaming chalice, rumoured to be cast from gold bars found in a long-forgotten vault under the Pimlico Wilde gallery. The very bars said to have been seized from a Spanish brig, which had in turn stolen them from a monastery, which had (at least according to one scribbled anecdote in the clubs early records) received them from the descendants of Hannibal himself. Such provenance, naturally, has not been independently verified.

Alas, Pell Mell’s competitive landscape is sparse. The sport is simply too refined to have caught on widely. The only truly credible opposition comes from the Bond Street Raveners, a team whose style could charitably be described as flamboyant, and less charitably as outright anarchic. When these two sides meet, the match is christened the Pell Mell London Derby, and every stroke, every disputed call, every illegally adjusted hat brim (for Pell Mellers are renowned for trying to gain every advantage possible, even sending messages by the slant of their hat) is magnified into legend.

This year’s Derby promises a clash of philosophies as much as skill: the Club’s precise, almost Roman approach (think Scipio Aemilianus, but with Saville Row tailoring) against the Raveners’ ungovernable flair (think Hannibal, but mostly tired and emotional). The Pimlico Wilde Cup will sit in its glass case until the final bell , or until someone “accidentally” drinks from it, as in the regrettable incident of 2017.

Tickets will be available soon from the usual sources, as well as the venerable Pell Mell equipment suppliers on Haymarket, purveyors of mallets, monogrammed balls, and those peculiar half-capes without which no gentleman would dare take to the court. For those lucky enough to attend, remember: this is not merely sport. It is history played out with the satisfying thwack of a well-struck ball, echoing across the centuries.

The Death-Defying Bounce of Extreme Tiddlywinks

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The Death-Defying Bounce of Extreme Tiddlywinks

By Miranda Gough

Few would have predicted that the hottest, most lucrative new international sport would be related to tiddlywinks. Yet Extreme Tiddlywinks,a high-adrenaline mutation of the ancient pastime,has vaulted from drawing-room eccentricity to global sporting phenomenon, with top stars earning more than NFL and football players.

The unlikely architect of this metamorphosis is Seb Tuller, art expert at Pimlico Wilde auction house. Tuller, better known for cataloguing obscure Brâncuși bronzes than for athletic daring, has long carried a secret: he is a third-generation tiddlywinker.

“I grew up in the sport,” he tells me. “My grandfather invented cross-country tiddlywinks in Wimborne in the 1960s. He’d create courses across fields, ditches, even rivers. You didn’t just squop, you journeyed. I wanted to take that spirit and turn the wick up to eleven.”

The result is Extreme Tiddlywinks: part billiards de la Jardin, part biathlon, part sheer excitement.

How the Game Works

The official rulebook,bound in waterproof neoprene,runs to 317 pages, but the gist is this:
• Matches are staged on courses up to 50 kilometres long, incorporating sand traps, water features, scaffolding, cliffs, sinking sand and, in one notorious Bristol event, a bouncy castle.
• Players must flick their winks into a succession of giant, brightly coloured pots positioned along the course.
• Physical obstacles are mandatory. Competitors may have to rappel down a climbing wall between shots, or swim to reach the next pot.
• Protective goggles and helmets are compulsory. Health insurance is “strongly advised, but not enforced.”

Scoring remains traditional: you win by being the quickest to the final pot. “The elegance is in the historical continuity,” Tuller insists. “Our routes may now go up Everest or across a live military firing range rather than through the Wimbourne Vicarage garden, but how to win remains the same as when my grandfather tiddled his first wink.”

“Just how dangerous is the sport?” I ask. “Has anyone actually died playing?”

Tuller smiles thinly. “We don’t keep statistics on deaths whilst playing.”

He does concede that injuries are common: sprained thumbs, concussions from overzealous squops, and what players darkly refer to as “wink-lash.”

And yet, the rewards are staggering. Top athletes,household names in Extreme Tiddlywinking hotspots like London, Singapore, Toronto, Osaka and Torquay,now earn millions annually in sponsorships and appearance fees. The reigning world number one, Magnus “the Catapult” Sørensen, was reportedly paid £8.4m last season, not including his lucrative deal with a leading energy drink.

“These are not backyard flickers,” Tuller insists. “They are gladiators of plastic.”

