its raining, its pouring

Tuesday meant cricket! I was excited by the thought of going to the oval to see England take on Sri Lanka in the one day match and we headed off to the tube station, bypassing M & S on the way to get some food....due to the works at Tottenham we had to change to 3 different lines and double back to the oval - but we made it there without too much fuss. As we wandered to our seats I asked Rohan if no women actually like cricket in England, there were men, men and more men. I felt distinctly outnumbered. Were there any other women in this stadium at all? Thank god emery was going to be joining us. Taking our seats play hadn't started as there had been a slight shower of rain just before we arrived, so the announcers told us that play wouldn't start for another 30 minutes. As promised at 1.30 play commenced and about 25 mins later emery rang to say she was just walking in after leaving work early. Just as she came up the stairs to the stand, thunder rolled across the sky and the heavens opened. The rain pelted down and pooled at the corners of the covers. For the next 3 hours we sat huddled in the corner of the staircase trying to work out if the sky looked like it was clearing or was it just illumination from the ground lights? Should we abandon this and go home and make a curry? What were the chances of play resuming sometime in the next century?

Finally, they said that play would start at 5pm and there would be reduced overs. We trudged back down to our seats ready for the resumption of play. Unfortunately, what had occurred in that three hours was a transformation. A transformation fueled by pedigree (which is not in fact a brand of dog food as we thought but instead the logo of a brand of beer I cannot recall). In the time that the rain had fallen, so too had the beers down the gullets of the fans and things were looking distinctly dodgy. The guys sitting next to us began to regress, all grunting and inane comments, one man fell through the picket fence and onto the ground. As I remarked to emery, the problem with public events is that the public go to them. The cricket itself wasn't particularly inspiring and the three of us looked at each other and decided to call it quits. We figured it might be safer to get out before our cricket neighbours regressed so fully that they began walking on their hands.

A crowded tube ride home and we put on the bbc radio coverage, opened a bottle of red and had a home cooked lamb curry.

When it comes to cricket I think I'll take the aussie summer and the quiet beauty of Bellerieve.