Our album of Galle photos, all 31 of them, can be seen through the flickr album below:
Early rise and it is clammy. Tennis feels like real hard work – Ged wins 6-2.
Shower and take breakfast. Again enjoy the resort; read, take a little sun, share a Sri Lankan curry to fish lunch, finish Finkler, swim and then played cricket with staff and a couple of guests.
The big left-hander top scores again for the oppo at 75 or 80 of the 109. Ged gets less wally than most, takes two wickets and a catch (Michael the English guest). Ged’s team struggled to 22 for three but then Ged and Amal (who clearly has hidden depths and strength) muster 70 odd in six overs to at least make a respectable total.
Shower and then return to photograph the sunset.
Dinner of jumbo prawns with chips and salad (eventually) interrupted by darkness as our side of Olive Ridley needs a shilling in the meter . We move to the other side, then back for banana bread and ice cream and watch a bit of Oz V Zim with “M”.
Our other Sri Lanka photos- 79 excluded from the album – can be found through the link below:
Our album of Galle photos, all 31 of them, can be seen through the flickr album below:
Another tough day in paradise beckons.
Ged rises mega early to see if the swarming swallows arrival of the evening is replicated in reverse in the morning – it isn’t!
Daisy and I played tennis; 5-5 – very tight game.
Then shower, breakfast, reading (When Freddie Became Jesus, then started The Finkler Question). Snack lunch of burger to share and beer to share, then more reading.
A late afternoon stroll to Wijaya for cocktails with the expats. Moscow Mules and Arak Sours.
Then tuk tuk home. No real sunset to speak of. Watch the swallows swarm as usual and then some R&R before supper.
Tiger prawns with salad and chips (switched the rice) and wine again!
Our other Sri Lanka photos- 79 excluded from the album – can be found through the link below:
Here is a link to the King Cricket piece, which relates to one of several games of garden cricket on that holiday – this one at the Frangipani Tree, near Galle, on 19 February:
Frankly, some of the comments are better than my report – it is worth reading for them. King Cricket can be like that.
Lord’s isn’t the only place where cricket and tennis intertwine
Here is my contemporaneous journal record for the whole day:
Very heavy overnight rain – some of Daisy’s things get wet – no point in even considering tennis this morning at seven – Daisy does hair drying instead.
We invent our own exercise regime.
Breakfast, reading (Kalooki Nights), lunch of grilled calamari, chips and bread! With beer.
World Cup [cricket] 2011 starts but we play our own garden version.
Five aside, Wojciech refuses to play but tennis ball cricket enables Daisy to have a go.
We make a respectable 89 for three of eight (I scored 15 in an open stand of 40 odd). We meet “Major General” Richard and his sporty son Chris (my opening partner) and daughter Millie and who knows we might meet the wife (Rosie?).
Our side loses as big fella Sanjay takes advantage of asymmetric field which helps left-hander with big hitting ability.
Even Daisy scores a run off my bowling.
More reading afterwards, followed by dinner of lamb tajine followed by chocolate ice cream washed down with a Spanish Crianza
Tough day.
Our album of Galle photos, all 31 of them, can be seen through the flickr album below:
Our other Sri Lanka photos- 79 excluded from the album – can be found through the link below:
Our album of Galle photos, all 31 of them, can be seen through the flickr album below:
Overnight: THE MYSTERY OF THE STRANGE DISAPPEARING SOAP!
(Squirrels crawl through the bathroom slats and take the small bars, Amal tells us!)
Amal brings us an early morning coffee and we play tennis.
We shower and take breakfast in the cool shady breezy spot where we had dinner last night.
We read, having bagged a quiet breezy spot on the lawn. We take a snack lunch of tuna sandwich with some chips and salad washed down with a beer. We read some more.
We get ready for dinner, observing the swallows that nest for the night in the coconut trees outside our room.
Huge dinner of prawn samosas, crab with rice and veg, but the centre piece was the crab. Valdavieso Sauvignon Blanc washes it down and a flourless chocolate cake is the final straw.
Our other Sri Lanka photos- 79 excluded from the album – can be found through the link below:
Our album of Galle photos, all 31 of them, can be seen through the flickr album below:
Rise before six and take coffee before setting off in Praseeth’s tuk tuk to Lighthouse hotel for tennis.
