Rugby
Well, the end of the domestic season has arrived and there is only the final international games left before the southern hemisphere rugby season closes and the time has started for player movements between unions and to clubs overseas. I suppose the important ones are the transfers which affect my team, The Sharks. Skipper Badenhorst and Monty Dumond are both making the move to the Free State Cheetahs. Dumond will be making the move temporarily and will only be used during the Super 14 before he comes back to the Sharks for the Currie Cup.
To be honest, Skipper Badenhorst in my opinion is welcome to move along. He has been a servant for the Sharks but is a true journeyman having played at so many other unions before coming to the Sharks and to be honest he is our third choice hooker behind Springbok incumbent Bismark Du Plessis and converted wing, Craig Burden. He will be better used by the Cheetahs as their second choice hooker. Good luck to him.
The Springboks, or should I say South Africa, played a game against the Leicester Tigers and it was very embarrassing. Admittedly, these guys were our second string team with our first choice resting after a very long and successful season and hadn’t played together at all before the game. But to be so destroyed is humiliating for the players. Chilliboy Ralapelle was the captain for the evening and only played twenty minutes before being subbed out. It’s a pity because I rate Chilliboy and he really isn’t getting enough game time.
I heard during the week he was linked to a move from the Bulls to the Lions where he would be both first choice and captain and I actually hoped that it was true because it would finally allow him to get the game time and experience needed. But both sides have denied that he will be moving, which is a real pity. But I can hope it’s all smoke and mirrors, like the Heinrich Brussouw incident – he isn’t coming to the Sharks by the way.
Books and writing
As always I have been doing quite a bit of reading and the book that I have finished last was Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. I did enjoy it for a while but when I reached the final hundred pages my interest waned and I really had to push myself to get through it. My favorite book of his was Angels and Demons and it seems as though he has followed the same formula in the books he has written since (Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol).
Robert Jordan’s The Gathering Storm has been released lately. One of the books I’m reading at the moment is Robert Jordan’s Lord of Chaos. It’s the sixth book in his Wheel of Time series and it’s become a drag, a chore, to get through it. I loved the first book in the series, The Eye of the World, but it feels as though the publishing house wanted more and more and he had to drag it out more and more for revenue purposes. I really wondering if I should even try to get to the end of the series. Robert Jordan has passed on, unfortunately, before he could finish his work but had stated that book 12 would be the last book in the series and would be called A Memory of Light. Brandon Sanderson was tipped to complete it and I’m sure he did his best to ensure it was up to the same standard as the rest of the standard. But the problem is that the final book has been stretched to three books. Is it something which Brandon Sanderson could have avoided? I doubt it. He has said that he tried to finish all of the story threads which had been left hanging at the end of the last book. But I can’t help but wonder if maybe some of those threads weren’t meant to be tied off? Just a thought.
Pecan Hill and Spoil the Child
Still no movement on Pecan Hill, but I have to honest and say that I haven’t sent through any more queries for it. I’m trying to perfect my query before I send it on to other agents.
My work is still going on with Spoil the Child. I reached a point where I was stuck as to where I wanted to go with the story but it was while I was driving home the other day and listening to the beginning of Stephen King’s Just After Sunset when he was reading from Arthur Mocken’s The Great God Pan (I’m not sure if I got the spelling right) that I had a flash of inspiration. I know which direction I want to head, but now I just have to get there.
Geoff's Ruminations 