Starlight had a tumble. It’s all a bit of a blur – to spoil the plot, she’s absolutely fine – but this is what I recall of it. 

I didn’t see the fall occur, but I know what happened in abstracted definition: 

Infant, n.a child during the earliest period of its life, esp. before he or she can walk; baby.

Bed, n. a piece of furniture upon which or within which a person sleeps, rests, or stays when not well.

Barrier, n. anything built or serving to bar passage, as a railing, fence, or the like.

Bounce, v. to spring back from a surface in a lively manner

Acrobat, n. a skilled performer of gymnastic feats, as walking on a tightrope or swinging on a trapeze.

Gravity, n. the force of attraction by which terrestrial bodies tend to fall toward the centre of the earth.

Vomit, v. to eject the contents of the stomach through the mouth; regurgitate; throw up.

Drowsy, adj. dull; sluggish.

(All these from http://dictionary.reference.com) 

After that, everything is staccato. A rush, then a wait. My wife phones me at work. “I can’t find the doctors number!” I phone the doctor, make an appointment. Call my wife back. “Take her down now, NOW!” I have phoned them, they are primed. “No”, she says, “I have phoned an ambulance”. “I’ll cancel the doctor.” “But what if the ambulance can’t get here? Should I cancel the ambulance?” 

The only circumstance in six years in which I need to take control of situations has been during panics and crises. I’m there right now, quite detached, calm. “No”, I say. We might as well get the ambulance. No point in adding another link to the chain. Starlight is 9 months old. There is no way a doctor’s going to look at her and release her without some kind of hospital observation. 

“Phone me when you’re in the ambulance” I say. There is no point in me moving. They are in Kildare. I am in Dublin, where the hospitals also are. Until we know which hospital they are going to, I might as well stay put. My wife phones me back. They are going to Tallaght Hospital, the Children’s A&E. 

I am in Tallaght Hospital, searching for the Children’s A&E. A security guard gives me directions – one must follow the red footprints, down a corridor behind the main A&E area. Hansel and Gretel, lost in the forest, finding their way to safety. 

This is not a political blog, so I shall keep this bit brief: the one minute walk from the main A&E to Children’s A&E was harrowing. Men and women of all ages and nationalities were laid out on trolleys; some trying to sleep; some trying to read; others talking on phones; all trying to retain some level of dignity in this most vulnerable of states. I looked around me, away from them, seeking Charon or Virgil. The children’s A&E, with its bruises, breaks and cries were bad; but the walk down was somehow more deeply affecting. I got in, there they were: Starlight bouncing on her mother’s knee, smiling. There weren’t many other children in, yet.

“She’s making a liar out of us” my wife says. As our children are wont to do. What with being in KDoc and DDoc and ShannonDoc and NOWDoc and the local doc with nauseating regularity. There’s never been anything major wrong. But with the head, you just don’t know. 

Starlight is called in and they check her temperature, blood pressure, pulse, pupils and ears. “Obs” they call it. So now we know something. They say she’ll be checked on the hour, every hour for four hours. We can go where we like in between Obs. So, now we know a little more.

We go for a coffee while we wait for the next round of Obs. “She seems fine anyway” I say. We phone and text around; let everyone know what’s going on. It’s all very drawn out. Three Obs later, the doctor reckons we can probably go. 

But then she comes back and says “No”. Because Starlight is under one, she should stay in for the night, for more Obs. It makes sense: you never know with heads, so you need to keep an eye on her. We are both relieved by the idea that she will be under medical supervision for the night. I will be staying in overnight, so I drive home for a change of clothes and to pick up Sunshine, who is with our neighbour. My wife waits with Starlight. 

I should share with you some advice I was given at this juncture: If you’re ever in this position – overnighting in a children’s ward (and I hope you won’t be, but let’s face it, I think we all consider it something that can happen) – stock up well. They don’t feed you and there are no hot drinks allowed on the ward. If you drink coffee or tea, get yourself a large one and drink it before you settle in. Bring a sandwich, newspaper, book, whatever you might need. Once ensconced, you won’t want to move. Go to the toilet. 

