I sit here writing this week’s blog on the balcony of the Chester Broughton Hall Cricket Club pavilion, with my heavy, tired eyes getting closer to shutting by the hour as they have become bored to death.
I have been watching the rain fall out of the grey sky for a day and a half now, and the once humorous sight of the ground staff running around putting the covers on and off the pitch like a disorganised pantomime production team has now turned agonising.
I am up here in Chester, south of Liverpool, for what was meant to be a hard hitting T20 Finals Day for the NCCA (National Counties Cricket Association) for who I commentate and present for, but the weather gods had a different idea.
After playing in my own cricket match during Saturday – we lost – I left Southampton at 7:30pm and put my foot to the floor for four hours to reach the hotel located ‘up North’ just before midnight.
It was an easy drive, I enjoy long drives, the pink sunset was keeping my eyes engaged for most until it became dark and then I turned to loud music – my song of the week is “So American – by Olivia Rodrigo”.
I thought the further north you go, the cheaper it’s meant to be, but boy I was wrong, and after a couple severely overpriced beers later (£14 for two pints, do the maths), I went to bed… “tarra”.
The buffet breakfast area on Sunday morning could’ve been mistaken for Met Office’s HQ with the amount of rain radars to hand and debates of precipitation percentages, with my opinion being “yeah, it looks pretty wet”.
Pretty wet it was, delayed start after delayed start, pitch inspection after pitch inspection, but finally we got started with the first semi-final.
My role was to have mic in hand, speaking to the captains after the toss, doing pitch reports and then commentating on the game with our ever-growing production set up, which is honestly better than most major counties.
All was going well, and the game was going to be a tight finish, that was until the umpires ushered the players off the field with just 13 balls remaining once the rain started to fall hard, to be fair the makeshift Met Office weathermen from earlier were pretty accurate with their predictions.
Despite its frustration,I did get to do some work and it did also allow me to indulge in the sports that were being televised around the world that I would’ve been missing… Saints vs Leeds Play Off-Final, F1 Monaco Grand Prix, Indy 500, Moto GP Grand Prix, it’s safe to say I was well occupied.
Earlier this week I thought I broke my toe, how? By cleaning my uni house.
How can cleaning a house be so dangerous? By dropping a TV stand on your exposed big toe.
It seems almost everyone has got or at least seen these TV stands, it is made from black glass, quite heavy, very common, stylish though.
Well I was lifting ours out from the living area, I picked it up and started carrying it outside, with an obstructed vision I was trying to keep an eye on the ledge that connects the inside to the outside to make sure i didn’t trip.
During that moment, I had tilted TV stand forward, from which I soon realised with immediate pain that the middle draw in fact can slide out, and did so, from a height, landing directly on my big toe.
You know that sort of pain where it makes you feel instantly sick? And when you feel that you have to run off the pain? Yeah, that was me. Kind of strange how my reaction was to run despite the pain coming from that area.
A bag of frozen corn – we had no peas in the freezer – helped soothe the pain, I thought about getting it x-rayed buy there is not a lot you can do for a broken toe… toe-well.
I had to say a few goodbyes this week; my parents have abandoned me by jetting off to Canada for a month, Freddie has ditched me to go home for a while, and my course mate Chloe is moving to London for an internship, I am really living that single bachelor life now.
Despite this, I have decided to spend more time here in Southampton, as I feel there are more work experience opportunities here, and it is quite nice living in a near empty uni house, I prefer peace and quiet.
My aim for the summer is to build up industry experience, get even fitter and healthier, keep an open mind, and most importantly, have a laugh !
Read my previous blog here…
