Month: August 2021

The Hundred Finals Day At Lord’s & “A Hundred Weeks Later” With John & Mandy In Noddyland, 21 & 22 August 2021

The Hundred Finals, Saturday 21 August 2021

Janie and I played tennis at 8:00, enabling us to get ready and set off in a leisurely style for the inaugural finals day of The Hundred tournament.

No difficulty finding suitable parking spaces ahead of the women’s final, both for Dumbo on a street nearby and for our backsides in the Warner Stand.

Ahead of taking our seats, we ran into Alfred & Sunita, tennis friends of ours from Boston Manor. They were invitees in the President’s Box, which made our Members and Friends privileges feel positively like slumming it.

Slumming it in The Warner Stand, with no Champagne Charlies behind us today
My double-selfie skills are coming on…

Janie in particular got snap-happy during the warm ups.

Are the cricketers below practicing for cricket or Morris dancing, I wonder, on reviewing the pictures:

Morris Dancing…Or Possibly They Can Boogie.

Throughout the tournament (this was my fourth visit to Lord’s to see The Hundred) I had relished the opportunity to help choose the walk-on music for various players, despite the fact that most of the choices were between three songs I had not heard before by three artistes I’d not heard of before. In truth, I think the “join in the fun…you choose” appy stuff might be aimed at a demographic other than mine.

But I was delighted that the first “choice of three” I was offered on finals day, as Fran Wilson’s walk-on music, included two songs and three artistes I recognised:

  • Yes Sir, I Can Boogie – GBX Feat. Baccara
  • By Your Side – Calvin Harris Feat. Tom Grennan
  • One Kiss – Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa

I voted for the third of those choices, but the consensus narrowly went for the first choice – a song from 1977 which I recall finding old-fashioned even at that time. I recall my mum liking the Baccara record. Mum would be in her hundredth year this year, were she still alive. Perhaps she would have embraced this aspect of The Hundred.

Once the game got underway, Janie and I competed to get pictures of the pyrotechnics that went off whenever a boundary was scored…

…or “the occasional central heating” as I called it. It was a slightly chilly Saturday afternoon, such that we quite enjoyed the bursts of warmth. On hot days such bursts can be unbearable.

I got my timing right for this one

The Women’s Final rather petered out, as a match, unfortunately. The women’s matches I had seen prior to the final had been close and exciting to watch.

Never mind. There was loads more entertainment lined up.

The men’s teams warmed up while the musical entertainment kept the crowd happy

Jax Jones was the live musical entertainment on finals day. Another artiste I had heard of – I saw him interviewed on one of the TV music channels a few years ago and was impressed by his diverse, global musical influences. Not to mention his dapper choices in headgear.

But until the day, I didn’t realise that Jax Jones was the artiste behind The Hundred’s theme tune, Feels, until he performed it:

The number that really got the crowd (including me and Janie) going was You Don’t Know Me, with its utterly infectious beat:

By this stage of proceedings I was feeling far too cool for school, so it came as no surprise to me that I recognised one of the choices for Chris Benjamin’s walk-on music; Incredible by M.Beat Feat. General Levy. Janie was suitably impressed. I was delighted that my choice was the chosen one.

Even more impressive was my timing to snap the pre match fireworks at the men’s match – we’d both managed to get to the cameras a little late for the women’s fireworks:

With all the music and pyrotechnics, you might be wondering whether there was any cricket involved. Yes there was. I should confirm that we did watch cricket that day.

Unfortunately, matters took a bit of a turn for the worse towards the end of the match. The absence of Champagne Charlies behind us meant that, instead, we had a Beer-swilling Bernard instead, who managed to kick over one of his beers, soaking Janie’s bag. Yes, she had taken a washable jobbie with her (based on previous experience) but “Bernard’s Beer-stream” succeeded in soaking the bag and seeping through to some of the contents in a mood-affecting manner.

