A Day to Remember

If I could turn back time
If I could find a way

If I could reach the stars
I'd give them all to you 

Then you'd love me, love me
Like you used to do

If I could turn back time

By Diane Warren (for Cher)

When the Cricket Fixtures for the coming season are published in the late Autumn, there is always one which I look for first: The Championship game at The Nevill, Tunbridge Wells.

Will there be a game there this year?

What’s the date?
Who’ll be playing against Kent?

Last November there was Great News!

Indeed there was going to be County cricket at the Nevill in 2016.

And - for the first time since 2003 - it was going to be my beloved Sussex in a four day game starting on Sunday 17 July.

In the First half of my life I regularly took the less than 10 minutes’ walk from Farmcombe Road over the railway line to the ground.

And in the Second half each year I either drove or took the train from Bickley to Tunbridge Wells.

But - as all those of us who watch Countdown on Channel 4 in the afternoon know - there is a Third half.

This year I came from a new direction; driving from Hove across East Sussex through Lewes, Uckfield & Crowborough. It felt like my own Third half had begun!

There was a only a modest size crowd as I met up with Sally & David Lambourne – who both watch cricket with me regularly – and Bob Ayers and Mike Varney, each father of one of Nicole’s best friends and each on the first ever visit to the Nevill.

We sat – as Tradition demands – at the Railway End between the sightscreen and the iconic marquees.

We were soon joined by Graham Bishopp, who I played cricket with at the Upper Banner Farm Cricket Club and then at the Borderers in the 1960’s and ‘70s.

And then by Graham Clayton (a member of the Team of 1969. Captain: Lord Ric) and his friend Bill; with whom I had watched Sussex v Middlesex in a T20 Blast at Hove on Friday evening.

There was a spare seat next to me and a Lady asked if she could sit there.

My Favourite Sister-In-Law (Auntie Barbara) has told me never to judge people on appearances.

But straightway I knew the Lady wasn’t the Ukrainian - 27 years’ old - Blonde that a Lord Ric Blog really deserves.

To start with … She wasn’t a Ukrainian. The Lady had that wonderful, mellifluous speaking voice that can only be acquired from a really expensive private education in England.

And though she had been 27, a gentleman - if really pushed - would have said 27 was a “couple” of decades ago.

But … She was Blonde!

In the way that so often happens at Cricket, we started to chat.

She told me that it was her first visit to the Nevill; though (like me) she had recently watched Sussex play at Arundel. 
She had driven up from Chichester. Her husband had planned to come too, but at short notice he’d had to go into work as his boss had a child who was ill. She’d decided to come on her own.

I told her that I had grown up very, very near the Nevill: the ground where I had seen my first County game almost 60 years ago in 1958.

Did I tell her that Young Jim scored 127 on that Saturday long, long ago? Of course, I did!!

That I had driven up from Hove, where Dianne & I now lived at weekends and to where I plan to retire. (OK: Not just yet!!).

I explained that Dianne wasn’t interested in Cricket, though we’d both gone to an England v Australia Ladies T20 game last season with Sally, who was sitting just in front of me.

The Lady asked if any of my children were interested in the game.

Not really, I replied. My elder daughter Nicole has taught in Abu Dhabi for the last three school years; she was about to come back to teach in the UK. I’d gone out to see her last October and seen several days of the Pakistan v England Test Match.

And your younger daughter?

I heard my voice catch as I said that very, very sadly Laura had died a few months ago. 
Dianne, Nicole & I were just taking each day a day at a time.

The Lady said how sorry she was.

And – as well-educated, middle class English people do – we quickly and almost seamlessly moved the conversation on.

After tea I decided to go for a stroll round the ground. OK, it was to get a Good Boy ice cream! After all it was National Ice Cream Day!!

And when I returned to my seat the Lady had left.

The Lady may never have been Ukrainian and she hasn’t been 27 for a while.

But she did have that wonderful speaking voice and she is a Blonde.

 I’ll be looking out for her at Arundel next season!!

------

I said goodbye to Sally & David and Mike as they each made their separate way home.

At Close of Play Bob & I walked along Upper Cumberland Walk & back over the railway line to my car parked in Delves Avenue.

I dropped Bob off at the station and drove through Tunbridge Wells town centre and then past Skinners’ School, where I’m an alumnus.

As I got on to the Tonbridge bypass, I realised that - as it always is – the game at The Nevill is A Day to Remember.

I thought of Mum & Dad, to whom I owe so much and whom I think of every day.

And I thought of Laura.

Over the years Laura & I had hundreds of conversations - & silences too!! – on our walks with Lottie.

Many, many topics covered.

But we didn’t ever talk about Life after Death.

Rather like the central heating clock, neither of us would have thought we knew enough about how it all worked.

But Laura will now …

Mum & Dad taught me never to do Deals with the Devil.

As plenty of you will know, I hope to be alive and well in the Summer of 2039.

I will turn 87 that June.

And Sussex – the oldest professional cricket club in the world - will be celebrating its 200^th anniversary.

I’d like to be able to walk to the Ground and enjoy the celebration lunch.

And in the 20+ years between now and 2039, there’ll be time for lots & lots of Cricket watching, the game which has been such a huge part of my life.

But as I headed past Sevenoaks and on towards the M25 and back to Merryfield, I knew that if the Devil offered me the Deal of no more Cricket watching in return for half an hour with Laura, then I’d take it.

Who really knows if there is Life After Death?

And if there is, whether the Dead can ‘connect’ with the Living?

But just in case … …

Laura:

If I could turn back time
If I could find a way

If I could reach the stars
I'd give them all to you 

Then you'd love me, love me
Like you used to do

If I could turn back time 

Love Dad xxx