Hello and welcome back to my Substack

I've decided to fire-up my Substack newsletter again

Hello, and welcome back to my Substack newsletter.

I’ve decided to fire-up my Substack for the first time in three years because I’d like to share my writing with you ahead of a busy summer.

This will include my forthcoming trip to Germany to cover a few matches in Euro 2024, as well as eagerly looking forward to a first visit to LA as part of business - and a spot of pleasure of course - when Arsenal travel Stateside for their pre-season tour at the end of July.

Not to mention sharing my love of cricket, travel, music, dogs, daily positivity (if I can muster it) and general musings that will hopefully be vaguely interesting to you, my dear reader.

You might think as a journalist I would have had my fill of writing, but in my time as a reporter, as well as editor of the esteemed Gooner Fanzine - of which we’re trying to keep alive, more of that next week - it seems I’ve been doing an awful lot of ‘reporting’ and ‘editing’, not to mention ‘selling’ and ‘marketing’, when my first love has always been simply writing.

So, please forgive me for the indulgence, I hope you’ll enjoy my regular Substack musings as much as I will hopefully enjoy writing them.

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D-Day

I’m sure like many of us, we have been watching the D-Day commemorations this morning with a humbling admiration and powerful respect for the wartime generation who gave so much, so that we can enjoy our freedoms today.

I had the incredible privilege of visiting the D-Day beaches a few years ago.

I shall never forget the site of those haunting stretches of Normandy sand where so many made the ultimate sacrifice.

Driving and stopping at many points between the most western beaches of D-Day - Pouppeville and La Madeleine (Utah), around the Cotentin Peninsula, to nearby Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes and Vierville-sur-Mer - which at six miles long, was the scene of the most horrific fighting for the US 1st Army, 5th Corps, on the site known as Omaha Beach, from which the scenes from the harrowing opening of the film Saving Private Ryan were based on - the peace, the serenity, the quietude of those stretches of sand was what impacted me on my visit. And still lives with me now.

We also drove to, and visited Gold and Juno beaches, where the British and Canadians landed - from Courseulles-sur-Mer from La Rivière to Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer to Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer to Ouistreham at the mouth of the River Orne situated nine miles north of Caen.

The calm and the serenity was what I took away from visiting those hallowed places, now simply peaceful and unprepossessing hamlets, villages and towns. But where those living there still appreciate the incalculable losses incurred on this day 80 years ago - and where they still understand and honour how much was given.

Standing on those beaches, I felt the peace and the solemnity of such places. You couldn’t help but be awed - and full of respect for the heroic sacrifices made. Places where, 80 years ago today, death and destruction rained down onto those poor souls.

Heroes we rightly still remember on this day of days, as the Allies took their first steps to rid continental Europe of the Nazis, back on June 6, 1944.

One of my favourite War Poets is Laurence Binyon.

His World War I poem, “For the Fallen,” is as haunting as it is important right now.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

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Daily List:

Day ahead: Catching up at lunchtime with my cousin as we plan our drive to Germany

Day ahead II: A trip to Lord’s this evening to write about Middlesex’s T20 clash with Glamorgan

Aims: Trying to get a bit of Gooner Fanzine admin done during overs at Lord’s

What I’m currently reading: Mike Brearley, Turning Over The Pebbles. A life in cricket and in the mind

Music I’m currently listening to: Lenny Kravitiz’s 1991 album Mama Said - after the 1990s rocker played a quick set that I had the pleasure of watching at Wembley Stadium ahead of covering last Saturday’s Champions League final (more on that match in a future Substack)

Podcast I’m currently listening to: Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO - the real truth about sugar

See you tomorrow.

Cheers,

Layth