Nurdle & Spank

Of all the appendages that homo sapiens has evolved, the medial malleolus is one of the least effective with which to catch a cricket ball. At least it was a unique, innovative method to choose. The hand thing hadn't worked for anyone else, barring the notable exception of Ben Salt's smart return catch and Jeff the keeper, who had gloves.

The day started early, having a chat with a fox up the allotment while harvesting stuff for tea, then DC2 came round to cut up dolphin in my kitchen. The sandwich malarkey was behind schedule when the call came through from the 1st XI to nick one of our players owing to their own deficiencies. We rolled with it and even ended up with jam appreciator and all round top gun Rich Grove to replace and bolster.

Portway's opening batsmen were keen to get on with it after winning the toss, but some tight, unrewarded opening bowling by Mackie, assisted by the other one, limited them to below four an over and happily, a couple of catches stuck. Unfortunately, all this did was to bring better batsmen to the crease. We watched some of the biggest sixes hit at Frenchay and heard the tinkling of glass from the golf driving range and hoped they wouldn't fire back. Some tried reasoning with the batsmen not to hit it quite so far, especially when we were having difficulty finding a replacement ball. They wouldn't even let us continue with a brand new one.

Despite positivity in the field, the Cowboys couldn't rein Portway in. They could induce one of their batsmen to fling his bat to square leg, but you don't get points for that. Just giggles. Dave, Ben, Rich, Grant and Alan all bowled admirably in the face of the onslaught. The short square boundary didn't help and did I mention the dropped catches and the fool who took one on the ankle? Even when the ball was caught and the batsman started to walk, the umpire wasn't sure and the batsman curtailed his homeward hike.

So somewhat daunted then by the prospect of scoring 298 to win. Those nice ladies in the kitchen had done their bit by laying out all the sarnies, veg, dolphin and that. They even had the brew on. Nice one. People were heard to say with their mouths full that it was the best tea of the season. Good to see some friendly faces to support too.

And so to bat. What's this? Who's this? Excuse the novice Cowboy (and scorer for the first twenty overs) but which one's George and which one's Adam? Or is it Alan? No, that's Alan spectating in the Tavern Stand. The one without the hat's just smashed another four. Fifty up. So soon? Crikey! Game on.

After the loss of Adam at the end of a great opening partnership the Cowboys consolidated and pressed on. George, supported by Grant and the early order ended up with a personal best in the eighties, making it all look possible and Jeff, Rich and Ben all tried to keep the hope alive.

It would seem that the ankle bone isn't connected to the batting bone and the No.7 batsman didn't need a runner. After getting off the mark with a six it didn't look like he was in the mood for running at all, but if the run rate was to be kept in sight then the slightly beguiling bowling required a bit of nurdling as well as spanking. Not spooning to the keeper off the back of the bat, although appealing when the batsman was walking was a strange custom, as was the Portway Haka at the fall of each wicket.

Dave and Mackie powered the lower order, the latter hitting his maiden six, followed immediately by another which won a few nominations for the cider moment, but it was unreasonable to expect him to do that every ball, which is what was required of the last couple of overs. In the end, 253 for 7 was a bold effort, leaving Stroddy and DC2 with their pads on, possibly salivating at the short boundary and what might have been.

Scorecard here, more match reports here.

Do Cricketers Eat Carrots?

Or do they prefer a dolphin / tuna sandwich?

Up slightly later than the crack of dawn to harvest stuff from the allotment for the cricket tea. It means less time in the supermarket and that's got to be a good thing. Someone else was handling the carnivores.

But would anyone fancy carrots, beetroot, mangetout, gherkins, lettuce, red onions and redcurrants? Yeah, yeah, there was bread and cheese and a few onion bhajis, muffins and chocolate brownies too.

See the next post.

Proper Purple

Beans Means Yum

Sexa Gurka

Pink & Purple

That's Entertainment

Red Green & Gold

Mycena

Cool as a

Better success with cucumbers this year thanks to the good weather in June. Or are they gherkins? (The courgettes / marrows have a similar identity crisis)

Les premiers haricots

Local Produce

Sweet & Sticky

The hoya's in bloom, with half a dozen sweet smelling sticky flowers attracting butterflies and moths in the evening.

