I’ve never been one for the soaps, but a lot of people are… people you’d never expect. A friend of mine would throw his axe of a guitar down on his bed after practising thrash metal licks and rush out to the lounge room to watch the latest episode. It was neighbours and Home and Away in Australia, Dallas and Days of Our Lives in Yankton, and Coronation Street and East Enders in the UK… and all of it is

Filth

That’s all.

This week took me out to a County game between Essex and Warwickshire in the pretty little town of Chelmsford. That’s Chelmsford pronounced with a ‘ch’ and not a ‘ch’. The town is about half an hour by train out of the Old Smoke through the Cockneys and rests, as most English towns tend to do, on a river which is called, in this case, the Tees… for anyone who wishes to know.

Journalist

Whenever I watch a game of cricket, I like to be right down in the front row next to the white picket fence. I like to smell the grass and admire the groundskeeper’s work up close. But most importantly I like to be close to the players. There’s a sense of comradery that builds over the course of a four or five-day game. You feel like you’re almost a thirteenth man, all of their faces become familiar, and the names emblazoned across the back of their shirts sear indelibly into the mind’s eye. You share something special with them, something that is eternal… you’ve seen their struggle up close, and you understand them. It’s really quite a unique and soul bonding experience. One of the fielders actually came over to me to ask for the football scores… I forget his name, but he wanted to know if Manchester City had beaten Fulham. I told him they had.

Spooky

Panic At The Disco

Then things got weird. He wanted to know how much by and who’d scored. I’d looked during the day, and I knew the scores, I’d even glanced at the players who’d scored the goals but since the names weren’t that familiar to me, they hadn’t quite stuck. “Vitriol!” I exclaimed. “What?” he replied… “Vitriol scored a goal, maybe even two!” “Who??”, “Something Ee-oowl scored a couple of goals” I stammered “Gvardiol do you mean?”, “yeah that’s him.” That I was in some way close to being correct gave me a short burst of confidence… “And Boden got a goal” I was pretty sure about this one… “WHO???” came his sharp response. “Boden scored a goal” I said louder knowing this one was correct. “Foden you mean???” Ah shit, the second one stung, now he was looking at me with a screwy face. I went all out on the last one “and Alcatraz scored the fourth goal!” “Alvarez, for fuck sake” he replied. He went back to fielding, and I carried on my support from behind the white picket fence.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not

One of my favourite places to be is on the toilet and I’d snuck off an over before lunch to ensure a good seat. It’s a safe, closed off part of the world with no chance of grief from outside save a natural disaster. The caveat to this rule is if someone else outside the sanctuary is pressing cloth. If there is only one stall this is a disaster. The whole experience is ruined, and one may as well finish what one can and exit the venue. Two stalls can be a battle of wills, but if you stand your ground the stall next door usually budges first. Three stalls and it’s smooth sailing, the unfortunate one waiting outside with only two arms can’t point at three doors. There have been exceptions i.e. a second patron arriving in his time of need. Then it becomes like something out of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly with pistols pointing in all directions. There were four stalls provided at this particular house of relief so smiles all round.

Back Foot Cover Drive

The expected rush into the toilet came a minute or two after the umpires had flicked the bails. There was the usual small talk about the game accompanied with doors banging, running water and hand driers blasting off like jet engines then, after several minutes, the lavatory again fell silent. A moment or two passed… then the door to the toilets crashed open as if John Wayne had finally found the bar the dirty cur he’d been hunting was holed up in. There was a scuffle of short steps across the tiled floor, then a vigorous yank of a zip followed almost instantly by the sound of a forceful stream upon porcelain. Nothing too out of the ordinary… until the words “There you go big boy! Ahhhhh, it’s ok now big boy.” I had been startled and now I was confused and afraid. Was that the name he had given his todger or was it what his mother used to say to him when he was being toilet trained? I became alert and watchful like a guard dog hearing the snap of a twig beyond the tree line. “Oooooooh yeaaah big boy, that’s the stuff!” My head tilted to the side, what were my eyes hearing? Did he know I was here? Did he care? My mind played tennis over which of the two was worse… It was simply bad toilet decorum. I waited for five minutes after he left before cleaning up and leaving.

And Now For Something Completely Different

This game turned out to be a corker. There were strange rhythms throughout with both teams gaining and losing the ascendency. Warwickshire batted first and fell into hardship early, tumbling down to 5-64 then 6-106 before a rear-guard action including a big juicy ton from Barnard got them to a shade under 400. Then Essex was bundled out for 160. Causing a shockwave of hushed murmurs around the ground by the battered and bruised Essex supporters, Warwickshire decided not to enforce the follow-on, went out to bat and were trowelled over for 94. No good deed goes unpunished! The game wasn’t done yet… needing 330 Essex lost two wickets in the first couple of overs before righting the ship to catch Warwickshire on the score card with four wickets in hand. Lovely stuff!

Dom Perignon

There was a carnival atmosphere around the ground after the hometown got the result. I decided to head down to the pub and ended up having a beer with the two South African test players signed to Essex, Dean Elgar and Simon Harmer! Well, we didn’t actually talk… they were sitting about thirty meters away, over at the other side of the bar. I gazed at them with a look of pride in my eyes. One of them glanced over, then carried on with his conversation.