Cricket – Page 2 – only here for the cricket

Just like Christmas Eve

It was the 24th, it was freezing, there was a palpable sense of excitement building as midnight approached… it must be the Ashes.

Four years ago I sat on Robbo’s sofa, full of apprehension, waiting, as it turned out, for Sky to duff up their coverage of the most anticipated toss in recent history (they missed it completely), and then watching Harmy bowl the most anticipated first ball in recent history (he missed the cut strip completely). Poor old Harmy. There he was last Sunday, sat uncomfortably in the Sky studio, appearing on a guest panel for the Ashes preview, not, presumably, for his insightful comments, and what did they do but show THAT delivery. Eight times in all. Poor old Harmy – briefly the best bowler in the world; bounced out the West Indies in their own backyard; but now immortalised in the phrase “doing a Harmy”, which means bowling the ball direct to second slip.

With the First Test beginning in the early hours of Thursday morning, Wednesday evening’s preparations were crucial. A visit to my newly refurbished local gym was probably not ideal in terms of energy retention, but a ski holiday is looming just beyond the Fifth Test, and some fitness must be regained before then. The sign on the gym wall made me smile – “Please restrict yourself to 15 minutes on the CV machines at peak times”. Frankly, an unnecessary instruction for the likes of me, who would fall off any machine after more than 15 minutes of use.

A quick pizza to restore some of the calories carelessly burned off in the gym, and then a visit to my friend Slid, where we blew up his coffee machine in a quite entertaining fashion, but nevertheless managed to generate some liquid caffeine to aid the Ashes-watching effort.

Back home, settled down with some biscuits and a (glass) bottle of Coke, the hype finally ended, the cricket began. And three balls later the familiar watching-England-in-Australia pose was adopted – slumped forward, head in hands, disbelieving. England captain Strauss cut straight to Hussey in the gully, England 0/1.

Woke up early, out of necessity, to catch a flight to London. England four down but Bell and Cook sounding in control. Mum was driving me to the airport, so headed the few hundred yards down the road to her house. By the time I had sat down in her car, England were seven wickets down, and Siddle had an Ashes hat-trick (Australian Daily Telegraph headline: Pom Disposal Expert). Cue a certain, familiar despondent feeling.

Still, all not lost just yet. Bookended the flight with an espresso in each airport, keeping me awake through a course on social networking, and now in London, staying with the family. Sebastian, not yet two years old, was left under my care for part of the morning today. A touch of recklessness on my sister’s part, I thought, but we got on rather well, and never more so than when catching up on the second day’s play at the Gabba. Sebastian, unaware of his obligations to support the Poms, sportingly applauded all the boundaries and wickets with equal vigour. In a post-highlights-watching discussion, he agreed with me that Graeme Swann was guilty of dropping it a little short at times, and noted that Michael Hussey was particularly adept at rocking on to the back foot and pulling through midwicket. I explained that his Uncle Andrew is very like Hussey in many ways, perhaps especially in the art of smearing suncream on one’s face.

In other news, Nasty Jen can now add The Sprinkler to Reversing the Bus, Lightbulbs and Shopping Trolley on her list of classic dance moves. Check it out on Graeme Swann’s Ashes video diary at the ECB website here. Starts about 7 mins 30 seconds in – although the whole thing very entertaining and worth a watch in my objective not-remotely-cricket-obsessed opinion.

Must have a nap – third day’s play starts in 8 hours. First session crucial, England must make inroads with the new ball, Sebastian reckons. I reckon he’s right.

September on the wane

There’s a nip in the air now, even in the South of England it would seem, as even there the cricket season has drawn to close. Nasty Jen and F… have looked a little wistful of late, and are wondering how they are going to get through the winter evenings without the gentle cadences of Aggers’ voice describing the floodlit scene at The Rose Bowl, or Lord’s, as England complete another successful run chase.

Now there’s a thing. England successfully completing a run chase in an ODI. Again. Two or three years ago, who’d have thought we could say that.