Goosegogs

Brock's About

The badger's been at the carrots early this year. Can't do much about it, apart from grow them in a cage and all the cage material is going around the sweetcorn.

Winners & Losers

So it goes.

The frog hopped out as I was picking the last of this year's 20+kilos of strawberries and a blackbird deposited the still warm body a few feet away, presumably clearing the nest of one that didn't make it.

It's one thing to lose when you're in nice surroundings and you think you've given your all, but when the drone of the M5, drizzle, the peculiarities of human behaviour and the frailty of the aging human form make the afternoon not all that enjoyable you sometimes wish you'd been at home to answer the call from your crying teenage child, which must have come close to the moment that the ball, destined for a six, held up on a strong gust of south-westerly wind and found its way into the fielder's greedy hands.

Oh. You want a proper match report?

Brislington won the toss and inserted the Cowboys on a lively batting wicket and despite losing Wayne and his toe early on, the run rate was gurt awesome for a long while, thanks to Mister Higgins' masterful display of square cutting and stuff, ably supported by the early order. After his departure for 70 the team rallied to bat out the 40 overs, ending up on 220-8, some 20 or more runs short of what might have been possible but respectable nonetheless, give or take the odd, remarkable run out.

Drizzle interfered a bit towards the end of the innings and continued throughout and after tea. Brislington didn't appear to want to come out to play. Was it a bluff? A tactical delay within the rules pertaining to weather? A ploy to make us round off our almond slices with a(nother) pint? It didn't seem any worse then than when we'd been batting. Pass the rule book. Oh, it's stopped.

OK. Set mental calculator to 5.5 an over. Anything less, we're winning. Some tight, aggressive opening bowling from Hidayat, supported by Andy C saw to that and kept the openers down. Then, in the skipper's own words 'it went a bit pear shaped'. This was directly related to said skipper's plan of coming on to bowl and offering up ripe strawberries for the batsmen, one of whom eventually filled his punnet to 111 not out. There was a glimmer of spirited and wiley resistance to accompany the frequent trips to retrieve the ball from the hedges (three were found in one, the true one the soggiest) but against a very solid batting performance the bowling lacked the penetration and depth blah blah, especially as some shirker was claiming incapacity and in others it was quite apparent.

The opposition completed the task within 27 overs for the loss of only 2 wickets.

Scorecard

New Fruit Please

From red to black in the new month as the strawberries are nearly finished and the blackcurrants are worth harvesting.

Poppygold

Ring Of Bright Water

Just four survivors from the batch in February



Previous tadpole & frog business here.

Mellow Yellow

Maximum Parameter Exceeded

Now this blog is clearly the epitome of vanity publishing - all the veg talk, vague references to my various music projects and random slices of pie. Today there can be little more vain than me bleating on about achieving what I've never been able to do in some thirty five years of trying. Still, it's worth recording for posterity, in a fairly abstract and anonymous manner, if only because it stops me ranting on about strawberries and a poor onion crop and how none of the bands at Glastonbury really float my boat this year.



We were playing at Midsomer Norton and I wasn't the only one fearing a murder. (Yawn) Still, if you've got to die, they're pretty nice surroundings. I was wittering on to anybody who'd listen about the cycle path along the old Whitchurch light railway that takes you out of the city, bypassing the Wells Road, towards the magical Mendips, Stanton Drew and Pensford. If you haven't swum in the river by the church at Publow, you haven't lived. Just don't do it when a herd of cows are coming for a paddle.

I should mention that there was another apparently more important match going on in South Africa that required ours to start ridiculously early and pause for a couple of hours while those who gave a damn could watch the inevitable. At least that murder was swift and didn't go to extra time or penalties



As the next batsman in, nothing focuses the mind more than the sound of the stumps clattering and the bails tinkling. The butterflies and dragonflies dart and leap inside and you find yourself on cruise control towards the wicket, to the very same spot where you've just witnessed your more able comrade executed.

