September

As Fantasy Bob's cricket season reaches his end he welcomes the arrival of September.  There is only one September Song, which FB discussed last year.  But while Carole King's It Might As Well Rain Until September has been all too an accurate description of this season, FB will not feature it.

Instead he wishes to bring to the attention of his world wide readership the following song lyric which mentions September in its first line.  It is perfect.

It is sung here by David Bowie.

It was a day in that blue month September

Silent beneath the plum trees' slender shade

 I held her there My love, so pale and silent 

As if she were a dream that must not fade 

Above us in the shining summer heaven 

There was a cloud my eyes dwelled long upon 

It was quite white and very high above us 

Then I looked up 

And found that it had gone 

And since that day, so many moons in silence 

Have swum across the sky and gone below 

The plum trees surely have been chopped for firewood 

And if you ask, how does that love seem now 

I must admit, I really can't remember 

And yet I know what you are trying to say 

But what her face was like, I know no longer 

I only know I kissed it on that day 

As for the kiss, I long ago forgot it 

But for the cloud that floated in the sky 

I know that still and shall forever know it 

It was quite white and moved in very high 

It may be that the plum trees still are blooming 

That woman's seventh child may now be there 

And yet that cloud had only bloomed for minutes 

When I looked up 

It vanished on the air

The song is Remembering Marie A and is by Bertolt Brecht.  As a lyric it is as near perfect as it can be.  It is about young love and the passion of the moment of course, but a cricketer will find the same nostalgic wistfulness about scoring that first 50 long ago - When I looked up, it vanished on the air............

The song is from Brecht's play Baal written in 1918 and the great man's first full length play.  It was televised with Bowie in the title role in February 1982.  

At the same time as the play was transmitted, Australia were playing West Indies in Adelaide.  West Indies won by 5 wickets to square the 3 match series.  But the match was a gripping affair, as Australia recovered from a disastrous first morning of 17-4 to set a fourth innings target of 236.  Even when West Indies were in sight of the finishing line a series of dropped catches by Australia made things easier than they should be.  Clive Lloyd in particular was given several lives and was not out on 77 at the end.  Alan Border's typically back to the wall 126 in Australia's second innings got him the Man of the Match award.  He reached his hundred on the same day that the play was transmitted.