Then my mood took a turn for the worse too, as the DJ, perhaps transfixed by the entertaining cricket match, or possibly on a toilet break, simply forgot to play Incredible when Chris Benjamin came out to bat. I should write to the Chief Executive of the MCC about this one. Relaxing the dress code – fair enough. But the DJ forgetting to play the chosen walk-on music is a breach of Lord’s etiquette and should be suitably sanctioned.

Here, to make up for the disappointment, is that Incredible track:

In truth, by the time Chris Benjamin was walking to the crease (without his walk-on music) it was becoming extremely unlikely that Birmingham might rise Phoenix-like from the hole they were in by that stage to pull off an incredible win. Here is a link to the scorecard.

Janie and I therefore took our leave of Lord’s a few minutes before the end of the match, to avoid the crowds.

We’d had a great afternoon and evening. The razzamatazz does feel like an update or reset to the short format; that should make it more appealing to the young and young at heart.

John & Mandy In Noddyland, Sunday 22 August 2021

In this crazy pandemic era, time flies by. Could it really be more than a hundred weeks since we last saw John & Mandy?

Dinner At Kitty Fisher’s With John And Mandy, 28 August 2019

No dinner out this time – just a blissfully long afternoon/early evening in Noddyland to celebrate the joint birthdays – a week early this time as it happens.

Janie did her humus and pita bread starter thing as garden nibbles ahead of the meal.

The weather had been teasing us (pretty much all summer in truth) but even on the day there was the occasional threat of showers, including one shower just before John & Mandy arrived. But the weather smiled on us for a couple of hours enabling us to sit in the garden, chat, drink and nibble.

The showers returned just as we were preparing to come inside anyway.

Janie’s signature baked Alaskan salmon dish was the main, followed by a boozy summer pudding.

It was really lovely to see John and Mandy again post-lockdown. We had lots to chat about and somehow Zooms and phone calls can’t quite do the same job, however much of a decent substitute for the real thing they might be.

It shouldn’t be another hundred weeks until the next time.

Several Testing Days At Lord’s & White City, 12 to 16 August 2021

England v India Test At Lord’s Day One: Thursday 12 August 2021

This day did not start well. Even before we set off towards Lord’s, I got a message from Chas “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett that he was poorly and would be unable to attend with me on Day Two. Janie also picked up a message from one of her Samaritans friends cancelling their planned get together on Saturday.

Then we arrived at the Church Street car park, which I had booked more than a week ahead of time. A shifty young man was turning everyone away from the car park, even people (like us) with advanced bookings.

“The car park is completely full”, he said. We deployed the stand-off method, refusing to move the car and asking him to get the police when he said we were causing an obstruction. He phoned his boss, then simply let us in. The car park was far from completely full. Read into this incident what you will.

Dumbo’s space

When we returned in the evening to rescue Dumbo, we complained to a different young man who reluctantly provided me with the above sign to mark my spot for the next day. “Someone could remove the sign in the mean time”, he told me, ruefully, but he did promise to e-mail his colleague who would be on duty the next morning.

Meanwhile, we still got to Lord’s in good time to grab decent seats in a shadier/drier part of the Lower Warner. However, Janie soon became irritated by the “Champagne Charlies” behind us, who apparently started off by braying at each other about how much money they were making in the City just now and then went on to make disparaging remarks about women’s cricket.

Janie wondered why we were sitting in such a crowded place, while the Lower Tavern was sparsely populated. I explained my theories about the pecking order of Lord’s stands, with the Lower Tavern being the most despised of the Members & Friends stands.

“Let’s go over there, in that case”, said Janie. And that’s where we ended up spending the rest of Day One. I also returned there on Day Two solo and spent Day Four there with Janie.

Just before we decamped to the Lower Tavern, I received an e-mail from FoodCycle wondering whether Janie and I could possibly step in and host the White City project on the Saturday. Having had our Saturday plans messed up, we said yes to that request; we felt that the only decent thing that had happened to us so far that day was getting press-ganged into volunteering for a superbly good cause.