Back in the ward, we have a room to ourselves. Starlight is back to her normal self, bored silly and causing mayhem; but not quite enough for her liking. If we put her in the cot, she grabs the bars and jumps like a kanga hammer, doing her Bessie Smith. So, we take her out and let her play on the immaculately clean floor. Where she immediately scrambles for anything with a hand hold and tries to climb it. Sunshine admonishes her “Starlight, don’t be silly! You’ll fall!” Then, she admonishes us: “Mummy, Daddy, tell Starlight to stop being silly or she’ll fall!” The parents become the parented; such powerlessness. 

We decide it’s time for everyone to go to bed, so my wife and Sunshine head away. I try to settle the ‘unsettlable’. I give her a bottle, coo her, put her in her cot, take her out again and play with her some more, put her in her cot, coo her, give her a bottle… We were so hell bent on ‘doing it right’ with Starlight. We have her pretty much trained to go to sleep on her own. This means, if one of us is there, she thinks its still playtime. Up and down the ward outside, I can hear children crying for various reasons, boredom, pain, bedtime, a wish to be elsewhere. I know what I have to do, and it’s the hardest thing to do: she does not know where she is or what’s going on, but I have to leave her. I step outside the door and listen to her cries, crescendo first, then calm and peter to diminuendo. A strange music, which at home can be strangely satisfying at end: for she sleeps. Here, it breaks my heart. 

I creep back in. Settle in with one of many books, fall asleep. A nurse comes in to do the Obs, which Starlight sleeps right through. The nurse explains they’ll be done every three hours through the night. It is 11 now, so the next is at 2. She advises I try to get some sleep, and I guess she is right. 

I settle onto the camp bed, which folds me upward and spills me out to the floor – as you see in all the good cartoons. After cursing under my breath, I straighten it all out, and settle again. I am reading a book of short stories by Jorge Louis Borges. A writer who mixes fantasy and reality so effectively that you start to wonder what exactly is real, and what is a dream. Here, with my daughter sleeping peacefully behind the bars of a hospital cot, it is apt. 

I wake briefly as the nurse leaves. The 2am Obs are done. Next set at 5. I know Starlight will wake and not sleep after that. And I am right. A bottle and some toys placate her for a while. I dare to leave the room while she is distracted. I notice something about us Dads. The Mums on the ward and the children are all in pyjamas: perhaps to provide some comfort in this strange place. The Dads though, we’ve all slept in our clothes, like cowboys on the frontier. We’ll take what’s coming and we’ll do it with our pants on! 

Later on, a nurse comes in to do the 8am Obs. She tells me a social worker will come in but not to worry, because it’s standard practice. I know this, anyway, and assure her I take no offense from it. My sister works in child protection, and you’d be glad of these interviews too. 

The panic is over, so I return to my usual bumbling self. The social worker comes in, and as she explains this is all hospital policy, I try to reassure her that I’m not worried by her presence. Rather than say what I have just written three lines up, I say “Ah, sure with everything you read in the papers, of course you need to check. They’re always asking – how do these children fall through the cracks?” She looks at me; I smile crookedly. This is me, sans coffee. After a short enough discussion, hopefully enough to dissuade her from the opinion that I am some kind of tabloid waving maniacal bog trotter, she takes her leave. She lets me know that the local public health nurse will get a letter also. This time, I just say “Grand!” (A few days later, the public health nurse tells my wife she could see that coming, just by how active Starlight is. She advises we get used to casualty). 

Soon after, my wife arrives with Sunshine, who proceeds to tell me that Starlight wasn’t well, so she had to stay in the hospital with me. I mutter something about it not being a dream after all, to which, her usual reply (which is shared with the daughter of BFD who writes here too): “Silly Daddy!” 

We go home, getting a bucket of coffee on the way. There is plenty to do at home. Our house is like the Mary Rose, suspended in time from the moment the fall occurred. As we start moving things around and tidying things up, my wife shouts “Starlight!”. I turn to see Starlight attempting to climb the stairs.

This week, undoubtedly fuelled by being trapped indoors by the rain with only the kids for screaming company, I decided I wanted to become a Travel Writer. Not one of those ones that visit Venice and remark that they found the quaintest little coffee shop just behind the third piazza on the right. And I definitely did not want to be one of the ones that wrote ‘Ten rambles through the Salisbury plains’ either.

