Links to Chapter One and Chapter Two
Edmund slipped and shivered through the snow until he eventually found the Witch’s castle. It looked quite creepy, but bolstered by thoughts of Turkish Delight (oh, his Saracens – and the Scarlets were his favourite Welsh side), he crept through the imposing main gate.
He found himself in a courtyard filled with statues. They had snow settling on them, and they all looked very sad. Near the gate, there were a couple of magnificent Lions, and then he spotted a statue that looked very like Lucy’s description of Mr Iknus. There was a collection of stone rugby balls, and what looked like a few referees. (“Those referees probably deserved it,” thought Edmund.)
Suddenly, Edmund was rooted to the spot by a chilling low growl. He turned his head to find himself staring into the eyes of Maugrim, chief of the Witch’s Very Secret Police.
“Come,” said Maugrim, “Her Majesty is expecting you.”
* * *
“What!” said the Witch, not at all friendly like the last time, “Have you come alone? I told you to bring the Daughters of Maeve and the other Son of George.”
“B – b – but,” stammered Edmund, afraid of her icy stare and stern manner, “I couldn’t get them away from the Beavers. They were all talking about the return of Paulan to Narnia.”
The Queen turned even paler, if that were possible.
“Paulan!” she muttered to herself, “No, it cannot be possible. My spells are strong.”
Before Edmund knew what had happened, she had crossed the room and spear-tackled him with one strong arm. “Tell me all,” she said, preparing to drive his head into the ground.
Edmund, quaking with fear, told her all that he knew.
The Witch released him with a thump on the floor, and clapped her hands to summon her minions.
“Harness the springboks and prepare my sledge immediately! Get my dwarf! Maugrim: take the swiftest of your wolves, go to the Lodge, and kill the children and the Beavers. If they have already gone, then proceed to the Stone Stadium.”
In the twinkling of a drop goal, the sledge pulled up, driven by a dwarf who looked suspiciously like a scrum-half. Edmund was bound, and unceremoniously dumped into the bottom of the sledge. There wasn’t even any Turkish Delight.
* * *
“Susan,” said Peter, “Where’s Edmund?”
“I – I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I haven’t noticed him for a while.”
“Ah, children,” said Mr Beaver, “I’m afraid he’s gone to see the Witch. We must be on our way quickly.”
“What?”, said Lucy, “No, surely Edmund would never betray us.”
“Daughter, I’m afraid he has the look of one who is in the Witch’s favour. How long that favour lasts is another matter.
“Did anyone notice when he left? Did he hear that Paulan is on the move?”
Nobody was quite sure.
“Then we must be off at once. Mrs Beaver, please pack us up as quickly as you can.”
Mrs Beaver – for of course it’s always the females who are prepared for anything – had already got nearly everything ready for travelling. She had a pack ready for everyone, and they were off in less time than it takes to reset a scrum.
* * *
They had a long, cold and weary journey, and stopped after some hours at a safe hiding place, where they cast themselves down on the floor, covered themselves with the blankets kindly provided by Mrs Beaver, and fell asleep immediately.
They were awakened at dawn by some faint voices, which became clearer as they drew closer.
“Ho, ho ho! Go left! It’s on!”
“I’m straighter than that throw-in.”
The children rubbed the sleep from their eyes and looked in confusion at the Beavers.
“It’s Father Jiffy and Father Nige,” beamed Mr Beaver. “The Witch’s magic has kept them from Narnia for so long, but her enchantment is fading. The voices of rugby have returned to the land.” They rushed outside to find a volley of rugby balls flying through the air, and the snow at last melting.
Ovally Balls 
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DCI
…..that WW extract is TERRIBLE……………..
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@tom: You missed the final couplet:.
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@Slade:
It is, isn’t it? It’s like a bad parody. It’s the worst bit I’ve found so far, though and there are some really good bits. Reminds me a bit of that quote about Wagner: “he has some lovely moments and some bloody awful half hours.”.
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Not a huge Dead fan, but have to say not sure about the Guardians pics. I would start with Workingmans Dead.
Anyway, I like this one off the second live album.
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OK, here are the answers for the kwiz from earlier.
