The first ever picture of The Heavy Rollers, taken, quite brilliantly, by “that joker of a supervisor steward”, Paul Guppy. From left to right starting with, in the green shirt and shades: Nigel, Charles, Jeff, Me (with Hippity & Henry The Duck), David. I have often wondered about the person two seats to the right of David. Did he not want to be seen on camera? Was he having a Sneed-snooze? Had he existentially expired?…
Following the resounding success of the 1999 Heavy Rollers visit to Edgbaston – my first one:
…which itself was the sequel to the inaugural Heavy Rollers outing in 1998:
…at some point a decision was made to make it two days rather than one for 2000. That decision was as yet unmade in early December 1999, when Nigel wrote:
Whatever your reasoning-to see Charles take money off Jeff, Ian’s mascot/s, the cuisine, the cricket even….the time has come to believe in the future. Things can improve.
England v West Indies, same place, Thursday June 15th and possibly 16th too?
Let me know,soon.
Nigel
I cannot see my reply or even any e-mail replies on the e-mail trail, yet somehow we must have all communicated to Nigel our considered opinion on expanding the adventure to two days: YES PLEASE!
We were all working together a lot in late 1999, so my guess is that everyone had the opportunity to discuss the matter with Nigel and for all the arrangements to be communicated by means other than e-mail. An extraordinary thought 20+ years later.
In the absence of a swathe of photos and documentary evidence, memory evidence is thin. The traditions described in the above two pieces (1998 and 1999) would have been pursued without doubt. We will have stayed at Wadderton, certainly on the Wednesday and Thursday night. David will have done the honours with the picnic on both days. Jeff will have done Edgebaston [sic] betting sheets. I would have trained home on the Friday evening.
One strong memory I have of this episode was a moment of fame for one of my mascots, Henry the Duck.
I’m pretty sure it was on the TV highlights we saw at Wadderton on the evening after the first day’s play. I’m guessing it was when Graeme Hick was out for a duck, the camera panned to Henry for a few moments and Michael Holding said, words to the effect of:
that just about sums it up.
Traditions take a while to settle, of course. Even The Heavy Rollers. So there was some fragmentation and controversy that summer.
No-one has ever managed to establish why Nick “The Boy Malloy” Bartlett wasn’t there. Nick is convinced he wasn’t invited. Nigel insists that he would only have needed the nod from Chas and Nick would have been an automatic pick. There are rumours that some indecision might have been involved. The truth will never be established.
Later in the summer, the fragmentation meant that Chas and I, together with Michael Mainelli and Bob “Big Mac” Reitemeier spent the day together at the Oval on Day One of The Fifth Test.
That event might inadvertently have kicked off the short spate of ill-conceived attempts by senior Children’s Society folk to join The Heavy Rollers and the resulting accusations of elitism.
On Day Five of the fifth test, Jeff Tye called me in the morning and suggested that we “walk up” and see the day’s play together, as it promised to be potentially historic – indeed it turned out unquestionably so. As I explain in the above piece, to my regret since, I let work get in the way. Jeff was smarter and/but went to the Oval on his own that day.
But returning to Edgbaston in June 2000, here is a link to the scorecard for the match...then feast your eyes again on that early incarnation of The Heavy Rollers…
