Howzat?!

Well, you’d think it’d be easy-peasy, a nice relaxing day at the cricket – though test cricket is tough and there’s nothing too relaxing about it for the players out there in the blazing sun.  We spectators have it a wee bit easier, though it’s amazing how often you lose concentration:  looking down to pick up your beer, have a sip of coffee or root in your bag for a biscuit – and end up missing a wicket.

Some people, mostly men, pitch up carrying only a phone – tickets are digital things these days and you can also pay for everything with your phone if you’re clued up enough.  Not being a minimalist in any shape or form, I marvel at how they can manage it.  “Och, they’re just going to drink beer,” said a youngish woman carrying only a handbag – quite a big, expandable one admittedly but nothing approaching my two bags.  One for food – strawberries for three, cubes of cheese, apples, nuts, struggling hard to bring the healthy options; the other for the umbrella (complete overkill), jacket, sunglasses, suncream, floppy hat and, the piece de resistance, kitchen roll.

And it was the kitchen roll that really came into its own when the guys in the seat behind warned us that there was a waterfall of beer – and later water – heading our way, cascading down the steps towards us and our bags.  We managed to lift everything out of the way – beer stains are a bugger to get rid of – and stem the flow before it reached the row in front and a rather swanky Fortnum & Mason bag.

“It’s my wife’s,” the man in charge of it said, “and she wasn’t too happy about me bringing it here.  Thanks for saving it – and me!”

We left just before India’s impressive young captain Shubman Gill reached his century but our journey home did not run smoothly.  Bus to New Street but alarm when the driver told us that there were no trains!  She wasn’t joking.  A train had somehow managed to damage some crucial overhead wires and Birmingham’s main station, a vital hub, was in chaos.  To cut a long and tiring story short, we eventually got a bus to Sutton Coldfield, another bus that we thought was going to Lichfield but didn’t and had to summon a lift from a dutiful daughter for the final few miles.  Phew.  Later we found that a friend had found a more direct, less stressful route and was home with his feet up long before us…..

It’s hard work sometimes, this hedonistic retirement lifestyle.

A few days earlier, having had to have a knackered tyre replaced at short notice, I’d headed down to London for a long-awaited 90th birthday celebration.  The birthday girl is now well on her way to 91 but who wants a big garden party in February?  Not in this country anyway.

Liz, the star of the show, is more than worth the detour – the “God Bless Atheism” sticker is on her study window, by the front door and irresistible to some of us.  The hot, sticky journey down the M1 was forgotten.  This was party central and irreverence was de rigueur.

People came from far and wide to pay homage and Lewine, a fellow golf writer, following in Liz’s distinguished, trailblazing footsteps, nipped down from Edinburgh for the evening.  On the way out, to catch a flight back home from Heathrow, she couldn’t resist the piano and I’m just sorry I wasn’t sharp enough to video the moment.  Some of Liz’s extensive collection of rocks came from Quartzsite, Arizona, where Lewine and I stood in line, arms full, as Liz arranged shipment home.  By sea, amazingly – but there were a lot of rocks.  They all arrived safely several months later.

There was another party two days later, for brother-in-law Brian and the dress code was a little less flamboyant but one of B’s presents caught the eye.  He does like a black tee shirt (much to his wife’s despair) and after spending time working in South Africa, he loves a barbie, though that’s not the correct terminology, as the tee explains.

Brill.

Not so brilliant was Eddie Pepperell’s withdrawal from the Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge in Normandy after sharing the third round lead with David Horsey and Albin Bergstrom.  Eddie’s making his way back to form and fitness on the HotelPlanner Tour (formerly the Challenge Tour) but his back seized up and he could barely move last Sunday, let alone swing a club and compete over 18 holes.  Gutting does not begin to describe it.  For the full, gory details and more listen to the Chipping Forecast with Eddie, Andrew Cotter and Iain Carter.   Horsey, another veteran fighting to get back with the big boys, won the title.

Finally, two classic pics from Scotland, undoubtedly the home of golf and golfers extraordinaires.  First, we have Louise Clark, a volunteer at the recent Women(‘)s Amateur at Nairn and a stickler for getting things right, with her self-corrected bobble hat.  She spent the night before her stint adding the apostrophe abandoned by the R&A.  Look closely, it’s an immaculate piece of work – which is more than can be said for the R&A’s effort.

And a lovely photo of a legend and a legend-in-the-making at The Machrihanish Golf Club the other day:  Belle Robertson with Bob MacIntyre on a glorious day in Golf’s Own Country.

Oh, and before I forget, a friend who’s a bit of a soap buff chided me (gently) that it was Cliff Barnes in Dallas – not Jim.