This is my submission for the
2014 Summer Lovin' Contest
so please enjoy it and remember to rate it. Any feedback would also be much appreciated.
For any serious cricket lovers out there, please forgive any inaccuracies; I've done my best but most of my knowledge comes from a cricket-loving grandfather in my childhood and a little extra research.
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I guess that for most British people, or at least most English people, there is nothing quite so redolent of summer as cricket: the players in their whites on the green field, the gentle crack of the leather ball on the willow bat, the gentle ripple of applause after a good shot or a well taken wicket and, of course, the black scoreboard in the corner of the field... we'll come back to that later.
For those of you who don't know cricket, well, I'm not going to explain it here; go and Google it. It has an undeserved reputation for complexity but, in reality, if you can understand football (in any of its many varieties) or baseball, you can understand cricket. What is deserved is, I think, its reputation as a slow, sedate game. I can never remember which Irish writer said that, lacking spirituality, the English had invented cricket to give themselves an understanding of eternity but he had a point. Certainly five or six years ago I would have agreed with that sentiment: I would rather have watched paint dry than a game of cricket!
My involvement in the game came, circuitously, as a result of my now long ex-husband's mid-life crisis. When he hit forty he, like many I suppose, found himself frustrated in his life and what he had achieved and suddenly aware of his ageing body. However, not for him the typical, if embarrassing responses of donning Lycra and taking up cycling or joining the Little Hambelton Morris Men; not the dangerous response of skydiving or buying that motorbike he'd missed out on as a teenager. No: Alan decided on a series of affairs as his way of avoiding ennui and proving that his body wasn't past it yet.
I could, indeed I did, forgive him his first fling with, how clichéd, his secretary. The second, with a woman at the golf club, was harder but we might have survived that, at least while the boys were growing up. The third, some woman at a business conference he attended, was just too much. It was bad enough that this was the third time but what made it worse was that, while I could think that Alan had seen the first two sluts regularly for years (and temptation can play the long game) this woman was a complete stranger; somehow, this was simply too hard to bear.
A year later, at age 39 I was a divorcee with three boys aged fourteen, twelve and eight. It was two years after that that cricket entered my life when my eldest, Jack, starting playing in the senior team at the local club.
The scoreboard in the corner always intrigued me with its moving numbers that changed mysteriously. Wandering the boundary during matches I discovered that it was, in fact, a shed one wall of which was the scoreboard. This piqued my curiosity further: what went on in there? Was the scoreboard operated by a squad of Munchkins who slept in the shed between games? Was it full of obscure leavers and pulleys? As you can tell, at this point the cricket wasn't holding my attention. However, the one thing I never considered was that it could be the starting place of a lesbian affair between two divorcees. I know -- no imagination, me.
My first time in the box was a year or so later. By then most of the laws of cricket has permeated my brain by some kind of osmosis. Actually, it was more that, however dull I'd found the game at first, watching one's child competing at something is always captivating. When he did well, I wanted to appreciate it; when he was dismissed I wanted to know why. So I watched and I asked questions and I learned; by the end of Jack's first season, I knew the player positions, the rules and even the umpire's hand signals. So then one Saturday, before the match began Roger Smyth, the team coach, came over to ask me if I'd help with the scoreboard. One of their regular scorers was off sick or something and Roger had heard me explain a decision to another mother the previous week and thought that I had a good grasp of the game. "Don't worry that you've not done any scoring before, Bill in there will keep the scorebook. You'll just need to spot the umpire's signals and change the score on the board."
And so I became a scorer. There were no Muchkins and such machinery as there was inside was simple. The scorebook, on the other hand, was much more arcane with its strange symbols for byes, wides, no balls, wickets and all the rest. However, never one to admit that there was something a man could do that a woman could not, I learned to keep the scorebook too.
Yes, I know there's no lesbian love interest yet but be patient. Like cricket, this is not a quick story.
Jack moved on to university but by then Daniel was playing so I was still involved with the cricket club. Finally, my youngest, Harry, who proved to be the keenest cricketer of my three sons, was playing. I'm now 47 and perhaps a little physical description of myself is in order.
I'm fairly average in height at five foot six and have a figure that might, in my mother's phrase, be called 'comfortable' -- her code for overweight. Not hugely, mind, just more rounded all over; bits that were flat now curved and curves were, well, curvier and squashier. My eyes are pale blue, my once red hair is... still red actually, but now thanks to dye rather than nature, wavy and shoulder length around my oval face. In fact, the bit of extra weight has helped my face; it was always rather hard and narrow when I was younger but now my cheeks are fuller it's actually quite pretty, in a middle-aged sort of way.
It is the first game of the season when Roger, still the team's coach, comes over with a woman behind him. "Sorry, Helen, but there's a bit of a problem: Jason, the chap who was supposed to be scoring with you this season, has pulled out, says he can't do it. Now, I've found Margaret McKinley here," he gestures to the woman and I glance at her in time to see her flinch at the name, "and she's done a spot of cricket scoring before and can help out, at least for the first few matches. Okay? Right, jolly good... er, must dash and make sure the chaps are all fired up and ready."
He bustles off, leaving the two of us. "Hello, Margaret, I'm Helen Walker," I say as I offer my hand.
"Hi, Helen," she says, shaking my hand, and I detect the slight twang of an antipodean accent, "but please, call me Mags."
"You don't like Margaret?" I ask, just to make conversation as I lead the way to the scoreboard.
"No, I bloody hate it, if you'll excuse my language."
I smile. "No problem Mags. Who's your son? Mine's Harry; he's the wicketkeeper and mid-order batsman."
"My son's Kyle, fast bowler."
"Harry mentioned him. He said he was really good."
"Thanks. It's his first season at the club so we don't really know anyone. Nice to hear he's made a good impression with his teammates."
"I just wanted to ask, are you Australian?"
"Accent's still there isn't it, even after eighteen years. I'm from Brisbane originally."