The first ball comes down and you survive it, either patting it away or leaving it. Phew! Not a golden duck then. Some days you are unable to say this to yourself and it's all rather embarrassing. Some days you might be lucky enough to get an edge for a single or mistime a drive but still get a flukey two runs. Huzzah! I'm off the mark, I troubled the scorer (more later) and I'm up the other end now, looking at those hills from a different perspective. Oh! He's left arm around the what? Okey dokey.

A stupid shot at a good ball which you just survive, the ball whistling past the stumps or dropping short of the fielder, followed by a sensible shot at a bad ball. Crikey! A boundary. Then it all happens again, it's deja-vu all over again Brian. But this time you don't play the stupid shot at the good ball and you get two bad balls that you somehow guide past the fielders and they race over the dusty turf to the ropes.

Well now, this is quite pukkah, you allow yourself to think. I've got double figures now, I don't know exactly how many but I really don't need to count. You think you're settled and that you've got things reasonably sussed but then you get tied down for a bit and there aren't any runs coming. A new bowler comes on and you take a wholly inappropriate swipe at a ball for which your brain has yet to evaluate a tracking system. All the opposing team go, Ooooooh!

You take a little walk like what you see them do on the telly. You say to yourself ***************** Do you want to be here in sixty seconds or do you want to be walking back to the pavilion? Geoff Boycott's mother comes to mind. Then you take the same swipe at the next ball, but somehow it seems wholly appropriate this time. You discover what you hear other people call the meat of the bat and you have time to get your breath back while they look for the ball in the hedge.

Colleagues come and go at the other end and you wonder who's going to make the runs today. The next ball sits up short on the leg stump and you find the strength in your wrists to lift the bat and pull the ball down the hill for another four runs. You hit the ball hard along the ground straight towards a fielder and it goes through his hands for another boundary. Yup, it's all very hunky dory, playing shots and building an innings like a musical jam, an improvisation around a theme, until you try to drive a ball over the bowler's head but somehow get strangled and tucked up and end up spooning a rather tame dolly to the delighted bowler. As you walk off there is no applause. You don't deserve any



But what's this? What's somebody saying to me involving the words, got, you and sixty? Does not compute. Computer says no. Maximum parameter exceeded. Many years ago I scored forty-five a couple of times, but today? Just then? 60? My maiden half century? F@ck! If I could do that, we're in for a massacre, nevermind a Midsomer murder. Oh! and I'm going to have to buy a jug of beer. For my batting? But I'm a bowler!

I'm not, as it turns out. Not as good a bowler as I once was. Just for now I'll happily balance that against apparently proving myself as a batsman of sorts and for receiving the unanimous vote from my team mates for man of the match. Man, I'm having a little jig for that! It might never happen again. Ten years ago I didn't think I was able to play cricket anymore because of a back injury, so it's all the sweeter. Sure it was a downer that we didn't score enough runs or bowl tightly enough to win. At times it looked very messy. Very ordinary, as the Aussies would say. Lol - which is how their cricket is looking these days. The England football team too.

There was a little twist to the tale when I narcissistically visited the scorebox to check the scorebook and shake my head in disbelief at the number of boundaries I'd hit. Sure enough I shook my head in disbelief as I counted my score in one book and it totalled only forty-three and the other had it at fifty-three. Or was that forty-nine? Arrgh! That sinking feeling. I had to round up a steward's enquiry and assist with addition sums. Happily, they fell the right side of fifty. Fifty-three I think. I'll settle for that. I thought I might have been on about thirty something. Applause at fifty would have only fried my swelled, heat frazzled head into getting out at fifty=three anyway.

As I say, vanity. But probably better than turning it all outwards to include other innocent and not so innocent participants.

Mixed Veg

Ribes rubrum

Avon River Tripping

Niebieski

OK class, pay attention. The Polish for blue is the same as the word for heavenly. Neat.

Solstice Harvest

Green & Blacks

Flower Show

I suppose lilies are a bit blousy really. It's the first year I've grown them. The bulbs appear to have come complete with lily beetle larvae which hatched and nibbled the emerging leaves.