Cricket

Sometimes life is good, sometimes what ones does, reminds one of something one has never really had any contact with, sometimes what one has is all one needs. today, I had a good time, I was at the Hampstead Cricket Club charity match, this is an annual match, played by professional Cricket players, film stars and other worthies for charitable reasons. The likes of Emma Thompson, Imelda Staunton and Jim Carter were overseeing proceedings, cricket was played, cakes were sold, burgers were grilled and we even had an appearance from the friendly local police, it was as if my idea of England circa 1914 appeared from nowhere like magic, and disappeared after I left.

I know many of the worthies are probably champagne socialists, I know many of them support the revolution that has destroyed England, but I think that in some ways they don’t realise the damage they have done, in many ways they are quite strangely ‘conservative’. After all, someone who hated England, would not be chairman of a middle class cricket club, would not support or sponsor a cricket match, attended almost exclusively by middle class and aristocratic poms, and they would not exult in socialising with a bunch of white middle class Englishmen!

After the match, I sat in the club house drinking some very nice, subsidised beer, it was a joy to see English families, drinking, socialising and just being themselves. After my few drinks, I left and went to the Underground, passing some estate, there I saw some Somalians, one was on the phone, no doubt organising some drug deal, the younger one glared at me, seeing if I could be easy meat for his next robbery, he decided not as I’m a bit tall and broad for some skinny Somalian like him, I glared back and continued on my way.

This is the contrast between one place and another in London, not fifty yards apart.