From one end of the entertainment spectrum – watching Sophie’s end of term ballet show in a hot, packed Ashville hall on the Saturday – to a hot packed Old Trafford cricket ground on the Sunday watching England play Australia in a One Day International match. Impressive to watch ‘best in the world’ performers – the cricketers were great too.

Setting off on a giddy ‘lads’* day out (yes, I am talking about the cricket now) always gets me excited. The thought that I get to be a kid again, where I’ve got a responsibility holiday (apart from the notion of bringing myself and the rest of the fleet back in one piece) fills me with a unique energy.
Harmless fun and japes, laughing hard, doing things on a whim, going to places and situations that I couldn’t experience in any of the normal modes of me is very good from time to time. Reminds me of the Peter Pan in me. Somebody once asked me and Skip (who couldn’t make this tour) whilst Headingley bound on a damp train full of cricket and commuters, if we were in the Barmy Army. “oh no,” Skip replied “we’re a special ops unit”.
The match we were at had heroics. It had tension. It was two (at times) gladiators equally poised in the balance of mortal combat. The series win was at steak and oh how pleased we were when a Yorkshiremen brought home the silver for St. George (and the dragon). Meanwhile the England football team were outplayed on the field by Germany knocking them out of the world cup.
By the time the match had finished and we’d got out of the ground, the vast majority of car and house England flags had already been demoted to out of sight, out of mind. Not many people were drinking champagne on the train back over the Pennines that night, I can tell you… except us that is. What a superb day. Cardiff next year?
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* J who I’ve known over half my life,also a father of 3 also relishes the rare away missions that life throws at him. The rest of the unit : H, a brilliant chap, has the ability to run scores of miles up mountains and has a wit and interlect just as excersised, likes a day off from himself, I’m sure. T contributes an infectious positivity, R a wise humour and honoured veteran while M shows that growing up in Wales has a lot of parallels to growing up in Yorkshire.

I was lucky enough to do a lot of my favourite activities over the past 5 days or so.
Thursday – went to watch the cricket at Headingley with a lovely bunch of people. ‘My’ team (Yorkshire) won one of it’s key matches of the season – they beat arch rivals Lancashire by 17 runs in a confident win. A train ride back to Harrogate, followed by a few drinks in town ensured a healthy hang over the next morning. Luckily, I’d arranged the day off so one of the first ports of call was coffee in town followed by a few missions to stock up for the festival we were headed to for the weekend.

As I’d mentioned in last years post, Lindley Woodstock is technically a private party but had the feel of a small festival – stages, fires, PA’s, people, curry van, bouncy castle etc. Very lovely it was as well. I ran the top stage – the format of top stage act > bottom stage act > top stage act (etc) meant that the music could go on seamlessly (ish) all day and night. The highlight musically for me on that stage was a psychadellic act who’s name I missed – all Gong / Hawkwind ish. really interesting. The highlight for the bottom stage for me would have to be Mick Artistic, who I’ve seen before somewhere but who was on top form at Lindley.

After a lovely Sunday in the sun we headed home to get the kids settled for school night. The next day – Monday – I went and had quite a major haircut followed by lunch at home, followed by the delights of seeing Sophie at her Baby Ballet class. Very cute. Very pink. We let Sophie have a potter about in the KidzPlay at Hammerian House – they had a TV on where I got to see the second half of Portugal thrashing North Korea. The big think of the day was Eirene and I’s 10th wedding anniversary. ‘Tin’ apparently. 10 years ago that day we had our wedding reception / party (and oh boy oh boy, what a party it was!) up at the Harrogate Arms. This was back when the club downstairs was still serviceable, so we took over that with DJ’s, set an acid jazz / funk type band upstairs and I think we had more stuff outside… all very much fun) so with those thoughts in mind we headed back up there with the kids after school for a look. Downstairs is no more, the pub has been knocked about a bit (still nice) and outside has donkeys and birds of pray! what a difference 10 years can make!

A big thanks to Ed for sending over the fantastic guide to the Ashes suppliment. As you can imagine, I’m really looking forward to tomorrow (and the following couple of months of said game). Just got myself psyched up for the first day of perhaps the most iconic of contests by watching this fantastic round up by the Test Match Special crew : http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/archive/8137396.stm

Watching cricket. The australian (v india ) boxing day test. Very nice setting !

Well we won at the cricket! Against Australia! (ECB One Day International Triangle series)
Looking good for the world cup coming up in March.

Top weekend. Went out for a few drinks on Friday night, Saturday – not a lot! Had some friends over. Today I got up at 7 to go round to a Sky Sports wielding friends house to watch as much cricket as I could squeeze in before a round of disk golf. Spent the afternoon cooking (a really nice traditional French Beef Stew) followed by eating and.. chilling.

Holidays and weekends away / short breaks are on my mind and are being planned a lot in my life at the mo. It’s going to be a busy year for hopping about by the look of things. Nice!