The All England Extreme Tiddlywinks Championship

This June, the Gobi Desert will host the All England Extreme Tiddlywinks Championship, the sport’s most prestigious event. The three-day competition will feature night-time rounds under floodlights, an aerial pot suspended from a crane, and, controversially, a blindfolded route through a crocodile infested bog.

Bookies have installed Sørensen as favourite, though insiders whisper about Britain’s own Alice “Thumbs of Steel” Prendergast, who reportedly practices by flicking frozen peas across motorway service station cafe tables.

From Parlour to Podium

Tuller seems equal parts bemused and delighted by his sport’s runaway success. “I thought it would be a niche endeavour,” he says, “but on current predictions Extreme Tiddly-winking will be bigger than football by this time next year. We haven’t really had a new sport for decades. Parkour was probably the last.”

As for the future, he dreams of Extreme Tiddlywinks as an Olympic sport. “The IOC called it ‘unorthodox,’” he admits, “but so was snowboarding once. Give us time. The world is wobbling in our direction.”

Whether or not Extreme Tiddlywinks conquers the Olympics, it has already conquered imaginations. In the words of Tuller’s grandfather, scribbled in the margins of his first rulebook in 1967: ‘Never underestimate the power of a small disc. One day people will be winking on the moon.’ Tiddlywinks have not yet reached the moon, but it is surely only a matter of time.

Final Diary entry of Hally Redoubt: Race the Blue Train

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Final Diary entry of Hally Redoubt: Race the Blue Train

(Final Extracts, London , St Ethelbert’s Square)

Late night, outskirts of London

We entered the capital like a knife slipping through steak,sudden, unavoidable. The Bentley grumbled at the stop-start traffic, eager to sprint, but London does not permit sprinting. She crawls, she coils, she waits.

Simon sat rigid beside me, his case balanced on his knees, jaw clenched so tightly I thought his teeth might crack. “Nearly there,” he said, though whether to me or himself, I could not tell.

St Ethelbert’s Square, midnight

The Bentley rolled to a halt before the Spenserian Club, our official finish. Pimlico Wilde had assembled the requisite gaggle of onlookers: art dealers, journalists, people in overcoats pretending to understand horsepower. They cheered as though I’d conquered continents. Champagne corks popped, flashbulbs fired.

And the Blue Train? It had arrived only minutes before,or so they claimed. There was muttering, rumours of timetable “flexibility.” Did the driver cheat? Perhaps. But I had not, and that was enough. Honour intact, if not victorious.

I stepped from the car, gloved and smiling, as though I’d planned to be second all along. One must always play the gracious loser,it is the last refuge of the proud.

After the finish

Simon slipped away almost immediately, murmuring thanks. No handshake, no flourish, just gone into a waiting black cab. He left his pastry wrapper under the seat, a small proof that he’d ever been here.

Later, I walked past the church where his funeral was held. Black coats gathered, faces turned to the pavement. For a moment, I thought of going in, though I had not been invited. Instead, I lingered at the edge, watching Simon stand near the door, case at his feet, shoulders bowed. He looked both free and burdened.

Closing thoughts

So here I am, back in London. I raced a train, lost with honour, and carried a stranger to the source of his grief.

Was it worth it? The sleepless hours, the toll booths, the pastry crumbs? Yes. Because the Bentley and I proved something,not about speed, nor victory, but about persistence. We chased steel across countries, and though we did not catch it, we did arrive.

Perhaps that is the truest race of all: not against trains or clocks, but against the temptation to stop.

I will sleep now, and dream of roads.

The Diary of Hally Redoubt: Race the Blue Train

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The Diary of Hally Redoubt: Race the Blue Train

(Extracts from Day Two, Somewhere near Paris)

Just outside Lyon, very early morning

I accidentally woke Simon at dawn by accelerating out of a toll booth. He snorted awake like a startled walrus, then demanded to know where we were. I pointed at a sign for Mâcon and said, “France.” His silence thereafter was, for once, companionable.

We breakfasted, if you can call it that, on apricot pastries from a roadside café. Mine disappeared quickly; his was half-squashed from having been sat on during an earlier nap. He pretended not to notice. I admired the effort.

Mid-morning, Burgundy

The Bentley devoured the miles. She likes long runs, the hum and pulse of the road. Hills rose, fields gleamed, and occasionally a cow turned its head as if to say: “You’ll never catch a train that way.”