(I know that there may be some other albums with starting tracks of the same name, but these are the answers I have). So, track – Album – Artist
1. She’s no good Bob Dylan Bob Dylan
2. Let’s go crazy Purple Rain Prince
3. Respectable Street Black Rain XTC
4. Two Of Us Let It Be The Beatles
5. The new stone age Architecture & Morality Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
6. Pseudo Silk Kimono Misplaced Childhood Marillion
7. A sort of homecoming The unforgettable fire U2
8. Go Vs Pearl Jam
9. Invaders The number of the beast Iron Maiden
10. EXP Axis: Bold as love Jimi Hendrix Experience
11. 15 Step In Rainbows Radiohead
12. Eleventh Earl of Mar Wind and Wuthering Genesis
13. Free fallin’ Full moon fever Tom Petty
14. Welcome to the working week My aim is true Elvis Costello
15. Cold as Christmas Too Low For Zero Elton John
16. Praying for time Listen without prejudice George Michael
17. Davy Meet Danny Wilson Danny Wilson
18. Custard Pie Physical Graffiti Led Zeppelin
19. Finest worksong Document R.E.M.
20. Wheels of confusion Vol. 4 Black Sabbath
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I’m sorry BB, but it’s still too difficult even with the answers.
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On the other hand I quite enjoyed Wordsworth’s game of cards there. Not that I know whether he’s pissed, taking the piss or perhaps talking in part about something else all together.
Then again that’s about as much of it as I want to read in one sitting and I fear Brookter may have overdosed.
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BB – got any questions re songs and bands after 1993?
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Tomp – out of interest what is the title of FD’s book?
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Nope, but I’ll make one up if you want.
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@BB – sounds like a good title for FD’s book.
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CMW – pretty sure it’s called ‘FD’s Book’.
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@Craigs – That’s good, it’s nice to know that “Nope, but I’ll make one up if you want” is still available for the rest of us.
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Millie Small RIP
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Craigs,
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Available from Waterstones or your local independent bookshop could probably order it:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/political-survival-and-sovereignty-in-international-relations/jesse-dillon-savage//9781108494502
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@CMW:
Good morning. Sadly the card game was only 20 lines of The Prelude. Each book has about 600 lines, and there are 13 books. I can just about manage one book at a time, but I couldn’t sit down and read the whole thing at once.
I trust you and yours are well?
FD’s book in on Cambridge University Press’s website — a snip at £75, and available for free if you have the right sort of account, which I don’t. I’m not sure whether he wants his real name generally known or I’d post the title — does he still post on here?
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Hah! Too late…
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@Tom
I’ve started using our ‘local’ independent book store — ‘local’ in inverted commas because we don’t have one in Chester and this is in Mold. They take orders and they deliver by hand. TBH I should have done this years ago, but Amazon was too easy. I hope they survive the crisis.
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DCI, It’s tough for them. I tend to go for the smaller (non-chains) here in the CR but the same distributor seems to be used by all Czech bookstores so it’s not a massive problem. From the UK I tend to buy direct from the publisher (places like Verso – good deals at the moment – or Repeater) or from Waterstones, who aren’t my faves but still.
I wasn’t in the UK at all between 2013 and 2017 and one of the first things I wanted to do when I returned for the first time was to visit a second-hand bookshop about a mile from where my parents live. The guy who ran it could also order new books for you. I picked up lots of good stuff there in 2013 including two old Playfair Rugby Annuals from the 1950s, lovely little things. Turned out it had closed in 2015.
When I was a teenager, there were 4 or 5 good second-hand bookstores but they’ve all closed down now. The charity shops are the only outlet but they’re more for impulse buys and can’t order for you, of course.
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I once asked FD if he was the author of a piece that was published on the Mail & Guardian site from SA and he said he was so I’d hope that he’d be ok with others knowing his real name. Plus, he might pick up a couple of sales.
Anybody else who wants me to reveal their true identity only has to ask.
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Cheers Tomp. If necessary, we can always redact these posts if it’s likely to affect him.
I just want to be able to follow him around obviously.
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Well, my assessment of my own abilities was good. I knew 13 and 19 and should have known 14 and 20 (prob also #4 and #17)
….”a man’s gotta know his limitations….”
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I uncovered TomP’s real name by investigating the Basque name for butterfly.
He shares his name with a former Lancashire cricket captain so that’s ok, then.
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@Tom:
Chester has a reasonable Waterstones, a couple of remainder chains, a biggish WH Smiths, and that’s about it, as far as I or the internet can tell. There used to be a couple of second hand shops, but they’ve gone. It must be really difficult and I feel guilty I didn’t use them more.