Ged wins 7-4 (6-2). Mendis looked after us there.
Went back to Villa for wash and ready for 9 am Massage with wonderful Milton and Roshan (Milton’s son) who looks about 15 but apparently is 28.
We take a herb-infused tea and a late breakfast, then relax in our villa most of the day while Praseeth, Roshan (the Villa) and Wanita fuss over us.
We swim a little and sunbathe a little. Then we cover ourselves in skeeta protection and go off to the ramparts with Roshan for cricket.
No one is playing and a few mangy layabouts don’t seem too keen, but the peace offering of an Indian red heavy tennis ball seems to do the trick. One lad runs off to get stumps and a bat – it’s game on.
Deceptively straight bowlingA hoick to mid-wicket, where a you can just make out the stray Queenslanders
A stray Aussie from Brisbane watches for a long time and eventually decides to join in, after some baiting of an Ashes variety by Daisy, “to try and dislodge the pom” when I’m batting.
This pom was not for dislodging
The Aussie softened a little when I suggested that he might be “Matthew Hayden’s evil twin (if that is possible)” after he played a half decent stroke.
Roshan and Praseeth played well, especially Praseeth’s batting, despite him “feeling un-special today” apparently.
Daisy stuck around & took the photos. When stumps were drawn, the locals asked if I would be coming again tomorrow. I said “maybe”, by which I meant, “probably not”.
I recall cunningly arranging a slightly later than usual meet time with Ashley so I could see the denouement of the World T20 Semi-Final between Sri Lanka and England.
I recall a very convivial evening with Ashley after the match. The restaurant seemed quite good, but I seem to remember that Ashley had a fist full of vouchers, which enabled us to try the place at modest prices. We concluded that the meal had been good value for us, but that the place would not pass the Manchester “value/how much?” test once at menu prices.
Ashley might recall more about that evening; if he does, no doubt he’ll chime in Ogblog-like.
…”why not? Yes, by all means put my name in the ballot for pairs of debenture returns”…
…led to a very polite letter from the MCC, letting me know that, if I had really meant it, there were indeed ballot returns available for me, both for the last regular Sunday of the tournament and for this finals day.
“That would be absolutely spiffing,” I implied, not by using those exact words, but by ticking some more boxes and writing a fairly substantial Gregory Peck.
Excellent value for my minimal effort and the money.
We had similar debenture seats for finals day as we had for the previous Sunday…
…just a little more central in the Grandstand. As the previous week, we were sitting very close to John McCririck. Actually, the previous week we had sat close to…” …you know, that eccentric bloke who does racing, adverts and stuff on the TV”. I had to Google him between time to discover his name.
We certainly wanted to see the women’s World Twenty20 final – that was a big part of the excitement for us, especially as England had qualified for the final. So we set off in good time to catch the start of the first match – this also enabled us to avoid any crush at the gates. Daisy did the picnic again, I’m pretty sure, as we were in Sandall Close that weekend. I think she went more for a bangers and nibbles picnic this time, with the previous week’s having been a more sandwich-based affair. But it might have been the other way around.
I had managed to catch a fair chunk of the England Women v Australia Women semi-final on the TV on the Friday. I thought the Aussie girls had scored plenty but England batted beautifully that day.
On finals day, it was the England bowling that shone through – taking advantage of morning conditions to bowl. Not an enormous crowd for the women’s final, sadly, but a decent number of us turned up to support. The ground started to fill up as the match progressed.
It was a great feeling to witness live the England Women win a World Final at Lord’s.
Daisy wears one for the girls (some months later) – thanks to Kim for the picture
For the men’s final, what had been the empty seat next to mine was taken by a young Asian gentleman from Birmingham who was supporting Pakistan. He got more and more excited as the match unfolded and was in a state of great euphoria by the end.
In truth, it wasn’t a very exciting match. The Sri Lankan score always seemed below par and at no point did the Sri Lankan bowlers seem capable of containing the Pakistan batsmen.
We left Lord’s and wandered over to Harry Morgan’s to wait for a cab in comfort with a coffee. Cars were driving around St John’s Wood hooting horns, hollering Urdu chants and waving Pakistan flags. I don’t suppose the residents of NW8 had ever seen anything like it before.
