All I wanted was a fucking cheese sandwich (by the way, greetings to all our viewers in far flung parts of what was once the British Empire. I can understand why you all wanted to devolve, leave the mothership in your brand new, re-named pod, as I surely do as well. To pilot your pods into new, uncharted space - although still confined within your well defined, final frontier, some arbitrary line drawn on a map with the blood of dead soldiers. Empire building was once all the rage, but, my friends, if only the consequences could have been foreseen. A world full of people living in countries that suddenly had new names and new oppressors to oppress them, but at least they could make ‘ethnic’ music once more and get to meet Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel and ignorede by Bob Geldof. By the way - who the fuck would want to buy a Charlotte Church CD??)
Anyway back to this fucking cheese sandwich. The Toads had rocked up to some little thatched country pub, conveniently situated right next to the ground, for a pre-match tactical talk and pre-briefing. I was a bit peckish and feeling somewhat delicate after spending the previous evening celebrating the wedding of Dave and Hazel Carter in a sauna somewhere in Ringwood and listening to perhaps the crappest (is that a real word?) disco that has ever dared to call itself a disco. One of those discos where the DJ talks over the records through a P.A. system similar to that used by British Rail, thinking he is being really funny, but in reality he is just a cunt. Sorry Dave, this doesn’t mean my feelings for you are any different, just that the disco failed to bring out the John Travolts that lurks somewhere inside me. In fact there’s plenty of room inside me for quite a few John Travoltas nowadays.
Anyway, I really fancied a fucking cheese sandwich, but after negotiating a path to the bar past a gaggle of gormless hooray-henrys talking loudly, wearing canvas shoes and cravats with matching blonde trophy wives wearing plastic faces and forced smiles, recently disgorged from all the bloody 4X4’s choking up the rustic car park, the menu proved to be a bit of a disappointment in the fucking cheese sandwich department. So I elected for the Coronation Chicken in a baguette option for slightly less than what I recently paid for my new Charlotte Church CD. I remember wondering what the fuck was Coronation Chicken, but then again you can hardly go wrong with chicken can you? although why they choose to live in stinking barns full of chicken piss and shit and dead chickens which they often eat themselves as they stumble around on feet too small for their chemically enhanced swollen bodies in eternal daylight, I have no idea.
Anyway there we were, sitting in the suffocatingly hot pub garden when our food arrived. I was handed a baguette filled with approximately half a gallon of coloured mayonnaise with the consistency of watered down water and four small cubes of what supposedly was chicken. As if that wasn’t awful enough someone had seen fit to deposit half the contents of a small garden over the whole ensemble and it was all gradually drowning in the coloured mayonnaise which was threatening to take over the world by this time. This is the essence of English pub food, and it was truly shit my friends. How the fuck do you eat something like this? I’ll tell you how, by pouring it all over your bloody clothes without attempting to eat it, cutting out the middleman completely. If I hadn’t been covered in mayonnaise I would have gone into the pub and complained but who would have taken a fat, over middle aged bloke covered in mayonnaise and sweat seriously? I know I certainly wouldn’t.
So we then went and played cricket and Spenser’s dad can once more see his son’s name in the Rivet. Spenser hit a glorious 50 and Alan Corlett played another fine Captain’s innings of 43 until he was given out L.B.W. by umpire Dave Baldwin. Unfortunately for us gossips, there was no controversy to report here. So Dave decided to give Neil out L.B.W. next ball. But again there was no controversy, although, at this stage Dave had taken more Toad wickets than the opposition’s bowlers?
134 for 4 - was a collapse imminent?.......... Read on ................... and on ...............
Alex then came on and smashed a short cameo innings of 29 including a huge six that almost demolished the local mayonnaise factory. Our final score was 182 for 8 after a late flurry by Lorne and your humble narrator who almost had to be hospitalised after running up and down the pitch for what seemed like an eternity. On finishing my record breaking innings, I was covered in sweat, had turned bright red and was seeing little green and purple wiggly things swimming before my eyes. Carol told me that drinking tea was good for someone in my condition as it cools you down by making you sweat even more. If sweat makes you cool then I was the coolest guy around for miles! And I hadn’t even had a cup of tea.
H.P.A. (the team of initials, although what they stood for I have no idea) then replied and after the first 18 overs your humble narrator was not only still completely knackered but also on the verge of terminal loss of joy. Despite excellent bowling by Andy Batch who one day will have that elusive quality known as luck, and Alan Bingham who also bowled beautifully for no reward, no wickets had fallen but not many runs had been scored either due to some gazelle like fielding, by Harvey in particular, and the usual competence behind the stumps of the Silver Fox.
But then those elusive little spaceships of joy appeared from their customary position lurking just behind the clouds, and formed themselves into the shape of Alex who proceeded to take the next 7 wickets. Neil chipped in with two and H.P.A. ended up on 130 for 9. Another mighty victory for the in-form team of the moment. As I looked up into the early evening blood red sky and saw the local farmworkers bringing in the sheaves and than looked back at my perspiring team mates, I felt a tear in the corner of my eye that began to trickle down my face at the thought of the end of another season of cricket with the Toads. Although it might just have been sweat!