The English Football season began this weekend with games in the Championship and Leagues 1 and 2. It is a little hard to get my head around the fact that Oldham Athletic are not amongst the ranks of the EFL, but find themselves in the National League - the fifth tier. They are not the only ones to suffer this fate - many clubs have gone before and some are in even lower leagues. Still others have disbanded or reconstituted as new clubs, often with similar names.

Holding it together financially is a big ask for many teams outside the Premier League and Oldham is no exception. Poor management and player recruitment are at least partly to blame for the current imbroglio, something which is now being rectified. The club has new motivated owners, a competent manager and an interest in buying players who are able to match it with their peers. The National League, however, is highly competitive and notoriously hard to get out of - a mere two promotion places of which the second is a playoff between five teams. At the other end, there are four relegation spots!

Good luck to the Latics.

 'So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.' 2 Cor 4:18

Seeing is believing is one of the catch phrases of the 20th Century, but its origins go back at least to Ancient Greece. The Greeks thought that seeing and knowing were identical or very similar. It's emergence in the modern era is linked to a more cynical take - 'show me the money or I won't believe you.'

Strangely enough, the period beginning with the world wide web has ushered in an epoch of increasingly credulity. Anything might be believed or disbelieved on the basis of a tweet, a doctored photo, a website claiming authenticity, a rumour spread on social media. Fact-checking becomes a frenetic attempt to douse spot fires sparking in every direction.

The Greeks also had a pantheon of gods for whom they made images - likenesses that reminded them of the physical characteristics of the deities. The Christian and Hebrew God has no such 'graven image' - in fact - expressly forbade it. Faith in the unseen is distinctly difficult in a world that privileges a totalising effect of the visual.

And yet, it abides.

In the 1990's, Paul Keating famously said that the 'inflation stick' had been snapped. There followed on over twenty years of relatively low inflation (save for the bump after the GST was introduced). But the CPI for Australia just released for 21/22 shows the underlying figure at 6.1%.

Inflation has taken off around the world and for many of the same reasons - choked supply chains, the coronavirus, government spending during the coronavirus and so forth. I am not an economist so I speak as the layest of the lay.

Most people probably don't go to the ABS to look at the breakdown of the figures, nor do they read the experts who write for the daily papers. Most of what they get will be from a woeful commercial news service that squeezes footage of of harried shoppers in between infomercials and sports reporting.

But truthfully many folks will be hurting and daily finding ways of making the family budget go further. Unluckier others will be searching for cheaper rents. There is often a human cost to a statistic.

Let's hope that we can locate that stick again - and who doesn't like a stick - and snap it for perpetuity.

Not to hark on a theme or anything, but the Grand Sumo Tourney in Nagoya has fallen victim to the corona virus in a big way. Well over a dozen wrestlers have been forced to withdraw as a result of an infection in the their stable (heya). The NHK broadcasts have been compelled to include lower division matches to make up the program time. I can never recall that happening before but I am pleased at having the chance to see rikishi I have never seen; also the opportunity to watch Asanoyama at work in the 4th division. Well done to the latter at 7-0.

But congratulations are in order for rank and filer (maegashira) Ichinojo who won his first Emperor's Cup last night (12-3). Things fell his way in the end - as they often have to - for such a result to occur. I think a promotion may be in order for the next basho. Meanwhile, not another peep out of me on this topic for two months. Promise!

No really, it's yours!

Photo courtesy Japan Forward.

You should never right off an ozeki, even one that seems to be chronically underperforming. And yet since my last post, the misfiring Shodai has come from being at 0-3 to an impressive 8-5. It was almost as if he had read my text personally and taken umbrage. Well, so much the better as he has thankfully lost the dreaded kadoban status. Now, if only he can develop a positive consistency!

It is hard to see who might join Terunofuji in the rarefied ranks of the yokozuna, one fine day. I doubt that it will come from the current crop of ozeki. But there are some up and coming wrestlers who are very promising and demonstrate a fighting spirit. I fancy Wakatakakage or Kotonowaka, both good prospects for ozeki in the future. And who knows what beyond that?

The Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament is now in full swing. There are no limits on seating and most of the rikishi are healthy, though Takayasu is out with Covid. But there is one wrestler who is looking increasingly uncomfortable as a top ranker. 

I am speaking of Ozeki Shodai, who looks more and more likely to drop rank in this basho. He is currently at kadoban status, which literally means, 'in the corner.' A wrestler becomes a kadoban ozeki when he fails to achieve a winning record in the previous tourney, such as 7-8. This is known as a makekoshi record, whilst a winning performance is called a kachikoshi. For the last three meets, Shodai has performed poorly in the first week, often getting to 0-5 before he decides to do something about it. He is currently at 0-3.