Thus ended my four days at Lord’s in less than a fortnight (which started here). I must say that these short-form International cricket matches make so much more sense to me in the context of a multi-country tournament than they do when they are simply a string of bilateral matches. I had enjoyed a couple of excellent midweek days with friends and a couple of super Sundays with Daisy. Well satisfied, I was.
This time Daisy is with me and I am pretty sure that she took on the picnic duties for this visit as we would have been in “the country residence” (Sandall Close) the night before.
We got to see two really good matches, as well as enjoy a good picnic:
Ireland v Sri Lanka – one of those matches where you always felt that the giant-killer/underdog (Ireland) was still in the hunt, yet sensed that Sri Lanka would eventually overcome them, which they did – click here for the scorecard;
England v India – a very exciting match, which England somehow managed to win, despite the sense that India would eventually overcome England’s seemingly below par score – click here for the scorecard.
We watched from the dizzy heights of debenture seats in the Grandstand, my “prize” for ticking a box requesting a shot at a ballot for a pair of debenture returns. These seats were not too far away from the Warner Stand seats I’d sat in earlier that tournament – that Warner side of the Grandstand and a lot higher of course.
My favourite memory from this day was Ravi Bopara’s six, which was caught in a beer skiff by one of the pair of gentlemen sitting next to Daisy in the Grandstand, splashing (mercifully little) beer all around us.
I have just looked up the BBC on-line commentary for that six – click here – which reports that the ball went into the Grandstand (last ball of the fifth over) and then simply says for the start of the next over “Umpire de Silva calls for a new ball”. What actually happened was that, after our neighbour returned the beer-sodden ball, both umpires had a poke at the ball and then a sniff at it, before deciding that the ball was no longer of the requisite quality. Our little section of the crowd, which knew exactly what had happened, took great pleasure in all that.
That England win kept England’s hopes alive for more than 24 further hours, until a rain-affected night match against the West Indies at the Oval proved a bridge too far for England.
But that Sunday, concluding with an unexpected England win, was a very happy day at the cricket.
This visit, on the Friday, was with Ian Theodoreson. I first met Ian when he was at Save The Children and I was on my first assignment for Binder Hamlyn. We’ve kept in touch, on and off, ever since. In June 2009, he was about to join or had just joined the National Church Institutions from Barnardos.
This was a very enjoyable day at Lord’s. Our tickets were on the Warner Stand, near the Grandstand (as were the seats a few days before with Mark). I remember Ian and I spotting Sachin Tendulkar being entertained in one of the Grandstand boxes, very close to our seat.
The cricket was good without being exceptional, as is often the way with T20 cricket. Little did we know that we were watching a pre-match between the two tournament finalists first up:
The Beechwood Hotel Garden and Roller. With thanks to Charles Bartlett for this picture.
How did our regular Edgbaston (and occasionally other grounds) visiting group, the Heavy Rollers, end up staying at possibly the worst hotel of all time? After all, we comprise a bunch of reasonably discerning, sensible people.
The very worst hotels only happen to stupid people, right? Wrong.
But this event does needs some context and explanation in our defence before the exposition.
Context
For several years, our excursion was based around the Wadderton Conference Centre, which was the Children’s Society place in rural Worcestershire, just outside Birmingham. David Steed, who was one of our number in the Heavy Rollers, ran the place and lived on site. The Children’s Society was pleased for a bit of income from guests in the quiet summer period and it was mighty convenient and pleasant for us, with a suitable garden for pre-match cricket antics.
But Wadderton had closed down permanently in the 2004/2005 winter.
In 2005 we spent one splendid night, before the match, at Tye Towers. We then spent on night at Harbourne Hall – VSO’s equivalent place to The Children’s Society’s Wadderton – a place to which we returned subsequently several times before it declined.
But for some reason people, after that first stay, wanted an alternative. It was perhaps perceived as too far from the ground (although it was much closer than Wadderton). Perhaps people felt it reminded them too much of Wadderton without “being” Wadderton.
David Steed, living locally, said he’d sort something out.
