'But ... I'm totally unprepared! I have no luggage with me, no nothing.'
'None of us do. We none of us expected this. That is, in general, the nature of adventures. Adventurers tend to smell. The great epic tales stank, I think, more than the historians give them credit for.'
K. Rundell, Impossible creatures (2023), 111-2
Some sentences have the power to change everything. They are the usual suspects: I love you , I hate you , I'm pregnant, I'm dying, I regret to tell you that this country is at war. But the words with the greatest power to create both havoc and marvels are these:
'I need your help.'
K. Rundell, Impossible creatures (2023), 57
The fact is that every large school requires an advocatus diaboli - and at Castrevenford Mr Etherege occupied this important post. He was flagrantly lacking in public spirit. He never attended important matches. He was not interested in the spiritual welfare of his boys. He lacked respect for the school as an institution. In short, he was impenitently an individualist. And if, at first sight, these characteristics do not appear particularly commendable, you must remember the context. In a school like Castrevenford a good deal of emphasis is necessarily laid on public spirit, and the thing is liable to develop, if unregulated into a rather dreary fetish. Mr Etherege helped to keep this peril at bay.
E. Crispin, Love lies bleeding (1948), 22
He invariably found Miss Parry's efficiency a little daunting. He seemed to see, ranked indomitably behind her, all those bold, outspoken, competent, middle-aged women whose kind is peculiar to the higher levels of the English bourgeoisie, organizing charity bazaars, visiting the sick and impoverished , training callow maidservants, implacably gardening. Some freak of destiny into which he had never enquired had compelled Miss Parry to forsake this orbit in search of a living, but its atmosphere still clung to her.
E. Crispin, Love lies bleeding (1948), 8
Tiekoro had always looked on Tiefolo as a boor who covered himself with gris-gris to track down animals that had never done him any harm; his reputation for bravery was for him tantamount to a reputation for stupidity. But Tiefolo was the eldest son of his father's younger brother, and so he ought to try to get along with him.
M. Condé, Segu (1984), tr. B. Bray (1987), 355
So cricket is one of the rare things which can bring the Pakistan military and the Taliban together, in what amounts to a temporary ceasefire. For example, it is not unknown for army bulldozers to clear the wickets of debris at the start, and for the Taliban to provide security while tournaments are under way. My informants told me that the Al-Qaeda, by contrast, never played cricket and favoured volleyball. They also liked football - but never cricket.
P. Oborne, Wounded tiger (2014), 411-2
Astonishing teenagers are a recurring theme in Pakistan's cricket history. Of the 33 players recorded as making their Test debut before the age of eighteen, 15 are Pakistanis.
P. Oborne, Wounded tiger (2014), 386
