Posted by Sam writes:
Having blagged two free press tickets to the last Pro40 game of the season at The Oval, we met outside the Alec Stewart gates on a rare day of bright sunshine in an otherwise dreary English summer.
With the Vauxhall End half of the ground closed off for an unexplained reason, we took our seats in the Peter May stand and quickly realised that the sun would be in our eyes for most of the first innings. But we’re lazy, so we cracked open a couple of Scrumpy Jacks and settled in.
Lunch consisted of more beer, a ploughman’s sandwich, a banana, an apple and a packet of Sainsbury’s basics mini muffins. In these tempestuous economic times, it’s time to go back to basics in more ways than one.
By the tea break, the sun had moved round a bit and was now burning the right side of our pale white necks, which were dangerously exposed.
Drifting away in a haze of sun and cider to dream about the glory days of Martin Bicknell and Graham ‘personal problems’ Thorpe, my companion woke with a start when Claude Henderson landed a skull-endangering six just five rows in front of us.
The sun finally set behind the empty new stand. The early evening shadows were beginning to creep across the ground and a palpable sense of malaise threatened to engulf us all.
The match ended and we trudged towards our respective trains, immersed in la petit mort of another summer ended, with dirty thoughts of the IPL and the Champions League confusing our tender, naïve minds.
Nice report Sam, but i thought the reference to Henderson a little unnecessary.
And ‘la petit mort’ is more of, erm, a climax than an ending (although they are not always mutually exclusive).
How pink were your necks by the end of the day? 6-pink – or more?
I must say that I’m slighlty worried about Sam being immersed in la petit mort.
Bonus marks for umlaut usage, BTW.
Dear lord, you should be banned from the train for shooting your gun, whilst wistfully thinking of summer!
THe dirty fecker.
I must admit, that there is a rather large amount of cricket related shenanigans there. THis must end.
You get your rocks off on IPL and Champions League Sam? and being utterly pedantic – it’s la petite mort – agreement of adjectives doncha know
curse you french speaking europhiles.
only joking.
thanks for the feedback though. really. if i never know, i never grow.
*cries*.
I now feel absolutely ghastly guilty for being party to making a grown Sam cry – especially as I laughed a lot at “personal problems” Thorpe (which is of course very hard-hearted in itself) and didn’t give you postive feedback…
*snivels sympathetically and wipes nose on sleeve*
Very predictable place, the Oval.
The sun always starts the day on the Oval side and sets on the Vauxhall side.
It was the same when I was a kid – except there was no empty posh stand with all those empty corporate hospitality boxes back then.
Slight confusion over whether you drank cider exclusively, or switch between beer and cider throughout the day.
Clarification please…
Also, slight confusion over the tense I adopted in my previous post.
Apologies.
And how pink were you?! I need to know. Sam – whacking one out for the end of the cricket season is one thing, which i, for one, can forgive, but not replying to queries … well that’s just rude.
d charlton:
pinker than rob key’s chubby little face, not as pink as a middlesex one-day shirt.
kendal king pin:
i turned up with four john smiths, my friend brought three scrumpy jacks. we polished them all off, but in what order and ratio i cannot recall.