Play up, play up and play the game!

Sir Henry Newbolt.  He looks rather too severe to fit in on Newbolt Close

Few people know the poem from which that line comes.  It's called Vitaï Lampada and it's from a Victorian poem comparing a bloody battle with a game of cricket and is extremely dated now.  What interests me is the name of the man who wrote it, Sir Henry Newbolt.  

Sir Henry was born in Walsall but for some reason I don't know, he was educated at Caistor Grammar School.  The close on which I live is near the grammar school playing fields and it bears his name, Newbolt Close.

It's a close of about thirty detached bungalows, mostly occupied by older people.  It's a friendly place and everyone waves or speaks to each other when passing.  A few neighbours go outside on Thursdays at 11am for the Newbolt Nattering.  We know about each other's dogs and hear about grandchildren.  Volunteers for keeping an eye on houses and gardens when people go away are readily found.  And sometimes surplus vegetables/flowers/plants are dished out.

Newbolt's other well known poem is "Drake's Drum" about the legend that the drum Sir Francis Drake took with him when he circumnavigated the world will be heard beating when momentous events take place.  Legend has it that the drum was last heard during the Dunkirk evacuations in 1940. 

I think Newbolt would have approved of Sir Francis.  After all, another legend has it that Drake is the sea captain who refused to be distracted from his game of bowls just because the Spanish Armada had been sighted.  He definitely played up, played up and played the game!

(Thank you, Tracy, for your suggestion about the life of our street.  This isn't quite what you said but you sparked an idea.)