Wanting to be well ahead of the curve, picnic-wise. for this year’s Edgbaston trip, Daisy and I went shopping on the Sunday before Edgbaston week to stock up on everything but the most perishable items (bread and fruit) for the forthcoming picnic-fest. This shopping we achieved in Kensington after visiting my friend Barry’s amazingly colourful photographic art exhibition:
The next day, around eleven, my stress levels went through the roof when I received an e-mail from AirBnB informing me that tomorrow’s booking for four nights in Moseley had been cancelled for unspecified force majeure reasons.
We were temporarily homeless and wondering where I might find somewhere faintly near where we wanted to be at such short notice. This was the second time I’d felt a sense of homelessness about this trip – the first time was when I logged on to book the Edgbaston tickets, more than a year earlier, to discover that our regular stand(s) of the past quarter century were to be a building site. Exile in the South Stand was the solution.
As for accommodation, “fortunately”, I found space in a place nearby that we had stayed in before, in 2023, nice place but limited kitchen as I remembered it. That would have to do.
Tuesday, we set off for Moseley via Leamington, where I had a hit on the real tennis court with Doc Robson, Charles Heaton & John Yarnall. The first two joined me and Janie for lunch, after which Janie and I toddled to M&S to stock up with the remaining items we thought we needed.
The limited kitchen in our emergency Moseley home was even more limited this time than it had been in 2023, so we needed a visit to M&S in Moseley on our way to Sabai Sabai to get some additional basic condament items.
Actually, come to think of it, pretty much everything I want to say about the next few days is there to be read in Ged’s piece on the King Cricket website:
With 2027 Edgbaston Ashes tickets up to £115, here’s a spectator report from a more affordable Test-viewing era (2026)
If anything were ever to befall the King Cricket site, click here for a scrape of that page.
The fact that the match was still alive on the third day and even into the fourth was pretty much down to this guy - Razaullah:
The drive up had been a rain-soaked horror-show. The drive back was glorious sunshine, made stressful for me only by Janie looking at the score, about 30 miles from home, soon after Day Four started, saying, "two for one...no, sorry, two for two".