As for FD’s real name — I’m just a bit wary of revealing people’s real names myself. Because almost everybody on the old blog wrote an ATL at some point, obviously I know everybody’s real names, so it feels a bit wrong for me to reveal them without permission in another context. But that only really applies to me, Sag and Cat as we were the only ones with that sort of access. I’m probably being over-cautious.
Just on that point, while I remember: I have absolutely no access to any of the old AoD site. I can’t log onto it or retrieve any data: as far as I can tell it’s gone for good. The only record I have is emails from individual posters about ATLs etc, and of course *puts on data protection hat*, if anyone wants me to delete those, I shall…
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There’s a school on Anglesey that shares my name as well, OT. My cousin was up in Gogland and took a photo of it for me. Arthur Emyr and Aled Jones are old boys.
I’ve mentioned it before but a ruck when Nige is reffing always attracts my attraction.
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DCI,
Really early ones are still available here: https://artofdomination.wordpress.com/
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I love old second hand book shops and normally leave with something I didn’t want before I went in. Gormenghast last time.
They suffer similar pressures to most of the high street so time will tell. Canterbury has a few good ones iirc.
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Yes, my mate went there. He was quite vitriolic about the anti-English sentiment there, although he did ok because he did well in his Welsh exams and was put into the Welsh stream.
He later won a physics prize that Brian Cox won a couple of years previously.
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For close readers of his work, Deebee revealed himself as a relative of the former Tory MP and friend of Oxford University Rugby League Club Edward du Cann the other week:
“Monsieur Ducan?” I heard and turned to see a young man holding his phone out to me with my WhatsApp profile photo on it.
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Craigs,
My missus gets exasperated by my interest in them. We were in London last summer. My lad’s first visit there. We stay in Notting Hill Gate and on our first day there they went to Kensington Gardens while I trawled the second-hand book stores and charity shops for gems. A couple of days later we did a long walk from Waterloo to Holborn via the South Bank, City, Clerkenwell and Farringdon. We ended up in Bloomsbury by sheer chance and I suggested they have a coffee and cake while I went to the marvellous Judd Books and Scoob.
South Africa has some good ones. On our Garden Route 3-weeker I went to stores in Knysna and George, both good. Pretoria had a few, ,y favourite was the Protea bookshop a little pricey but some good stuff
Cape Town has quite a few – Select Books and Clarkes on Long Street are both really really nice. And there’s a charity store just down from where we used to stay in Claremont that had a brilliant selection for nothing – I’d spend 200 Rand (12 quid or so at the time) and come out with 10 books. Also recommended is the one in the Breyten Breytenbach Arts Centre in Schalk Burger’s home town of Wellington.
The absolute daddy was in Joburg’s CBD. It’s an incredible place: https://www.ozy.com/around-the-world/the-biggest-most-chaotic-used-bookstore-in-the-southern-hemisphere/88026/
Expensive and cash only when I lived there but a place you could get lost in for days.
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@tomp
When the first email arrived from you, I must admit I *was* surprised to learn that your real name was Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Boarding School For Sons of Gentlefolk.
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Deebee, perhaps you can take us all down to the wet and wild coast for a couple of days when we come over to yours for the Lions Tour next year ?
Would happily do that SBT – my brother in law is always up for showing people around. Of course you need to bear in mind that the closest match is in PE, about 400km away with roads not recommended for the faint hearted! Beautiful drive from PE to Morgs, mind you through some spectacular Eastern Cape scenery as well as a crash course in human neglect and poverty.
Anyone travelling from Durban to Mbombela would also be most welcome to overnight at our guest house in Clarens (sleeps 8, free of charge assuming it’s not previously booked) in the Eastern Free State. Lovely town, close to the Lesotho border and one of the few places you can ski here in winter (Lesotho, that is). And it will be winter here – and bloody cold in that part of the world!
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One of my favourite bookshops is the Oxfam one in Berkhampstead, it’s near my sister-in-law’s. I mentioned it on the old blog and someone, it may have been Rachel, said that the rugby autobiographies I’d picked up in there probably had been donated by her brother.
Small world.
My highlight of the week is coming up, sitting in Asda carpark for an hour and a hal& whilst Eldest does the weekly shop
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@TomP – always been a Cambridge man, myself. May have ended up there if I’d got a 1st for my Master’s thesis, but unfortunately (academically speaking) my son arrived in the middle of my thesis and I packed up uni to get a real job. Well, one that paid the bills anyway.