I wanted to be like Bill Bryson, actually I think I wanted to be Bill Bryson. I wanted to visit places like Buttsville (Pennsylvania) just to see how many arseholes lived there. I had to see if there was a Dentist in Snaggletooth (California). I wanted to know how demanding the ladies were in Iron Knob (South Australia). Would Dissapointment (Kentucky) really be one? And I really, really needed to know what they drank out of on Whisky Dick Mountain (Washington). That was it, I had made up my mind, I was doing it.

My wife, once she had stopped laughing at me however, had other ideas. What about the children, who was going to look after them whilst I was off gallivanting in search of funny sounding places? A good question, as much as it pained me to admit it. Sod it, I would take them with me, although that would rule out visiting Titty Hill (England), as what was the point if I had the kids with me?

They are actually easier to control in the car anyway, they’re locked in place for starters, and if their noise got to be too much I would unleash the secret weapon. Normally I’m only allowed to have the car stereo’s volume at a maximum of 14, and only that loud if it’s a track the wife particularly likes. But I have discovered (when she was at work of course) that if I play Marilyn Manson as loud as 19, the kids kind of go into a trance, all slack jawed and silent. Works every time. She also said we had to be back by tea time, which seriously put paid to my plans of visiting Twatt in (all of) Scotland.

I decided to visit Butts Green (Essex), the kids spend so much time rolling around the grass anyway, and it was only 35 miles from home. I packed a bag full of healthy snacks and drinks, as well as a big bag of sweets to help with the bribery. I had my notebook, two pens and a Valium so I was set and we were ready to go.

We managed to get to the top of the road before the five year old informed me that she was busting for the toilet. My eldest is 16 for God’s sake, you would have thought that I had been in this game long enough to make the kids go to the toilet before we left. Then again, I’ve been carrying a wallet since I was 16 and after we had dealt with all things toilet and re-departed, we had to return again to pick that up.

The only excuse I can offer for having to return a third time is that I have only been carrying a mobile phone for a mere ten years, so was bound to have forgotten it given my track record. I’m sure our neighbour, as she waved us off for the fourth time, was starting to think I was trying to catch her stealing my plants or maybe the lid from our bin, as I had noticed hers hadn’t got one.

We hit traffic within 10 minutes, of course we did, why should I expect that anything in my life was going to be plain sailing? The bag of sweets turned out to be sugar-free so they went out of the window. I ask you, what kind of sick mind invents something like that. I bet it was the same kind of idiot that believes in telling children there is no such thing as Father Christmas, as it just perpetuates the commercialism of the birth of Jesus, or some such lily livered tree hugging codswallop. I was not happy, and obviously nor were the kids, they can smell a phoney a mile off.

I went to put the Marilyn Manson CD on but it was missing from the case, this was dire. I made a frantic phone call to the Wife to see if she had moved it, she had. Apparently me picking her up from church every Sunday, blasting Mr Manson’s version of ‘Personal Jesus’ had been deemed inappropriate. I do have a history of allegedly playing the wrong song at the wrong time though. Whenever the Mother in Law starts to leave our house after another visit, I have a habit of blasting ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on the stereo. Some people just can’t take a joke, and now the joke was on me.

I tried to fob them off with raisins but that only resulted in a food fight, which then obviously ruled out giving them an apple. The last thing I needed was to be hit with one of them whilst driving at 50 mph. That was of course if we ever got to go any faster than the tortoise mph that we were currently doing. Thirty minutes later I gave in, and turned the car around in defeat.

As we pulled up and trudged out of the car, my neighbour asked me what I had forgotten this time. With a sigh I replied “I forgot that you don’t have to go to Michigan to visit Hell.” She gave me a quizzical look, put the lid on her bin, and scurried into her house.

Here is one of my pet hates. Christmas in the summer-time. “He’s going mad!” I hear you say, “Everyone knows Christmas is in December!” 