But NJ and F… need not fear. One of the joys of being a cricket supporter is that the season never really ends, it just has a short break. And then Test Match Special returns, only at different times of the day, sometimes in the middle of the night. The forthcoming Ashes series will return me to a series of familiar experiences… waking up to the radio… shaking off the early morning torpor… feverishly wishing CMJ would hurry up and give a score update… realising that Ponting is at the crease… clocking that Australia are 290-1… groaning, slumping under the duvet, welcoming the torpor back with open arms…

It’s not all good news though. Frijj chocolate milkshakes, so good they should really be illegal, are no longer 2-for-1 at Tesco. Bah.

Life’s Rich Tapestry

It’s a Saturday in September, and the cricket season is over. Saturdays feel a little empty without cricket at this stage, and I didn’t fancy taking part in International Burn a Koran Day, so I headed down to Arboretum Road to help put the cricket square to bed for the winter. A football match was in full swing, however, and so the remedial work was postponed for an hour. I took the opportunity for a coffee down at Ocean Terminal. Stopping off at the news stand on the ground floor, I interrupted the proprietor, a middle-aged lady, having a chinwag with the cleaner.

“That’s me going to be a grandma again”, she says. “For the fourth time.”

“I’ve got five”, says he. “You’d better get a move on.”

Distinctly put out that she was lagging behind in the grandchildren count, she paused for a moment before declaring

“Had my first at 36.”

I too paused for a moment, to consider this. I am now 36, and haven’t managed to have a child yet, never mind a grandchild. I paid for my newspaper and moved on.

It’s remarkable what you overhear in conversations, without deliberately eavesdropping. Only a week ago, a bunch of us were in Princes Street Gardens, watching the Festival Fireworks close-up. Just to the left of our picnic blanket was a group of middle-aged people with, if it’s possible, an even more middle-class picnic selection than we had. I was quite impressed with our effort, comprising as it did olives, white wine, paté and a cheese board, but they were in a different league. Behind us, slightly further up the slope, were a couple of girls, getting gradually more and more hammered, and discussing recent visits to the hospital.

“Looks like it did during the Lang Siege in 1578,” declared a gentleman’s voice to our left, as some fireworks landed on the Castle Rock and continued to burn for a while.

“So, I wis thinkin’, right, is ma gall bladder f**ked?” came a voice from behind.

All part of the rich tapestry of life…

First Success for Coalition

Well, the England-South Africa Cricketing Coalition won a major international tournament on Sunday, ending “35 years of hurt” (the BBC news website there, perhaps slightly over-egging the sense of national disappointment at not having won an ICC tournament). I must say it’s been a bit of a shock, witnessing England play confident, aggressive limited-overs cricket. I don’t suppose the presence of Kieswetter, Pietersen et al can rightfully be considered part of a coalition since, unlike the Lib Dem activists in Birmingham this week, the exiles’ South African compatriots are, er, not overwhelmingly approving of their presence in the England side. Their actions are perhaps more analogous with the MPs who have defected from the Lib Dems to the Labour party, except of course that the cricketers have, it turns out, joined a winning team. At least in the shortest form of the game, at least for now…

However welcome or unwelcome they might be, and realistically England have always had a fair few ‘foreigners’ in their ranks, it’s hard not to credit them, and perhaps the Zimbabwean coach Andy Flower, with the change in attitude of the England team as a whole. South Africans (and Australians, for that matter) always seem to possess so much more of a winning mentality than Brits.

So the presence of Lumb, Kieswetter and Pietersen at the top of the batting order, and the attitude they bring to their game, quite apart from their heavy contribution in the runs department, must have had a massive effect on the confidence of the overall team. That said, how much the bowling unit needed an injection of confidence is open to question, given that Broad, Swann and Sidebottom are not known for their diffidence.

Last weekend, in Yorkshire, I didn’t manage to get a bat as Maggie seemed unwilling to hand it over. What’s more, she despatched my third delivery through square leg for four. I decided it was time to go back to the swings.