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Brookter! Glad to see you here! You’ve been sorely missed!
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Tomp – that’s a nice walk. I sometimes did similar walks from my office but generally we’d find a pub…
If I ever go back to SA I’ll look out for some of those shops.
Next time you are in London, I suggest you make your way to Hatchards in picadilly if you haven’t already visited. Whilst not a dingy second hand book shop it’s amazing and is a nice old historic building. There’re loads of signed copies of books there too.
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TomP – when I was in the army in Cape Town there were loads of great 2nd hand shops (books, antiques, art, etc) in all of the small satellite towns like Simon’s Town, Kalk Bay, Hout Bay and the like. Some are still around, but most have been replaced by ersatz shopping centres with their same-same stores and brands. Sad.
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Morning Deebee!
You’re very kind… I trust you and yours are well, in the circumstances?
There’s an article in today’s Times by Owen Slot about the risk that SuperRugby won’t survive and SAANZAR will revert to national competitions. He says that SA and NZ will manage well enough, because there’s a lot of interest from the public and TV (and the big crowds are always for the local games anyway), but he doubts that professional rugby in Arg and Aus will survive. Does that sound a reasonable description from your SH perspective?
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I have seen a video of DCI being interviewed by Ranvir Singh in his pre-retirement days.
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OT,
Ah yes… I remember that one. It would be about 2009, I think. I used to hate doing interviews, while some of my more career minded colleagues used to love them. Unfortunately I couldn’t find one of them at the time to offer them the ‘opportunity’, so couldn’t get out of it.
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As good as can be expected during our insane lockdown, DCI – total booze and smokes ban, no travel outside of each province, a load of other utterly arbitrary bans and restrictions and now the first instances being revealed in the press of large-scale corruption in the emergency roll-out. This, from a paper here probably sums things up best:
The average price of pineapples at the Joburg fresh produce market was more than 200% higher in April this year, compared to the same month last year. This is due to strong demand from home-brewers, who are resorting to desperate measures amid a continuing ban on buying alcohol. Peak pineapple season is now over, but despite fewer fruit on the market – and strong demand from exporters – producers believe there should be enough to go around.
Crazy stuff! Pretty much everyone I know is brewing pineapple beer, ‘apple cider’ and any other fruit they can get their hands on at the moment. It’s got to the point that the largest manufacturer of brewer’s yeast has stopped distribution to supermarkets as middle-income South Africa goes balls to the wall in brewing hooch!
On Super rugby, I think it probably won’t survive, especially in it’s current bloated, somewhat farcical format. From memory, South Africa provides the bulk of the TV viewers but didn’t receive a similar share of TV revenues, so perhaps it’ll be good for us to get back to a local competition. The Kiwis are talking about a domestic ‘Super rugby’ tournament and I’ve seen speculation of including some of the Pacific Island nations in it as well.
We’ve got a history of having sides from Zimbabwe, Namibia and more recently Argentina playing in our lower league comps, so it may be that we could expand that and get the Currie Cup back on the pedestal it used to be on. The last year or so has seen a substantial amount of money flowing back into the local game and I think it may just be what gets the fans back to the grounds – many were bored with Super rugby already. Especially if we can persuade more of our top players currently in Europe and Japan to come home. I don’t think our future lies in Europe – travel north-south may not be a problem timezone wise but it’s still 10 hours flight to an away game!
Australia? Will the Kiwis want them? Can they be part of a broader Pacific tournament? Not sure. Will Israel Folau be the new Chairman of Rugby Australia? Anything’s possible.
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@Deebee,
Thanks! I’m not sure pineapple beer is in my future… I’ve been drinking a bit more over the last couple of months, but I started from a low base and I’m working my way through the backlog in Richard Branson’s Wine Cellar[1]. I expect you’ve been Zooming Dova for tips on how to brew it? If so, please Stay Alert…
Would you prefer the Curry Cup to SupeRugby yourself?
[1] Virgin Wine Discovery Club: 12 bottles once a quarter and I used to cancel 2 out of 3 because I hadn’t drunk the ante-penultimate quarters yet. I’m about up to Summer 2019 now.
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Changing the subject completely, is anyone going to get The Last of Us 2? And has anyone been following the latest uproar about it?
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Is it from after 1993?
If it is, then No and No.
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BB – only a few decades after.
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*has Craig’s finished Bloodborne update*
Nope
*has Craig’s finished Bloodborne update ends*
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Stuck-up bastards they are.
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