We overtook a convoy of lorries, their drivers waving as though we were some kind of sideshow. Perhaps we are.

Noon, outskirts of Paris

A glimpse of the Blue Train again,this time on a bridge, briefly silhouetted. My heart lurched: it was ahead. Simon noticed, and for once his voice carried some steel. “We’ll catch it,” he said. He is beginning to take this personally, as though the train insulted his family.

He insists he must reach London in time for the funeral tomorrow morning. The way he says tomorrow carries weight. For all his fussing, he has grief under his coat. I sense it.

Paris, mid-afternoon

Traffic, chaos, the opera of horns. Paris is an obstacle, not a city. The Bentley is not designed to crawl, yet crawl we did, between lorries and bicycles and a man selling roasted chestnuts in the exhaust fumes. Simon cursed in a way that suggested he hasn’t often cursed before. I admired him a little for it.

We did not stop. Not for coffee, not for sights, not even for petrol at first (a mistake quickly corrected at a station where the attendant took my glove off to kiss my hand). Paris slid behind us, as theatrical in leaving as in arrival.

Evening, north of Paris

The train remains elusive. Somewhere ahead, steaming with bureaucratic punctuality. We chase it like hunters in an old story, guided only by instinct and timetable. The Bentley’s engine still sings, but I feel the fatigue pressing at the edges of my eyes.

Simon offered to drive. I laughed until he stopped asking.

Near Amiens, very late

The road is dark, and the Bentley’s headlamps catch only fragments: hedges, signs, sometimes the flash of another vehicle. Simon dozed again, one hand on his case as if guarding treasure. I wonder what grief sits inside and who waits for him in London.

As for me, I feel both exhilarated and terrified. This is no race against a train, not really. It is a race against myself, inevitability, against the knowledge that things end.

Tomorrow, Calais. And then,England.

Race the Blue Train: Hally’s Diary

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Race the Blue Train: Hally’s Diary

(Extracts from Day Three, Calais , Dover , Into the Night)

Dawn, Calais

We reached the port just as the gulls were beginning their dreadful chorus. Salt wind, diesel fumes, a faint reek of chips already frying. The Bentley looked slightly dishevelled, as though she’d been in a bar fight and come third.

The train, damn it, had already been spotted gliding into Boulogne. Too close. Too smooth. I imagined its passengers sipping coffee, folding newspapers, unaware of us chasing them like lunatics on four wheels.

Simon grew anxious, tapping his valise like it was a nervous pet. “We must get across the Channel,” he said, as if ferries operate by whim. The funeral weighs on him,he hasn’t spoken of the deceased, only of “obligation.” I suspect the loss is complicated, perhaps not entirely mourned.

Mid-morning, the crossing

The Channel was choppy, though the Bentley bore it stoically, lashed down among lorries. I stood on deck, hair whipped about, thinking of the Bentley Boys of old, daring, absurd, role models to us all.

Simon emerged from below decks pale and damp, declaring, “Never again.” He doesn’t have the sailor’s stomach. He clutched his case as if seasickness might drown it. I gave him ginger biscuits, which he accepted like sacraments.

The gulls followed us halfway. Spies for the train, perhaps.

Dover, noon

Back on English soil. The Bentley roared in gratitude, her tyres humming on the familiar grit of home. Simon grew animated,too animated,directing me north as though I hadn’t driven these roads since I was seventeen. Still, I let him. It seemed to steady him, to bark out turns and timings as if he were in control of more than the route.

Afternoon, Kent

The countryside sped by in a haze of hedgerows and pubs promising carveries. We refuelled in Maidstone, where a group of teenagers asked if the Bentley was “off TikTok.” I told them no, but perhaps she should be. They took photos anyway.

Simon phoned someone at the funeral church, his voice low, clipped. When he hung up, his hand shook slightly. “We’re in time,” he said. He didn’t say for what.

Evening, nearing London

The roads thickened. The Bentley snarled at the traffic, weaving where she could, elegant even in aggression. The city lights rose ahead like a promise or a warning.

Somewhere, the Blue Train must be closing on its own destination. Perhaps already pulling in, smug in its punctuality. I pressed harder on the pedal. Honour demanded I not cheat,but honour never said anything about speeding.

Simon fell silent. The case on his knees. His eyes fixed on nothing.

I, too, fell silent, though for different reasons. The race is almost done. But the journey,that’s another matter entirely.