Perhaps my weekend off contributed to some rustiness this weekend, but Holy Cross’ return to Falkland produced a dismal defeat, with my own brief stay at the crease consisting of a lot of flapping and scratching around, before being predictably trapped LBW and departing for an ignominious duck.

However, onwards and upwards. Wednesday night sees the mighty Bellevue team swing into action for the first time this summer. And the sun, apparently, is going to shine…

The Day after the Election

It’s the day after the election, and if the media accurately reflect the mood of the country then it would seem that we’re being consumed by post-election fever. However, one suspects that for most of the country it’s more like post-election indifference, and the media are frothing about the possibilities of coalitions here and minority governments there for their own amusement more than anything. Having surprised myself by becoming moderately exercised about the election this time round, now that it’s over I would quite like someone in authority to just sort the whole mess out, form a government and get on with it. But the whole thing seems destined to be played out on our TV screens for some time to come.

The first cricket outing of the season was not spectacularly successful. Having washed my hands in countless places where the Nanny State has placed large danger signs to warn you of the fact that the water is VERY hot, it almost came as an ironic pleasure to have my hands nigh-on scalded by the water from the cold tap in the changing rooms at Inverleith Park. As regards the cricket, well… grinding out 16 runs before being trapped LBW was not in the script, particularly, but such is the lot of a batsman sometimes. The following week, playing for the 2nd XI, I made some unknown single figure score before getting myself run out. So far, so distinctly ordinary. This weekend my only shot at redemption will be if I can persuade Maggie to bowl me some rank long hops so I can dispatch them into the children’s play area. The family and I are spending the weekend in a North Yorkshire cottage to celebrate my mum’s 70th birthday. Mum and I left early this morning to drive down, and after a recent series of late nights I was mildly worried about my prospects of staying awake at the wheel. However, sleep was never a threat with my mother’s minute-by-minute account of a recent wedding lasting until just before Alnwick. Shortly after, I received a text from Nasty Jen, reminding me to vote today, or as she put it, “2day”. Not entirely sure what happened there.

Somewhere near Morpeth, we stopped at a Little Chef for a coffee. The young waiter seemed unable to speak anything other than Teenager, which, when combined with the local accent, made communication tricky. However, we managed to secure a couple of coffees and made good our escape.

Neebs, sadly, and perhaps uniquely, there was no great crowning moment which sealed victory in the Scrabble tournament. I did play a word which used all my letters (I can’t even remember what it was), however my thunder was somewhat stolen by DC who had already played a (better) seven letter word the round previous, and garnered considerably more points. I nullified this to some extent by harvesting 40-odd points from JAGS on a triple-word score, and then Mrs G finished her letters almost immediately afterwards, denying DC his turn in that particular round, and sealing a single-digit win for me. There may be no great crowning moment, but with a little bit of encouragement I’m quite happy to talk about it anyway, as you can see. As for the Pronouns thing – as far as I understand this was an example of the media getting a story wildly wrong and propagating it enthusiastically. A highly unusual occurrence, I’m sure you’ll agree. I believe that Spears have launched a new *version* of Scrabble, which allows the use of Pronouns and the like. The rules of “proper” Scrabble, as I understand it, remain unchanged.