Now David Steed, bless him, ran Wadderton wonderfully and was subsequently a superb host at his Birmingham house. But he possibly wasn’t the best judge of a hotel. Cheap and near the ground seemed sufficient criteria for him. His e-mail a few weeks before the match:
Accommodation is confirmed as previously written about and subsequent telephone chat at Beechwood Hotel on the Bristol Road approx. 200 yards from the main entrance at Edgbaston…
…No deposits required and as we have spoken – do people want to come early enough on the Wednesday to perform on our local green followed by supper at ours with a meal out locally or in Brum on the Thurs. night. Any thoughts ?
That “subsequent telephone chat” was not with me. Anyone dare to confess?
Of course, in a more modern era we might have looked at TripAdvisor or one of its competitor/predecessor sites to check the Beechwood Hotel, but back then those web sites didn’t exist, or barely existed.
Nigel recalls that the main light in Adam’s room didn’t work because the light bulb had blown. When Adam approached Tom for a replacement light bulb, he was told to fill in a form to apply for a replacement – the replacement was thus not forthcoming during our stay.
Although David had promised us that the rooms came
“each with private bathroom”…
…I seem to recall having to toddle down the corridor to get to said bathroom. “Private”, I suppose, does not necessarily mean “en suite” in this Beechwood world. I also recall some very inappropriate jokes about Zyklon B from my companions during conversations about those ghastly showers.
But the most bizarre conversations were with Tom, who tended to sidle up to us in the bar/common parts areas of the hotel and bend our ears with tales of his roller-coaster and/or imagined past. I made some fragmented notes:
“I was a millionaire at 21…a multi-millionaire at 24…lost it all at 33. I’ve been out with Miss Jamaica, Miss Bromsgrove, the lot. I had an Aston Martin – would cost about £125,000 today. Do fast cars while you’re young, young man, you won’t fancy it once you are your dad’s age. I made a million when a million was real money. When a million was really a million…”
The company that owned the property was only struck off a few months ago at the time of writing, December 2015, so I imagine the property is now in the hands of the Mortgage provider, Nat West, who surely could find some property developer somewhere who might adapt the premises into some jolly useful affordable housing in leafy Edgbaston.
Two Nights and Two Days of Cricket
Why were we there? Oh yes, cricket.
We had a net at Edgbaston itself on the Wednesday evening. I’m not entirely sure how our evening panned out, but – having now also seen an e-mail from Nigel sent to us ahead of the trip – I suspect that the net was late afternoon – Nigel’s e-mail suggests 17:00 start – and that the game on David’s local green was therefore a that same evening at, say, 19:00.
Anyway, the muck-about game on David’s local green, the night before the test match started, did not go well for me, as evidenced by this page of my jotter.
Nigel “Father Barry” and son did well, as did a local lad, Craig, who wandered along and asked if he could play with us.
Harish (Harsha Ghoble) also had a good go, although I do recall bowling him on one occasion with one of my moon balls which descended vertically onto the stumps. “How are you supposed to play a ball like that?”, complained Harish. Nigel then dispatched my next, similar ball for six. “Like that”, said Nigel.
I also recall lots of bites on my legs afterwards, although whether those were from the green or the hotel is a matter of some conjecture. Perhaps a bit of both.
Postscript March 2017 – the scorecard relic and narrative about the park muckabout game is a false memory from 2006 – that happened in 2008 and the text is transposed to that piece, together with a link to Charles Bartlett’s wonderful 2008 photographs that helped me to disambiguate. It seemed a ridiculous idea, that we had a net AND a muckabout in the park the same evening…it was ridiculous – didn’t happen.
The dinner at David’s on the Wednesday evening was typically delicious and (equally typically) the wine flowed plentifully. We had a great evening, that Wednesday before the game.
Heavy Rollers 2006 With thanks to Charles Bartlett for this picture.
Light Rollers 2006 With thanks to Charles Bartlett for this picture.
I’m not 100% sure where we ate on the Thursday night, but I think it was that year we went to a local Indian place near Steed Towers. Others might recall better. I think I was in “Beechwood Hotel shock” by then. It really was not a place for the faint-hearted.
Or, as Charley the Gent Malloy would put it, “that hotel was no place for a wuss.”
