When I was a kid, we lived on a farm and our neighbouring farmer, a bloke called Jaroslav Trombik (who'd bailed out of Czechoslovakia because he was a classic looking Aryan and the Nazis wanted him in their SS), used to wear Rosemary's (his wife) corset because he had an abdominal hernia and the corset 'kept his insides from popping out'. I saw Yaroslav last Christmas holidays ...he's 95 now.
Back in the 70s, he had an operation to fix the hernia and no longer wears a corset.
As another interesting aside, he once took a game off Gary Kasparov, the Russian world chess champion. He taught me chess but I never got close to beating him.
Now, here is something I swear is true and is one of those 'what are the chances?' moment. Here in NZ, it's Queen's Birthday holiday and in the background, as I type this enthrallingly engaging missive, is a radio interview with the great ex All Black Grant Fox (who incidentally I played against many times back in the day). Foxy just mentioned a classic county game he played in the early 80s in which he said his team, Auckland, should really have lost as, in the last minute, an opposition player, who Foxy named, scored a try, which the ref missed. The name of the try scorer? My great mate David Trombik...Jaroslav's son.
What a mind-boggling coincidence!.