If it ain’t broke…

Cricket, Scrabble and the Election

The cricket season is almost here. Nasty Jen is pumped. A palpable sense of excitement hangs in the air, poised, expectant. Sort of like Morpheus in the Matrix as he hangs, suspended in mid-air, before slamming to the floor and putting his knee through the floorboards, somewhat carelessly. Perhaps they were able to claim on their buildings and contents insurance. Ah, the Matrix. It’s been with us for eleven years now. Almost as long as this Labour government. Now, this is not a political blog, goodness, it’s not even a blog about cricket. But the impending general election does provide some joy in this corner, as the nice people in the comedy department at Radio 4 produce a veritable glut of satire on the subject. And it’s even been possible to watch Gordon on television, shamelessly trying to imply that Labour have been doing a grand old job of running the country these last thirteen years, which is quite entertaining. And, unlike most people I speak to, I haven’t found the recent televised leaders’ debates a dreadful bore, in fact I have to confess that I’ve enjoyed them, what I’ve seen of them. I was prevented, sadly, from witnessing the early exchanges in Bristol, due to my involvement in a titanic Scrabble battle, where I was pitting my wits against a stellar line-up which included DC, Wiseman and Mrs G. I have pitted said wits against them on an almost annual basis since 2002, when Mrs G was still Miss C, and Wiseman may well have been DC’s flatmate. (That was a short-lived arrangement). Each time I have been found wanting, the spoils being shared over the years between Mrs G and, more commonly, DC, the latter’s word power being head and shoulders above ours. Much like his head and shoulders. So we were all more than a little taken aback when I emerged from the fray victorious, looking mildly shocked but unmistakably pleased with myself, almost Clegg-like in fact, to claim the prize (a rather fetching pewter tankard). You could have knocked me over with a small plastic tile.

I should warn you, dear reader, that due to a withdrawal of support for ftp publishing by Blogger, this blog may, around the beginning of May, disappear from the ether. Or into the ether. Disappear, anyway. But do not fret (of course if one or two of you did, momentarily, fret, I’m sure it would do no harm at all, and I would find it gently reassuring), as technical issues such as this are Wiseman’s speciality, and he assures me everything is in hand. At least, I think that’s what he said. I trust you will be able, accustomed as you are to this blog being updated with near-military regularity, to stick it out for a few days without a fresh post should everything go belly-up. You’re a hardy lot.

But back to the cricket. Tomorrow sees the start of the season proper, and an outing for the mighty Holy Cross 3rd XI. The weather is set fair and I may even have a new pair of batting gloves in time for the occasion. Brilliant.

Airport déja vu

Another flight from Edinburgh airport, another lengthy delay. I find myself sitting beneath the same speaker that I sat beneath eight days ago, the interminable wait on that occasion punctuated with conversation and laughs with 11 friends all en route to Val Thorens. And DC, directing a baleful upwards look towards the speaker, as another cheesy Christmas song interrupted his concentration on the Sunday Telegraph.

This time there are no friends, sadly. More mercifully, there is no Christmas music. Airport delays, who needs them? Luncheon vouchers are only a small consolation, although BA win points for possessing a decency lacking in Jet2 last week by advertising their existence over the tannoy.

At least I have a good book or two for company. My Christmas presents this year were, let’s say, tinged with a cricketing theme. Two books – Marcus Trescothick’s autobiography and Harold Larwood’s biography, and one DVD box set of the 2009 Ashes. Have been looking forward to watching the series highlights since it finished – the TV coverage being exclusively on Sky meant that I missed quite a lot of the matches as they happened. So Stuart Broad’s destructive spell at the Oval is, as yet, a pleasure still to be enjoyed.

Trescothick’s book provides a harrowing account of his breakdown when on tour with England in India, and subsequent struggles with depression. However, in the early chapters which chart his ascent through the echelons of county and international cricket, he recounts how he frequently found himself declaring “Isn’t this great?” as he experienced the joy of scoring runs at higher and higher levels.

Last week, I found myself, not for the first time, thinking, and sometimes saying aloud to anyone who would listen: “Isn’t this great?!” as I carved up another sun-kissed piste. Or watched the sun sinking over snowy mountains, with a hot chocolate warming my insides, and the prospect of a rapid exhilarating descent to the chalet ahead.

If anything, my speed on skis this year was even faster, having borrowed Kenny K’s helmet, and experiencing its sense of security for the first time. Thankfully it was never needed, except when Mandy took it upon herself to test drive it with a forearm smash to my forehead. With friends like these…

My trip to London is to see John Mayer play live, he having the temerity to schedule his only Scottish date on Saturday night while I was still in France. At least he had the good sense to arrange a London gig within two days of Maggie’s 3rd birthday, so I can combine two showbiz extravaganzas in one visit.