To be honest, he doesn't look at all happy at ozeki rank. The pressure at this, the second highest level, must be fairly intense and there is an unwritten obligation to achieve at least 10 wins each time around. Ozeki pride, it's called.

Shodai is a good wrestler and got to where he is on merit. There is just something going on inside his head. I don't know if Japan is big on sports psychologists but this is one man who could use a session or two.

Happier days.

Photo courtesy Japan Forward

When I first went to Japan on a work assignment in 2001, Shinzo Abe was a Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary in the government of the flamboyant Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. He rose rapidly from that position to be Secretary General of the LDP, Chief Cabinet Secretary and then Prime Minister in his own right in 2006. He went on to serve again in that role from 2012 to 2020. Yesterday he was shot dead by a gunman whilst campaigning for his party in Nara.

I had an interest in the labyrinthine world of Japanese politics from the beginning of my stay until we departed in 2007. Even before his long and successful stint as PM, Abe was a significant player in the political world, often appearing in news bulletins on NHK or referenced in the daily newspaper that came to our door, The Yomuiri Shimbun. It was no surprise that he went on to dominate his nations political life in the 2010's. He also made a significant contribution to Japan's international standing.

I come from a different place on the spectrum to Shinzo Abe and often disagreed with his positions on issues, both domestic and international. But he did not deserve to be gunned down - shot in the back - and his death is a tragedy for reasonable debate and the democratic order.

It is also a sad thing indeed for his family, friends and nation. A loss, deep and heartfelt, truly.

Rest in Peace Shinzo Abe.

Photo courtesy CNA.

Floods, erosion through wind and water, sunshine, tectonic activity, vulcanism and much else besides are factors that influence what we are able to recover about the historical, geological and archaeological past. The traces of entire ancient civilisations may be beyond our discovery, even with improved technology. There is even speculation, without any supporting evidence of course, that an advanced civilisation could have emerged on Earth in the past, become extinct, but remains outside our capacity to detect by virtue of the vast amounts of time involved and the changes wrought by erosion and tectonics.

So twenty of thirty years is less than an eye-blink given the age of the Earth. Still those same erosive elements can turn up artefacts of earlier lives, however contemporary. And so it was with the most recent extended rainfall and flooding. 

My garden can become a floodplain and quagmire in one, given the right conditions. The water hurtling down the lower-side fence is a sight to behold and quite extraordinary, really. While clearing a leaf blockage in the rain the other day, up popped a dog bone, a relic of my dearly beloved dog, Ruth. She had obviously chewed the best out of it and then buried it amongst the boundary trees. She is long gone but this bone was a precious reminder of our time together.

More precious to me, than unearthing another Rosetta Stone.

The front page of todays Blue Mountains Gazette, which I don't often quote from, has the main headline, "Losing Our Religion", a piece that is responding to the findings of the 2021 Census in Australia. It notes that the number of Mountains residents having "no religion" sits at 46.5%, a rise from 2016 of almost 11%. This is higher than NSW averages.

Of course, having no formal affiliation with a religion does not mean that a person is an atheist nor that they don't ponder spiritual questions from time to time, but is is indicative of a world (predicted by Nietzsche) in which the material trumps the metaphysical. Meaning is derived from engagement with the material world.

The loss of meaning that religion once gave people was much the subject of existential thinkers like Camus and Sartre. If no meaning can be derived from faith in God, then what purpose is there in life. The question answers itself in part, because if there is no purpose handed down from a higher authority, then it is up to the individual to create meaning for themselves. This is fine for smart philosophers in Left Bank cafes, but for many people, it is a terrifying prospect.

Loss of meaning and an enduring inability to find purpose are the cause, in my estimation, of much of the unhappiness of contemporary humans. There is only so much business, in the form of work, shopping, entertainment and other diversions that will provide that fix. It is temporary at best.

A friend of mine loves to characterise God as "the imaginary friend in the sky." I don't mind at all, but I can't help but think that this is but one device for staving off the inevitable, that time that will come when the discussion is front and centre and all jokes have ceased. 

It seems like quite a while since we experienced drought-like conditions, but really, it was only a few years back. I remember visiting Warragamba with Ann and seeing just how low the water was in the huge dam. That was 2019. Now it is spilling over, such is the quantity of rain that has fallen in the past few days.

My garden is like a floating pool, with eddies here and dashes of water there. Along the lower side fence, a torrent streams by every time the rain becomes heavier. The upper drive is becoming rutted once again. This will be the fifth repair of the year.

A little while ago I crossed the road to feed my neighbours animals - a cat, a dog and six chickens. They are away down south, hopefully somewhere drier. The chook yard was mired in inches of mud, the poor birds seeking a higher footing wherever they could. There was much clucking but not a lot of grumbling, except from the man in the wellies who kept sinking into the dismal slosh.

I welcome the sun again, soon.