What About the Chinese Ladies?

It was great to see Andy Murray win... at long last. He's an awesome player and he's finally got enough confidence to show this to the world, but we've all known for a long time that he has it in him and that he's up there amongst the greats. So why all the hype? Shame on the media for not making more of the fantastic achievement of Su-Wei Hsieh and Shuai Peng in beating the Ozzie girls, Barty and Dellacqua, in a game that showed tennis at its very best. To add insult to injury, the Guardian online showed an image of not Hsieh and Peng, but Ashleigh Bart and Casey Dellacqua holding their runners up trophy. Why? And why go on about all those matches the Australians failed to lose and say virtually nothing about the Chinese girls' mastery on court?
To make up for this travesty, here are a few pictures from China:

And, of course, Shuai and Su-Wei...

Newly Discovered Talent

How wonderful to discover new  talent. For me, recently twice.
I don't usually  learn much from watching the telly, but the other day I was bowled over by a programme about Vivian Maier, the recluse, unassuming Chicago nanny who went around her home city, New York and indeed much of the world, with her Rollieflex... almost unnoticed. She died in poverty, the world unaware it had lost one of the greatest photographers of the last century, and therefore of all time. An incredibly sad story, but life is sad, and sadness tinged with compassion is what the struck me seeing those images for the first time. I'd heard her name in photographic circles in recent years, but had never truly focused on her photographs before; my jaw dropped as I watched the telly bio of her life, drinking in fabulous image after fabulous image. As a photographer and sometime photographic judge, I'm always on the lookout for 'wow' images, but as with other great photographers, Vivien Maier went far beyond the 'wow' factor; something to do with a natural talent for getting to the very heart of what it is to be human with the click of a shutter.
What, I wonder, would the other greats of the past (Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tony Ray-Jones, Ansel Adams, Robert Capa etc) have made of Maier's images? If only they'd been given the chance as the BBC gave us the chance last week.

The other talent, a novelist, Michele McGrath, lives on the Isle of Man. I'm not normally a reader of historical fiction (certainly not the Wolf Hall variety of the genre), but I visited the Isle of Man for the first time last year and was keen to revisit the island of her tortured past. This writer's ability to transport one back to the perilous time of the Viking Raids in Manannan's Magic enthralled me. The characters truly came to life and I could hardly wait to read the sequel, Niamh of the Golden Hair. Who says men don't like romance? Chick-lit that pokes at men without really touching them (no, I won't explain!), definitely not, but the sort of earthy romance that Michele McGrath deals out... love it! And as in real life, the romance in these books is only a part of the story. I believe (and hope) there's a third novel in the series. As if to produce two seriously good novels within one year is not enough, the same writer has also written an intriguing novella set in France during the Napoleonic period (as with Mantel's Booker price winner, inspired by historical fact): Duval and the Infernal Machine. She has also published some short stories and a light-hearted fantasy romance, Gigi's Guardian, both of which are very different.

Yes, newly-discovered talent is a wonderful thing - particularly the talent of a child. Take at look at the story of a thirteen year-old winner of a school writing competition that I recently judged:
http://childrenaswriters.blogspot.co.uk/

Ten year-old Texan granddaughter just called out,'it's tea-time'... so, bye bye, wheelie bin and off you go into the digital ether...