Having been slightly disappointed with JM’s most recent studio offering, I am hoping his live show fulfils its reputation, and is worth the airport delay…

Camping and Clapton, pt II

Phoned the Oval on Wednesday, to see if they had any tours of the ground running in the next couple of days. The nice lady apologised, and explained they didn’t have tours on match days.

“Oh? There’s a game on?”

Even better. After a morning’s camping and travelling in planes, trains and automobiles (and boats, come to think of it), I took the tube from Bethnal Green to Bank, onto the Northern Line, and down to the Oval. Had lunch at the Oval Lounge, and then wandered round to the ground and took in most of the afternoon session. The sky remained clear and blue, save for some hazy cloud. The same stands that reverberated to the sounds of England’s Ashes triumph a month ago were mostly silent. The metal framework which would have supported the giant Sky Sports screen was still there, but was now framing only a section of the housing directly behind it. Gone were the noisy fans, the singing and the Barmy Army. In their place were a couple of hundred spectators at varying stages of cricket-watching experience, enjoying a meaningless end-of-season fixture between Surrey and Glamorgan. Gone too were the dramatic batting collapses of the series in general, replaced by steady and fluent batting from the Welsh openers, resulting in a score of 271/0 at stumps in reply to Surrey’s 430. I left just after tea, when Cosgrove, who, as the gentleman behind me in the stand had kindly pointed out, was “two stone overweight”, completed his century. Wickets seemed hard to come by for Surrey, now languishing near the bottom of the County Championship despite Mark Ramprakash’s twinkle-toed batting heroics.

Headed back into the City, somewhat bravely I felt, as rush hour was fast approaching, via a short visit to the Imperial War Museum shop to pick up a few bits and pieces. I had been there two days ago, and had been tempted by a poster of Winston Churchill brandishing a tommy gun, in his trademark pinstripe suit and bowler hat, fat cigar protruding from the lips-that-launched-a-thousand-soundbites. After having visited many of the exhibitions that day, I felt somewhat chastened and, well, a bit melancholy, and not inclined to spend money on what seemed like such a light-hearted comment on war. Two days on, I felt fine about it. Took the tube from Elephant & Castle to Bank, where I bottled out of fighting my way onto Central, and surfaced for some much-needed air. Walked along Threadneedle Street past the Bank of England and RBS, along Bishopsgate past the Gherkin, and cut through Spitalfields Market to Rough Trade, and on to Coffee@Brick Lane. After some caffeinated respite, I donned the manbag once again and caught the 242 back to Clapton. That’s Lower, rather than Eric…

Spare some change

This morning saw me breakfasting with the Guardian at Urban Angel just off Broughton Street. The note above the tips jar read “Fear change? Leave it here…”

The seasons are a-changin’. Summer is drifting away, and in its place autumn, a long-neglected friend, is edging ever closer, extending its misty tendrils in an alluring embrace. At least for me. Others, I know, dread the arrival of the darker evenings and the cold mornings, but there’s nowt queerer than folk.

Summer in Edinburgh has been a severe disappointment, or “not too bad”, depending on whom you speak to. Some spells of very warm weather were appreciated between the all-too-frequent deluges. It was a good summer for cricket, with rain and sodden pitches effecting fewer call-offs than last season. My church team won all their matches. Holy Cross 2nd XI, who carry me in their middle order of a Saturday, struggled throughout the season, clumsily wresting East League Division 5 survival from the grasp of our relegation rivals in the final game at Falkland. Falkland, it is worth noting at this point, is quite simply a magnificent place to play cricket. The ground, surrounded by trees, plummets down at one end to a large wooded area at the base of Falkland Hill, which rises majestically upwards, keeping an eye on the cricketing proceedings from above, like a more pastoral version of Table Mountain, perhaps, at the Newlands cricket ground in Cape Town. The downhill descent to long off/long on is so pronounced that should fielders of normal stature be posted there, they are periodically asked to raise their hands in the air to identify their position for the benefit of the batsman.