The other thing I did while on the wander was to see if Chris Swallow needed someone to make up the numbers for tennis on Day Two. As I was to be guestless I might as well and could use the exercise during the test match. As it happened, there was a vacancy and the suggestion helped out.

Janie’s opinion of Lord’s pitches was not improved by the Day One tally of just three wickets, although I thought England bowled without luck at first and without penetration after that.

Day Two: Friday 13 August 2021

An austere look for a day without Charley The Gent

I’m delighted to report that Dumbo’s parking space awaited him, without fuss, when I arrived at the car park on the Friday. It does have to be said that the “reserved” marker had, however, been removed.

I was hoping to place the seats I had obtained for me and Chas, so I decamped to the Lower Tavern while awaiting word from various folk, none of whom could muster a cricket lover or two at such short notice. The number of people who have said, subsequently, “oh, but if you had called me…”

Anyway, I snacked very modestly, drank water and read a bit, while following the increasingly interesting cricket match.

I chatted for a while with a nice chap named Richard who was similarly guestless that day.

Despite the absence of Charley, I enjoyed the day’s cricket. Chas would have loved it.

I also enjoyed a good hour of tennis doubles late in the day, with Dominic, Paul and Nick. My first game of doubles for a while – a good warm up for the “Doctors Of Leamington” fixture on Sunday.

Day Three: Saturday 14 August 2021 – FoodCycle White City

I didn’t take any photos of this particular gig, but the photo below shows the venue last year, when we were doing food delivery services from there.

Janie with Father “Friar Tuck” Richard & other White City volunteers

The gig on Day three of the test match was a cook and collect service along similar lines to the services we provide out of Marylebone. Fortunately hosting that service was not too onerous for us, as they really did have a shortage of volunteers that week, with only one other hosting volunteer. Talk about vacancies…

Still, we successfully gave away all the food and then went on to play tennis at Boston Manor Park, which we enjoyed, before watching the end of Day Three of the test match on the telly.

Day Four: Sunday 15 August 2021 – England v India at cricket plus Ged Ladd & The Doctors Of Leamington Feat. Mr Johnny Friendly at tennis

The commentatorat in front of the Allen Stand

Keen to get a prime parking place near Lord’s – probably more in demand on test match Sunday than prime seats in the despised Lower Tavern stand, we got to Lord’s early and had some fun snapping the pre match atmosphere.

Haseeb Hameed looking keen as mustard

Dinesh Kartik dressed low key for once, with Ian Ward

Photo-bombing my own selfie

I was due on court at 12:00 for a long-arranged game of tennis with “The Doctors Of Leamington” and Mr Johnny Friendly. The latter spotted me & Janie (Daisy) in the despised Lower Tavern and told me that the court was free from 11:30 and that the Doctors were keen to start early, so I actually only caught the first 20 minutes or so of cricket before retiring to the tennis court.

As it turned out, the Doctors were waylaid, so Johnny Friendly and I played at singles for a while until the Doctors arrived, which seemed to warm me up rather well.

Daisy joined us for the last few minutes of our hour, observing/filming a little from the dedans. The following clip shows me scoring a couple of strokes before making a bit of a mess of the third return, delivering a bestial roar for my pains:

Worth the price of admission alone, this 34 second clip.

After tennis, we joined the good doctors for some traditional picnic in the vicinity of the Coronation Garden, which seemed a little crowded for our taste but fortunately the Doctors had taken a well-located bench on the outer perimeter of the garden.

Eventually we returned to our seats and watched the afternoon’s cricket, which was actually quite absorbing and left the match well poised, such that I resolved to return on the Monday.

Day Five: Monday 16 August 2021

I decided to drive to the North-Eastern edge of Kensington, which is slightly closer to Lord’s than my flat. In any case, the parking space outside the flat was suspended to allow Bill to put in my new boiler, so there was doubly no good reason to go there.

The more or less due East walk from that parking place to Lord’s, mostly along the canal footpath, was a delight. Although I have spent much of my life very close to that path – e.g. at the Canal Cafe Theatre, I’d never previously walked that line, as it were.

