SMELLING VICTORY – THE MORNING BEFORE
It’s all very well them saying that, in this hot weather, if the temperature outside the house is higher than that inside, you should keep your doors and windows open – but trust me, when your black Labrador has eaten all the gooseberries in the back garden – again – you really need them open. 🐕💨
That said, Hector and I are both looking forward to the big match today. With the team just one game away from Finals Day, we can both smell victory – or, at least, I think we will be able to, once the air has cleared!
Because Somerset must surely be favourites to beat Yorkshire in the quarter-final of this year’s T20 cricket tournament.
And it was kind of the powers that be to bring the start time forward – presumably so as not to clash with the meeting I’m at this evening. Even so, it’s just as well that Glamorgan are out of the competition, as, speaking as I am in South Wales, had they still been involved, it might have affected attendance.
Come on Somerset!
Because it’s not coming home…it’s staying home…just where it’s been this past year!
THEY THOUGHT ‘TWAS ALL OVER, IT AIN’T YET – THE MORNING AFTER
Regular readers will remember how this time yesterday, Hector and I thought we were smelling victory. Well, despite it seeming for a moment that our olfactory senses may have been out of kilter – when Yorkshire appeared to be cruising to Finals Day – it appears we were right!
But the match that seemed lost as I entered the church that I was speaking at turned out to be an incredible and improbable win for Somerset – brought about, I should add, without a request being made for the divine intervention that seemed necessary.
Which means that one of us hopes to be heading to Edgbaston on Saturday. It would, of course, have been both of us, but Hector I’m afraid is no longer welcome at the ground – not after his fracas last year with a steward who threw him out of the Hollies Stand for not realising that the squirrel he chased and, uncharacteristically caught and ripped apart, was in fact some chap who had dressed up as a woodland creature for what was meant to be a laugh. Which, to be fair, it was for some – not least Hector, who still finds it funny now!
But Somerset’s epic triumph wasn’t the only reason that yesterday was so joyous. There was another reason too – one brought about by the fact that getting older causes you to think about things in ways you didn’t when you were younger.
Specifically, I have in mind the enormous pleasure that one approaching 60 is afforded by buying a brand new rotary washing line.
And no, it isn’t that I’d chosen it as a gift for my wife on our upcoming wedding anniversary – that, dear reader, will instead be the much cheaper spike that you have to buy separately in order to secure its position in your back garden!
But more unsettling than a belligerent Craig Overton in the eyes of a hapless Yorkshire death bowler are the thoughts that arise when you come to realise that, with our previous garment drying device lasting us over 30 years, this new one is likely to see us out!
Mind you, if on Saturday Somerset produce another heart-stopping performance like yesterday’s, I very much doubt I’ll make it through the weekend.
Unlike the unfinished box of Cornflakes in our kitchen cupboard – which will almost certainly see me out too.
Some musings 