WE’RE NOT NUMBER ONE!!!

Once again I feel forlorn and bereft because I know that the summer is all but over. And how do I know this...? Because “Soul Limbo” has played out the end of the last test match of another English summer and, apart from the knotty issue of some one-day games and the pointless razzamatazz of a few Twenty20 games, that’s just about the proverbial “it” for another year.

“My” team have managed to live down to all of the hype and managed to cling on to their position of “number one test team in the world” for about twelve months before handing over the title to a deservedly better team, and in that time played so relatively poorly that you really began to wonder how on Earth they managed to get their grubby little paws onto the ICC Test Championship Mace in the first place.

This summer, almost from the moment the South African team got the ball in their hands, the England (and Wales) team were outplayed, outgunned and outclassed at almost every turn and when they weren’t falling back into their old “losing ways” on the field, they seemed to be doing their level best to fall apart off it, almost as if it was the winning streak that was the glue that held them together, and once they started losing it seemed as if they had no love for each other at all. Or at least one of the “team”, anyway...

Rather typically, since I started to write that, of course, that rather fine chap who was the Captain who guided them to the top of the tree and then had to watch as they fell out of it again has announced his retirement. Ah, Andrew... You gave us some good times and, until this year anyway, things all went rather swimmingly. It’s just a pity that I’m such a persistent pessimist when it comes to following “my” team that my expectations are always so low, and yet things usually (and sadly) return back to what I consider “normal” before I ever get the chance to let my expectations rise.

Meanwhile, the Bank Holiday weekend was bracketed by the first two games of the five “one day” games, none of which fell on those lucrative “days off” (for the majority of the potential audience at least) because of the scheduling of the “domestic” season. The first was washed out by torrential rainfalls in Cardiff and the second was lost so comprehensively that it seems as if another claim to be the “best team in the world” in another form of the game is in similar jeopardy.

Whilst “Sir” Geoffrey Boycott comes in for a lot of criticism from both those who watched him play and from those who played alongside him, it must be said that when it comes to “stickability” and a willingness to hang on to your wicket at all costs, he might well have a point. After all, selling your wicket dearly hasn’t done the South African side any harm during this campaign and the England (and Wales) side never seem to look as if they have anyone who looks as if they might “drop anchor” and hang around for a bit.

And so another international cricketing summer, for me at least, seems to be all but over and there will be no more days and weekends spent in the company of my old pals from TMS burbling happily away in the background as I go about my days. Well, not for a while, anyway...

Now instead it’s going to be all gloomy days, dark evenings and wondering what to buy for whom for Christmas, and I’ve blown yet another soggy summer by not managing to make the best of it, and not spending any of my evenings sitting in the garden with a glass of something as the sun sets. Perhaps that was because this year, every time I even gave it a thought, the heavens opened and all thoughts of sitting outside became redundant.

I was able to do that during our recent few days away visiting friends in the south, mostly because they had the kind of enclosed garden that was conducive to such things, and they also have the kind of lifestyle that doesn’t involve getting ready for bed almost as soon as you’ve staggered in from work, sitting watching the telly as the darkness falls, and actually heading up to sleep at a time when most of the “grown-ups” we know are tucking up their toddlers for the evening and seriously considering cracking open the Chablis.

And now that the August Bank Holiday is behind us, I really begin believe that the summer is actually over. I remember going to Edinburgh for the last weekend of the “Fringe” a good few years ago and being struck about how quickly the weather turned and the evenings got darker once that weekend had sailed into history. It really felt as if someone had switched out the lights and the dark mornings, icy windscreens and the autumnal chill in the air became the norm within a mere fortnight of walking around those granite streets in the glorious summer sunshine.

But this is how our lives “drip, drip” away from us. Days, weeks and seasons pass and we get older and barely notice them as they slip past. It’s now almost two entire years since I attended a party marking the passing of a company for whom I once worked and which, alongside a little bit of work with a writing group, “inspired” me to start writing these pages. Two entire years of my life have been examined and documented on an almost daily basis and whilst you might not be able to work out a thing about what I was up to on a day-to-day basis during that time (even I can’t and I’ve got the illegible diaries to refer to) it does make me wonder quite what the hell I was thinking as I did it.

Luckily, I can read through those pages and find out just what it was I was thinking, but it still seems to be quite a bizarre record of possibly not the most exciting phase of my humble existence and somehow, when you start to think about it, reminds me of quite how terrifyingly swiftly a couple of years of a not considerable lifespan can vanish into history.

Meanwhile I seem to be sleeping less and less and waking up earlier and earlier as if my mind is trying to remind me that time is flying by and I really need to be making better use of it. You would think that the darker nights would mean that I slept better with the mind more attuned to think that darkness and sleep would be somehow associated, but not with this brain, unfortunately. Instead I lie awake, fretting about everything and noticing how quickly I’m skydiving towards eternity, perhaps just a little bit like a cricket ball being pummelled towards the boundary.

Still, maybe I’ll get lucky and the fielder on the boundary will drop the catch and I’ll manage to remain in the game or at least escape being caught for a little while yet. Well, if it’s one of “my” lot on the boundary, I think that I should be good for a few more innings yet and maybe, just maybe, I might actually manage to achieve something next summer.