Refreshed from the walk, I tried to take up position in the Upper Tavern Stand, only to be rudely ejected.

You can’t come in here, Sir, it’s been sold to the public!

Apparently demand had been so great for Day Five tickets from Joe Public, but not so much from members, that we were to be “penned in” to the Allen/Pavilion/Warner Stands.

I chose the Warner – mercifully Champagne Charlies don’t do day fives.

Towards the end of the day I relocated to the Lower Allen, as I could see there was plenty of space and I fancied a quick getaway.

I read, I watched cricket, England came second in the end but that aspect seemed…secondary.

Here is a link to Cricinfo’s scorecard and resources on the match.

I also concluded a highly scientific experiment for King Cricket, which I had started at The Hundred matches between London Spirit & Northern Superchargers a couple of weeks earlier and concluded at this test match. It is written up in the following piece:

The Hundred v Test cricket reading experiment

If anything ever goes awry with King Cricket’s site, you can find that vital piece of science here.

As “So-Called Freedom Day” Came & Went, We Indulged In Some Cricket & A Bit Of Low Key Socialising, 7 July To 6 August 2021

It was a strange period; the height of summer in regular times but the autumn of the pandemic, as it were.

The government had signalled a possible “relaxing of pandemic restrictions” for towards the end of June, but the highly infectious delta variant of Covid 19 led to the deferral of that “freedom day” until 19 July.

There was much re-jigging of diaries and arrangements in the weeks leading up to and following the revised date.

For the most part, Janie and I carried on doing what we had been doing during partial lockdown: working, volunteering and playing tennis.

Middlesex v Leicestershire, Merchant Taylors’ School, 12 & 13 July 2021

The plan was for me and Janie to go with Fran & Simon on Monday 12 July, but plans have a habit of going awry. The weather forecast for the Monday was awful and indeed it was heaving down with rain in Ealing.

Janie and I abandoned all hope of going to the game by mid afternoon, despite the fact that the rain was mysteriously dodging Northwood and play was taking place beneath leaden skies.

I’m rather glad we did decide to bale out of going, as I learnt the next day that it took people from Ealing/Acton way a couple of hours to get home due to the flash floods.

Simon ended up watching some rather good cricket solo on the Monday, while I ended up doing similar on the Tuesday.

I had arranged to play real tennis at Middlesex University early on the Tuesday morning and went on from there to MTS for my first sight of live county cricket since September 2019.

The Fag End Of The Cricket Season, Lord’s, 23 to 25 September 2019

Social distancing was still the order of the day, so I sat in a reserved area and was suitably reserved.

We were allowed to stroll a bit, which enabled me to encounter some of “the usual suspects”, such as Barmy Kev and Jeff Coleman, who for some obscure reason were bemoaning Middlesex’s poor play and poor luck this season.

I tried to cheer myself up by reading The Economist, which for some obscure reason was bemoaning the economic devastation caused by the global pandemic.

Middlesex were in a bit of a hole second dig, so I do understand why people were pessimistic, especially as Middlesex had been snatching defeat from the very jaws of victory all season. Still, I was strangely optimistic about Middlesex’s position given my previous experiences of seeing teams bat last at MTS.

For once, I called it right – click here for the match scorecard .

Ealing Samaritans Gunnersbury Park Party, Tuesday 20 July 2021

Janie had hardly met any of her new Samaritans colleagues before, other than in an “on shift” context, as she had done all of her training by Zoom and they had not been able to meet socially during lockdown.

So the “party in the park” idea seemed to be the ideal opportunity to meet some more people…

…which indeed it was. It was just a shame that, apart from Janie and Ilkay, whom Janie had already befriended and met, no-one from their traning group attended that night.

Still, Alison Shindler (coincidentally an old friend of mine from BBYO, as reported here) was there with her husband Joe, which was fun. We met some other very nice Samaritans volunteer folk including some of the Ealing grandees.

