A rose is a rose is a rose

A Rose is a Rose is a Rose - so said Gertrude Stein.

This is the story of a rose.

When my Dad was a boy, just at the end of the First World War, he used to walk to school. It was about a 4 mile walk, from his home in Darley Green in Warwickshire to Hockley Heath School. Nothing unusual about that.  In those days, shanks’ pony was the only transport available to most of the population.

Just before he reached the school, my Dad passed a patch of land.  It was on the corner of School Road and the main road that ran between Stratford-upon-Avon and Birmingham.  On this patch of land was a rose bush.  My Dad remembered it because one of his school friends picked a bunch of the pink roses to take home to his mother.  The owner of the land contacted the police and my Dad’s friend was arrested.  I don’t think anything too serious happened to him – he wasn’t transported to the colonies or even sent to the nearest Borstal Institution.  Probably he got a clip round the ear from the local bobby or maybe a good hiding from his father. 

Of course, it has occurred to me that maybe my Dad modified the story and it was actually him rather than a “friend” who took the roses.  He’s not here for me to ask; but he was probably the most honest man I’ve ever known so I’ve long since dismissed the idea.

Anyway, we move forward now to the 1950s when my parents bought that same piece of land.  It was part of a larger parcel of land on which they built a house in which we all lived happily throughout the 1960s. The rose bush still grew there and every year when it flowered, it no doubt brought back childhood memories for my Dad.  When my parents retired and moved house, they took a cutting from the rose bush with them.  They moved several times and on each occasion took another cutting.  When they finally settled down in a bungalow in Hockley Heath just half a mile from the original rose bush, they planted another cutting that flourished up against the wall of their home.  Which reminds me of Eleanor Roosevelt once saying how flattered she was to have a rose named after her.  She was not so pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall

Let’s wind forward again, to the mid 1980s.  My mother gave a rose cutting each to me and my brother.  I planted mine in my garden and it flourished, growing to a good height in just a couple of years.  There was only one problem.  It didn’t produce any flowers – not a single one.

After three or four years, my wife and I agreed that we’d give the rose bush just one more chance.  If it didn’t flower that year (1989), we would dig it up and plant another bush.  Sure enough, it failed again.  Time to get out the spade. But sadly, that autumn, my mother passed away, a victim of leukaemia.  Somehow, digging up the rose she had given me didn’t seem the right thing to do so I left it in place.

Maybe you can guess the next bit of the story.  Yes, the next summer, the rose bush was absolutely covered in flowers; and the same happened just about every year after that until I, too, moved on about ten years ago.

When I did so, I took a cutting in a pot; and it stayed with me until I arrived in my present home and was able to plant it at the front of my house.  And I have continued to take cuttings.  My brother’s rose didn’t survive but he now has a cutting taken from mine.  Also, my next door neighbour has just taken a cutting to plant at her other house in France.  The next set of cuttings will go to each of my three children.  So the descendants of that humble Warwickshire rose bush live on and will continue their travels.

As for my rose, right now, it is in full bloom, reminding me of my parents – my Dad and his schooldays and my Mum who gave me the cutting. Maybe a rose is just a rose.  But I hope I can be forgiven for thinking that mine is special.

Hansie Cronje Ten Years On

It is ten years since former South African cricket captain died when his plane crashed into Cradock Peak in South Africa’s Outeniqua mountain range.  Newspapers, radio and television have all marked the anniversary.  BBC Radio Five devoted two hours to a review of his life.

Instead of providing clarity, all of this renewed publicity has merely served to increase the pile of unanswered questions, both about Cronje the man and the match-fixing scandal that has forever tainted his name.  Are there others equally guilty who managed not to get caught?  Was he a good Christian man who succumbed to temptation or a psychopath?  Was the plane crash an accident or the outcome of a plot to get rid of him in case he decided to tell everything that he knew?  Is there a link with the death of Bob Woolmer in Jamaica several years later?  Who was on the alleged list of 62 players with secret off shore bank accounts?

It’s quite likely we will never know the definitive answers to these questions.  There are those such as South African journalist and broadcaster Neil Manthorpe who could, if they chose, tell more of what they know; and ex-cricketer Paul Smith has apparently been asked to write a book about the whole match-fixing affair.  If it gets past the lawyers, it will make riveting reading but I’m not holding my breath.

As for Cronje, it is hard not to marvel at his hypocrisy.  Here was someone who wore a WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) wristband whilst lying and cheating for personal gain.  He received not just the infamous leather jacket but also the $140,000 that he admitted to the King Commission and maybe much more.   It’s a long time since I was an attentive Sunday School pupil so I’ve forgotten some of what I learnt.  Maybe there is a passage in the New Testament where John the Baptist says to Jesus: “Hey, Jesus, that’s a cool jacket.  What did you have to do to get that?”

Possibly the key to the hypocrisy is that, in Hansie’s mind, the answer to the question “what would Jesus do?” was simple: “He’d forgive me.” After all, when Frans Cronje, Hansie’s brother, was asked if he thought Hansie had gone to heaven, his answer was an unequivocal “yes”.

It’s one thing to do wrong, regret it and seek forgiveness from those you have wronged and/or from your God.  It’s an entirely different matter to do wrong because you believe in advance that your God will forgive you. In Hansie’s case, he may have expressed his regrets to the King Commission but he never apologised to Henry Williams and Herschelle Gibbs , his fellow cricketers whom he drew into his match-fixing net.

Had he lived, Hansie Cronje might have been able to reach a point of true repentance and might have rehabilitated himself by both his words and his actions.  Instead, a mountain got in the way.  So maybe the obligation to be charitable passes to us and we should feel compassion for a man who was, like all of us, a fallible human being.  Ok, underneath a pious surface, Hansie was probably not a nice man. But in that, he’s not alone.  As someone once observed, there are more horse’s a*ses around than there are horses. And possibly, just possibly, in his last moments as the mountain loomed, he faced his God, sought true forgiveness and found it.