Month: July 2011

England v India At Lord’s Days One And Two, 21 & 22 July 2011

I needed to do some archaeology in my e-mail system for this match to work out who I went with on which days.

Turns out I went with Graham Stedman …latterly known as Iain Insteadman…:

Three Days At The Lord’s Test, England v West Indies, 7 to 9 September 2017

…on the Thursday, then with Janie on the Friday.

I hadn’t thought about this before, but Graham seems to be a bit of a rainmaker, if the story of his 2011 and 2017 visits to Lord’s might be deemed to be a reasonably-sized sample.

We only got just over half a day’s play on the Thursday; quite slow stuff at that.

Whereas Janie and I got a giant-sized day of cricket on the Friday, with fair weather and a Kevin Petersen double-hundred.

Here is a link to the match scorecard.

Still, Graham seemed to enjoy his day out:

Thank you very much indeed for an excellent day at the cricket. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was a very welcome distraction from the office. I am only sorry our enjoyment was cut short by the rain.

I will follow the remainder of the match with extra interest.

I replied to his message by saying:

It was a pleasure and was good to see you.  Janie felt badly on Friday that she and I did so much better weatherwise that day!

I am pretty sure this was the first of the occasions that Janie and I had our ears bent by a pair of retired Reuters journalists who told us exactly the same anecdotes, more or less word for word, both times.

But you do get a decent type of bore at Lord’s, you really do.

Three Nights In Buxton & The Importance Of Being Frank, 11 To 14 July 2011

Janie and I were struggling to remember all the details of this short break in Buxton with Chris and Hilary, in part to take in the Buxton Festival Fringe. Strangely, no photos.

I think we intended to walk but I don’t think we walked much, if at all. Perhaps the weather failed to smile on us.

Janie remembers speaking quite a lot with Todd at Nat’s Kitchen, before we stayed and also while we were there – he was helpful and full of advice. Perhaps I’ll be able to expand this entry when we do some archaeology on Janie’s diary.

I’m pretty sure there were one or two things that Hil and Chris were interested in seeing that we really didn’t want to do.

I have a feeling Janie and I went to see a folky-fusiony outfit in a basement bar type place one evening while Hil and Chris went to see a naff-sounding show which even they admitted afterwards had not been worth the candle.

The Importance Of Being Frank was a bit of a compromise choice which I’m pretty sure we all went to see and found funny in parts.

Here is a link to the relevant fringe preview.

That link is scraped to here, if the above link no longer works.

Quirky place but we liked it. Nat’s Kitchen reviewed – click here…

…or if that link has gone, scraped to here.

We also dined at the Old Hall Hotel one time – I think Hil and Chris were staying there and I think that was the first night…but our memories on this one are not great.

The only other thing I remember is the backdrop of the trip supposedly being an opportunity for the workmen to finish off snagging Noddyland (Janie had moved in a few weeks previously).

We returned to find only a couple of items from the list done; the rest of the time they had no doubt spent, as they had spent most of the preceding weeks, giving priority to the next big job. It took tears to invoke enough shame and sympathy to get them back in to finish off in the following few days.

Middlesex v Surrey At Lord’s Twenty20 Match, King Cricket Report, 7 July 2011

At some point in the future I might…just might…be able to provide a multi-faceted piece on this particular evening at Lord’s.

At the time of writing (January 2018), only my King Cricket piece, published October 2011, survives to tell the tale.

Yet tell the tale it does, I think – certainly from my perspective. Internationalism, scandal and some improbable, impromptu games…not bad.

Middlesex v Surrey Twenty20 match report

Just in case anything ever happens to the King Cricket site, I have also scraped that report to here.

For those who have the stomach to look (i.e. most often neutrals and Surrey fans for these occasions), actually it looks as thought his was a pretty good match, despite the fact that I must have missed quite a fair chunk of it – click here for the scorecard and reports.

One extra bit of evidence on who, from “Ged Ladd & Co”, attended that time, in addition to “The Tiberellis”, comes from Jez’s e-mail to me a few week’s before the match:

Mark

Monique

Steph

Ben

Rich

David

 

Simon Strez would also like to come as it’s his last chance to see a cricket game in England before returning home to New Zealand. I also have 3 friends that will be coming to the game.