Naturally, not being good enough play in the same league as Falkand 1st or 2nd XI, we were playing on another pitch entirely, with a dodgy artificial strip laid in the middle of an upturned bowl of a field which seemingly hadn’t been cut for weeks. Nonetheless, the view from the middle was quite possibly even better than from the main square, with the same imposing hill, and the added aesthetic bonus of a large stately home in the woods, poking several of its turrets out between the trees. A butler, say, standing looking out of a turret window, would have a decent view of the cricket, although watching Division 5 cricket may not be at the top of the domestic staff’s list of things to do on a Saturday afternoon in the summer.

However, should they have taken this option this particular Saturday, they would have witnessed an astonishing Holy Cross recovery from the somewhat precarious position of 15/5, chasing 139 to win. My part in this fightback involved grinding out an unbeaten 52, at a pace more commonly associated with coastal erosion, as I eschewed any attempt to breach the short boundaries in favour of nurdled ones and the occasional two. Taking so long to achieve victory had its problems, most notably in the form of the midges, who arrived approximately 30 overs into our innings. Taking a particular liking to the Stately Home End, they hovered in a cloud around the batsman’s head, making it even more difficult than usual to concentrate on watching the ball out of the bowler’s hand. And there they remained, face-bitingly defiant of our feeble wafted attempts to shoo them away, until my more attack-minded teammate edged one over the slip cordon to win the game.

So, the 2nd XI campaign ended on a relative high, despite the entire team picking up the award for the Most Disappointing Season (previously considered an individual award) at our glittering awards night, and personally-speaking, some hope remains that this previously-rarely-seen dogged batting attitude will be evident for more of the season next time, which would make a welcome change.

Changes have been afoot at work too, with Dave, our patient and gentle-hearted receptionist/admin assistant moving on to pastures new as a Church of Scotland minister. He retires from our office a happy man, having finally succeeded just this week in his multi-year quest to extract a smile from the girl-from-the-flower-shop as she walked past his window. To my knowledge, the Studio One girls remain obstinately resistant to his charms. He has one more week to melt their cold hearts. Being on holiday for the next week myself, yesterday was my last day working with him, and we headed to the movies last night to mark the occasion. Dorian Gray, after a spot of online research, was rejected in favour of District 9. We bumped into two of Dave’s young female friends in the ticket queue, and I was momentarily concerned that Dave would want to accompany them to their chick flick, but mercifully he kept the faith. District 9 is a great movie, with a lot more to say than might be apparent from reading a brief plot synopsis. Afterwards we hooked up with Dave’s friends for a drink. They being members of that ultimately elusive club, the Younger Generation, there was the occasional blank stare from their side of the table when musical tastes crept into the conversation, and some furious concentration from our side, trying to pick out their words with hearing resources slightly depleted by the ageing process. I may need to prescribe some of my own medicine soon.

The contrast in musical tastes between generations was further highlighted this morning, as I wandered round Tesco making some last-minute purchases before my trip to London today. As an insistent beeping sound emanated from a machine in the bakery, I viewed, with some bewilderment, a young boy nodding his head and dancing along. I had a vision of DC, shaking his head gravely and muttering softly.

Being a Times man, he would have been disappointed at my choice of dinner date last night as well, although I find The Guardian very well-behaved company for dinner as well as breakfast, and I took yesterday’s edition out for a pizza last night before the cinema. As I do from time to time in that particular establishment, I bumped into JB, Holy Cross’ marquee batsman and frequent winner of the Most Entertaining Run-maker award. JB is a good enough player to have played on the main square at Falkland. He is also a non-Guardian man, to my knowledge, but I pounced on an entertaining article on bowling machines by Harry Pearson, which I think distracted him. We shared some news on work and unclehood, before he collected his pizza and left me to mine.

And with that, I shall conclude my first blog post since I last visited London in May. At several times over the last few months I have considered writing a note to you all, bewailing my manifold sins of omission (at least in terms of writing, I wasn’t about to lumber you with more intimate confessions), explaining that it wasn’t you, it was me, and then sadly pressing the Terminate Blog button, wherever that may be. However, for reasons not entirely clear (to me, and quite probably you) I have decided to continue, and attempt to champion the art of proper writing (or my muddled attempts at it) in the face of the apparently relentless rise of Twitter. Twitter, to my mind, has its place, that place being for snappy amusing observations, but is still an inferior cousin of the blog.

