Almost exactly a week after attending the funeral of a Gateshead Fell cricket club (GFCC) legend***, a club I represented for a decade between 1977-1987, this morning I was further saddened to hear of a former junior & senior team colleague Brian Gray’s passing. *** – Last week’s melancholic events more extensively detailed in my narrative Respecting A Club Icon. Today’s bereavement news coming via text from John Hutchison, another member […]
Yesterday, 2nd January, saw me attending the first (and hopefully my last) funeral of 2020. The journey up to Gateshead taken with buddy and former team mate John Hutchison, paying respects to a recently passed doyen of a cricket club we’d both represented at various junctures of our life odysseys. The wake giving me an opportunity to, for the first time since summer 1987, enter the club house of Gateshead Fell […]
It was an arching run up with trailing bowling arm and slightly unorthodox delivery action I mimicked on numerous occasions during my 1970’s childhood. This then homage to Warwickshire and England cricketer Bob Willis ordinarily undertaken during ‘Test Matches’ my brother Ian and/or friends participated on the tarmac wicket of Dorchester Gardens, or dog dirt strewn cricketing square on Allerdene field, in Gateshead. When the game was played at the […]
A few days back I relayed recollections from my young childhood. While I mulled over a topic for today’s prose my mother (whose house I’m currently residing in suggested I journal further memories from the same era……….. Only funny ones this time. To be honest, what she really said “Was it you who ate that last Kit Kat, Gary?”. However, deeming there wasn’t much mileage in a narrative about Kit Kats […]
Prior to World War II (WWII), World War I (WWI) went by the moniker of the Great War. For a conflict which bore absolutely nothing great about it, a misnomer on the most grotesque scale. Calling it a war is even questionable in some commentators eyes. After all, the obscenity of some warfare strategies employed between 1914-1918 were little short of serving troops up as cannon fodder. Less a war, moreover […]
As a fan of the game who played club cricket for over thirty years it’d be remiss of me not to mention England cricket team’s victory in yesterday’s dramatic ICC World Cup final. A quite remarkable match where the tie was level after both the allotted 50 overs aside and the bonus six deliveries aimed at separating the sides. The host nation being awarded the trophy after cricket mad clergyman […]
Yesterday, I ventured north to the Riverside cricket stadium in County Durham with a buddy of mine; the sporting smorgasbord provided by England and New Zealand’s national teams. Both sides final group games; the victor’s spoils the certainty of a place in the ICC World Cup semi-finals. Boarding the packed train from our thriving West Yorkshire metropolis (Leeds), we took our pre-booked seats to a greeting of a fragrance known […]