Janie was so late back from work, however, that we missed the entertainment for the evening, Marie Naffah, who was doing 50 gigs in 50 days, apparently. We arrived just in time to say goodbye to her, so for now the video below will have to do.

The Hundred: London Spirit v Oval Invincibles Double Header, Lord’s, Sunday 25 July 2021

In the end we only got to see half a double-header, as the weather closed in after the women’s match. What was predicted to be the possibility of some light showers turned out to be torrential rain and flash floods which caused havoc around London.

Mercifully, my weather app tipped me off before the weather got too bad.

I have reported the event for King Cricket, click here or below:

A report from the first day of the Hundred at Lord’s

Just in case anything ever happens to King Cricket, a scrape of that article can be found here.

Despite shortened event due to the weather, we rather enjoyed ourselves. I had arranged to return for the midweek games myself and Janie was scheduled to join me on Finals Day, so we anticipated that we’d still get our fill of The Hundred.

Middlesex v Durham at Radlett, Tuesday 27 July 2021

Parking spaces at cricket grounds don’t get much more rural-idyllic than this

Janie and I had an early game of tennis, then met Simon at lunchtime/early afternoon at Radlett. I chatted briefly with Mike O’Farrell and others, holding up the process of finding some decent seats and settling in for some old-fashioned List A 50-overs-a-side cricket.

The weather sort-of smiled on us until mid to late afternoon, when a shower threatened to end proceedings but in any case was enough to scare us away from an exposed ground such as Radlett.

After the rain, a tense Duckworth-Lewis finish, which Janie and I watched on the stream at home. As has been the way this season, Middlesex were “close but no cigar”.

London Spirit v Trent Rockets, Double-Header, Lord’s 29 July 2021

In my desire to really check out The Hundred tournament, I had reserved a member’s place for myself at both of the midweek events at Lord’s. This was the first of them.

I enjoyed the women’s game from the pavilion terrace, where I was sitting right in front of the assembled rockets (as it were) while they waited to do their thing.

I was delighted to be invited to help choose the walk-on music for some of the players, although I didn’t recognise many of the bangin’ hits on offer.

I had planned to take in the men’s game from the sanctuary of the Upper Tavern Stand, but just before the end of the women’s game I was joined by Alvin, who then popped out to make a call before I had the chance to tell him my plans. So I watched the first innings of the men’s game from the pavilion, with Alvin, then relocated to the Tavern Stand for the final innings.

London Spirit did not do very well in these matches…

…women…

…and men.

Oh well.

Caroline, Alan & Jilly Visit Noddyland, 1 August 2021

A bouquet of yummy chocolate strawberries from Caroline

Long in the planning, it was super to see Caroline, Alan and Jilly after such a long time.

In fact, last time we saw Caroline & Alan for a meal, Janie and I were still full of Japan, as it were.

It’s summer, so Janie went for wild Alaskan salmon as the main, after some nibbles in the garden.

The afternoon and evening flew by, surprising us all when we realised that it was getting dark. That’s what tends to happen these days.

London Spirit v Northern Superchargers, Double-Header, Lord’s, 3 August 2021

An opportunity to watch some more cricket and get some reading done, I took in the second of the midweek The Hundred double-headers.

I decided to watch the women’s match from the Upper Allen stand and the men’s match from the Upper Tavern.

The women’s match was probably the best game (i.e. the most exciting game of cricket) I saw all tournament – see the scorecard here.

The men’s game probably the least exciting.

Oh well.

Pete Reynolds Memorial At Mosimann’s, 6 August 2021

Our first venture in a cab and our first indoor event since lockdown. Shirley was very keen that we join the event, as we (along with so many of their friends) had been unable to attend the funeral during lockdown.

Grace had organised the event wonderfully well. Mosimann’s is a stunning venue and was well suited to the occasion.

The speeches were heartfelt and moving, but it was mostly a party, which was, apparently, what Pete wanted. Pete usually got what he wanted in life, I believe, so he was certainly going to have what he wanted in this regard.

Philafrenzy, CC BY-SA 4.0