Moreover, I may even post it from the train, as the National Express wi-fi provision is considerably more robust than the last time I attempted to use it. Wi-fi. Just one of the reasons why the train is better than the plane…

Camping and Clapton

“We’re going camping for the weekend!” Alison had announced a week or two ago. So I did have some warning, but nothing quite prepared me. Alison and Sebastian collected me from the City Airport in the Passat Estate, which was packed to the gunnels with all manner of camping equipment, and some equipment not conventionally associated with camping. Like king size duvets, for example. “I don’t really do camping,” my sister explained. There was barely room for my luggage. I was glad I had decided to travel light.

Camping on the south coast of England is somewhat different to my previous camping expeditions in Scotland and Ireland. The ground, not to mention the air, is somehow drier and warmer. After a pleasant lunch of baguettes and pork pies, Angela and I set to work on putting up the tent, while Alison blew up the airbeds and made a cafetière of coffee.

Later I poked my head into the tent to find my sister kitting out the beds with organic Egyptian cotton sheets. Like she says, she doesn’t really do camping.

But we all did it, and survived. Despite a decent thunderstorm threatening to rip the tent away from its moorings in the early hours of Monday morning, apparently. I was oblivious to it all. Ah, the value of good earplugs.

We retreated back to London yesterday, once the tent had dried out a bit. I showered and changed and shot straight out again. I had tickets for Eric Clapton, and I didn’t want to be late. I wasn’t, as it turned out, and it was a great night. I was there with my friend Iain, who also accompanied me to see Clapton this time last year, in Hyde Park. This time round, it all felt a little more… civilised… which was, I suppose, entirely reasonable and to be expected given that it was in the Royal Albert Hall. A magnificent venue, and we had brilliant seats, but all in all I preferred last year. The band was slightly different this time, Doyle Bramhall II having been replaced by Andy Fairweather-Low, who was curiously subdued throughout, only getting a solo spot once, towards the very end. In my experience, a band feeds off its audience to a large extent, and with a crowd of well-behaved mostly forty-to-sixty-somethings, all sitting down, as compared with last year’s younger, sunshine-and-alcohol-fuelled crowd, nothing was going to get set alight. And with Clapton on the seventh night of an eleven night stint, I suppose the band were going to be on auto-pilot to a certain extent anyway. ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ was certainly an unwelcome addition to the set-list from where I was sitting, and the acoustic version of ‘Layla’, while great in its own right, is not quite as, um, electric as the original. Anyway, it was a good experience, and I’m glad I was there.

Today was a chance to recharge the batteries a little, although I ventured into the East End in the afternoon. Got a little lost, and found myself passing the end of St Mary Axe, a street which houses the organisation that regulates my profession. I considered popping up to their offices to see if any of their staff were doing enough work to merit our scandalous retention fee, but opted to try and find a record shop instead. I ended up in a hip coffee shop on Brick Lane.

“Black coffee, please.”

“Americano or filter?”

“Americano.”

The girl hesitated as her eyes fixed on my t-shirt.

“Can I read your t-shirt?”

The strap of my man-bag was obscuring the anti-Starbucks logo. She was clearly concerned that it was an actual Starbucks t-shirt I was wearing. I moved the strap.

“Oh, that’s cool. We like that.” Her colleague behind the counter chuckled.

Phew. I was relieved that I was considered ok to drink coffee there. I glanced up at the board on the wall above the counter to discover “Chav Coffee (filter)” in the list of drinks available. Phew, again. I settled down at a table with a left-behind copy of the Guardian, and tried to look nonchalant.

Tomorrow sees my second visit to a renowned London arena in three days. This time it’s Lord’s, for a Twenty20 thrash between Middlesex and Kent, where the newly-installed floodlights at the home of cricket are set to be used for the first time. And I get to catch up with another old friend. This holiday lark is just the thing.