Memories From A Starker Easter

Easter Saturday bequeathed West Yorkshire’s populace warm(ish) Bank Holiday temperatures. Consequently, yours truly ventured out to take in a local league cricket match. A game which, although not partaking for over a decade, I played my mid-teens to the cusp of middle-age.

Cricket a game of which I’ve written about on numerous occasions, in particular during my formative teenage years and early twenties; an era when I represented Gateshead Fell cricket club. Those chronicles fond recollections of my early days playing with willow and ball.

Footnote – Willow and ball is a reference to the main apparatus required to play cricket (ie wooden bat and leather sphere), not my two dogs names back then. Actually, as I didn’t have any dogs at that stage of my life they couldn’t have been… Although, in your defence, you weren’t to know that, I suppose… Well, unless you’re a family member reading this, or a close friend back in the 1970’s/80’s.

My desire to get out into the fresh air heavily this Easter driven by memories of the purgatory of this holiday in 2020; a juncture when the UK was in COVID-19 lockdown. Recollections which were jogged yesterday when I revisited a narrative written on Easter Saturday that year. The text below an interesting (hopefully!) look back at my observations a few weeks into lockdown. Months when the only fresh air I got was when hanging out my newly laundered undies.

As the main prose reflects a time when government edicts introduced restrictions to the UK populous’ liberty, I titled this narrative ‘Memories From A Starker Easter’ . However, as my mum was alive then, I’d give anything to go back to those pathogen ridden days… Her loss far harder to take than life under COVID.

Anyhow, below are the lockdown addled notions from that warm Easter Saturday in 2020:-

“It feels almost like the warm temperatures have  been delivered in mischief to test the resolve of the covidiots. The small proportion of citizens who appear to ignore UK governmental requests not to venture out to minimise risks of spreading COVID-19, unless essential.

Only the next few days will tell whether these dissenters, for whom the words sacrifice, selflessness and gumption seem archaic notions, embrace these requests. There’s no ‘I’ in team but there is in selfish. idiotic and irrational. There’s also an ‘I’ in Indianapolis (well three, actually), but as that’s not relevant to this monologue, so I’ll move on sharply.

Upon finishing my lunch earlier, I was regressed back to my 1960s/70s childhood during an exchange with my mother, in whose house yours truly currently resides. This flashback evoked by a maternal positing of “I’d rest your lunch before going out!”, in response to my post meal announcement “I’m off out to finish trimming that varigated hebe shrub, mum“

This advice taking me back to 1973, in the kitchen of my childhood home in Low Fell, Gateshead. Seven words my brother Ian and I received on announcing “We’re off back out for a game of football, mum!” after consuming a hearty lunch. Well, that is if Findus Crispy Pancakes could be classed as a hearty lunch.

In that era the matriarch’s words delivered as more an order than a suggestion. Her theory we’d be afflicted with stomach cramps if we partook in exercise immediately after eating. An edict leading to a twenty-minute post tuck period where our kid and me would sit on the settee sulking. Our tightly folded arms and loud sighs displaying our discontentment at proceedings.

Ordinarily adorning replica Leeds United kits, we’d count down the seemingly endless 1,200 seconds while, according to our mother, our stomach would empty itself sufficiently to negate against exercise induced convulsions.

Whether Mrs S’s theory bore any basis in fact or was merely a baseless old wives tale passed down through the generations, I was never inquisitive enough to find out. It wasn’t, though, an edict I was moved to submit to my offspring during their childhood.

Yesterday, I was sad to hear the news one of my Leeds United heroes from the 1970’s era, Norman Hunter, has contracted the COVID-19 virus. A tough uncompromising centre back, he was a member of the warriors in white managed by the late, great Don Revie.

Hunter one of a synergy of internationals representing the city of my roots with skill, determination and (when required) an uncompromising streak. Oft criticised by London based tabloid sporting press in spiteful, prejudiced polemics, this group of footballers adding significantly to the good times section of my life tapestry… A predominantly clover filled era of my existence; a time I fondly refer to as ‘utopia in sock tags’. The latter item stocking accessories adorned by the white uniformed heroes I revered as a kid.

Nicknamed Norman ‘Bites Yer Legs’ Hunter, the former England international (part of the 1966 World Cup winning squad) won two league championships, an FA Cup, League Cup, and two Fairs Cup’s in the decade of his tenure at Leeds United.

Go on, Norman lad!!…… Bite that spiteful pathogens legs!!

To close I just wanted to refute rumours that this COVID-19 lockdown was starting to drive me mad…… Now where’s did I put my Jason Vorhees hockey mask?!!”

Footnote – Norman Hunter sadly passed away from his COVID symptoms shortly after I wrote the above.