Nano Banana 2.1 (AI) Depiction Of Surrey v Kent, Midweek, Oval, 1976. (My “small crowd, plenty of kids” description has been taken too literally – I love it!)
Saturday 10 July 1976 – went to A[nil] Biltoo for afternoon. TV Joan Crawford film [probably The Command, which was Joan Weldon, not Joan Crawford!].
Sunday 11 July 1976 – all OK. Lunched at Il Carretto. TV Once You Kiss a Stranger
Monday 12 July 1976 – went to Oval: members seats!! TV Star Trek, Get Some In.
This is Anil Biltoo’s first mention in my diary. In truth, I don’t remember our friendship forming until the following academic year, but clearly we had initiated our friendship towards the end of the 3rd year and saw each other more than once during the holidays that summer.
Not a mystery, just one of those temporal slips that my memory tends to make.
The main memory slip mystery item from those first few days of the summer holidays is the visit to The Oval.
I most certainly remember the visit and I remember being shown around the pavilion, walking around no doubt open-mouthed at the pictures of great players and events from days of yore.
So stuck in my brain was the memory of being shown around, that it returned to me by way of a dream the night before my next visit to that pavilion – 21 September 2005.
Of course I had been to The Oval many times between those visits – not least nine days earlier, to see the magical 5th day of the 5th test of 2005. Other Ogblog pieces will/already do cover such other visits.
But the night before my visit to see Surrey v Middlesex, secure in the knowledge that my reciprocal member’s rights would enable me to use the pavilion, I dreamt of walking through that building. When I awoke, I wondered whether my dream had been an accurate representation of the place or just a dream-like replica. But when I got to the Oval and actually started walking around the pavilion, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, as I realised that my memory, in sleep, had accurately dredged almost every permanent detail of that building. It wasn’t a sense of deja vu – because I HAD been there before; more than 29 years before. If you had asked me 24 hours before that second visit to describe the inside of the building, I could not even faintly have done so.
The memory really is a weird thing.
Irritatingly, my memory has entirely suppressed…
…and my diary is no help with this…
…the answers to the following two questions:
- WHY did I have members’ access on Monday 12 July 1976?
- Who was I with for that visit?
My gut feeling is that it was a sort-of end of term Alleyn’s School field trip, organised a few days after the end of term to coincide with a match that was worth visiting. That sort of field trip has Colin Page’s fingerprints all over it.
Micky Stewart – after whom that pavilion is now named, is, of course, an Alleyn’s School alum. He might have been a helpful conduit for such a visit.
But in truth I don’t recall. I just remember the open-mouthed pavilion tour and watching what I thought to be some very good cricket. It cemented my view that I wanted to bowl like Intikhab Alum, if only I could work out for myself how to deploy leg (wrist) spin. Spoiler alert: I NEVER worked out how to deploy leg spin.
Here’s the scorecard from the match we saw in July 1976. I’m hoping the hive mind of the Alleyn’s folk who were with me that fine day can add to my memory of why we were there and what else happened.