Kapil Dev, India’s cricket captain, didn’t help my mood that day.
I missed seeing any part of England being knocked out of the first cricket world cup in 1975, for good (albeit unsuccessful) sporting reasons:
I also missed seeing any of the 1979 final, in which England lost out to the West indies in the second cricket world cup; no doubt because no-one else at Alleyn’s school was sufficiently willing to score a first team cricket match rather than watch the final:
But I have a seemingly weak reason for missing the entirety of the 1983 semi-final, in which India made short-shrift of England, while on their way to that historic trophy-lifting victory in the third cricket world cup.
Yes, I played cricket the day before; an epic “thanks for coming” appearance for The Players in the Keele Festival Week traditional Gentlemen v Players beer match:
So what could possibly have prevented me from hanging up those boots and spending at least some of the day watching the cricket on TV? It was, after all, festival week, a time of year that I especially loved at Keele, after all the term work and exams were over, when I could enjoy all that Keele had to offer without even the slightest pang of guilt.
The relevant passage reads (and yes I did need a magnifying glass and some deep thought to translate it):
Rose early – went – hitched- to London to see Sean and Marlenne [sic] – got train home – tired and pissed off after.
Sean and Marlene (I’m pretty sure I have spelt the name wrong in the diary) were the brother and sister-in-law respectively of my then girlfriend, Liza.
This was the one and only time I hitched all the way from Keele to London and it was an experience that, clearly, I was so keen not to repeat that I insisted on us getting the train home rather than trying to hitch home.
I don’t remember all that much about that London-bound, hitch-hiking journey other than the several discomforts of it; both physical (when sitting in passenger seats of 1970s/1980s lorries and mental (when I got that creepy feeling that the driver was more interested in my winsome, blond companion, Liza, than in the communitarian/sharing economy principles of helping a young couple who were hitch-hiking).
Sean and Marlene were (possibly still are) a very nice, very welcoming couple who lived in Stanmore. Sean, like Liza, had been raised in Keele itself, so they were not natural London sub-urbanites but seemed to fit into that mould very readily.
I recall that Sean was a hairdresser and the other thing that sticks in my mind is that they lived next door to a chap who had been in The Vibrators.
The diary entry infers that this day did not please me greatly. I am sure this was not Sean and Marlene’s fault; nor should I really blame Liza who had probably suggested the idea ages before – i.e. long before I realised that this 300 round trip to visit family in Stanmore was scheduled for bang slap in the middle of Festival Week and the day of the cricket world cup semi final to boot.
So it wasn’t a good day for me in North London.
It wasn’t a good day for England in Manchester either.
You can watch the highlights of the cricket match below:
Highlights (or should I say lowlights?) of the debates Liza and I might well have had about the quality of that day out and the possible repetition of such excursions are, mercifully, not available.