No, I haven’t gone quite that mad. But Christmas is getting earlier and earlier. Now before our children came along I didn’t really mind it so much. There were certain elements that I could understand needed to be kicked off early in the year, certain other elements which shouldn’t. But since our daughters arrived on the scene and in truth even a little bit when we started having nephews, nieces and God children, it has become a tortuous lead in of five months or more to the festive season. 

So what brings out the Scrooge in me? Some people say the Scrooge factor is never far from the surface. I disagree with them on this. I just feel there is an appropriate timescale for the warm and fuzzy Christmas feeling to kick in. I don’t really fancy the idea of doing my Christmas shopping in the early year sales and having them wrapped and ready for people. There are people I know who have their entire shopping list completed already. Not only that but the presents are wrapped and they are starting on the cards “straight after the holidays”.  I can appreciate that there may be occasions that necessitate the very early purchase of some presents but not everything on your list. 

What brought out the No-Christmas-Till-December feeling in me is the mid year cycle of programming on the Children’s TV channels. I can only assume that because the TV channels purchase the series of cartoons or Children’s TV programmes in advance and then repeat them, they end up with the Christmas episodes hitting the screens in July. Just as the kids start their summer holidays. Maybe it could be classed as unfortunate when the odd programme is like this but the past few weeks has seen almost all the programming on certain kid’s channels having Christmas trees, decorations and Fat Men from the North Pole checking lists!! 

To aggravate the problem the advertisers have cottoned onto this. They seem to increase the advertising punch at this time, knowing that the average child will now see a toy they want and say “I would like that for Christmas” instead of “That looks good” (I know, these are VERY polite children. The average child just “WANTS THAT!” or simply adds it to their list of required items somewhere on page four!). 

Then you read of shops that are starting to sell their Christmas merchandise. They are being very responsible, they say, as they deck the isles with boughs of holly. Please note that the Back to School section is clearly separated from the Christmas Grotto by the Halloween Skeletons and Pumpkin Lanterns! 

 “We have to stock it early because of the Internet, that’s it, the Internet is the problem. People buy stuff on there all the time”, they say. At least I think that’s what they say as the CD drifts a subtle Carol or two in our direction. 

“No one makes you buy the stuff”, says another as they down another glass of profit driven Celebratory Egg Nog. True, no one makes you buy it. But try telling a three year old how many days there are between now and Christmas and you are under a bit of pressure. 

So you get the kids home and lock the door hoping against hope that the questioning of “When are we getting the tree?” will stop soon. Then the postman kindly delivers the catalogue through the post-box. And there, staring up at you is a happy Dad in a happy jumper with reindeers on, standing in front of a Christmas tree with their happy family. Before you can react the toddler has seized the book with both hands and is seeking out mammy and a red pen in order to mark the things we absolutely must have. 

At least when I get into work I will have a few hours of peace and quiet from this midyear Christmas madness. I open my email and read the status reports, see the questions about why you need a day off to take your child to the doctor and delete the ones labelled “Can I just ask a favour!”

Then you open the mail from the Committee. 

“Please advise us as to your attendance at this year’s Christmas Party. Responses and Deposits by Friday please.”

There is no escape. It’s everywhere. 

It’s like a snowball effect as it rolls down a hill. It starts with one Christmas tree in one sitcom shown in July and before you know it parties are being booked, presents are being bought and kids are counting down the days to December 25th. 

It just seems to me that there are many other things kids are missing out by looking forward to the festive season. Like those long summer holidays they will miss once they are in the workforce (unless they become a politician!), the Autumn gathering of conkers and running through the fallen leaves and even Halloween which is  merely another day to mark of the calendar. In my ideal world no one would be allowed to mention the C Word until December 1st. And if you had to in order to get bookings for parties then you should do it in plain lettering with no seasonal pictures. But sadly it is very far from that. 

Incidentally, as of today there are 130 days to go. Let the Panic Begin!!

My phone is either having an epileptic fit, or trying to induce one in me. My Former Attorney (hereby known; without implication of warranty, expressed or implied; as ‘The Captain’) has sent me an email, text and is now trying to phone.  Such is the constant connectedness of smartphone life; one will assume you are dead if you cannot respond with synergy to an electronic missive in a suitably dynamic period of time. 

“Hello!” I say, cheerily enough

“Barbeque!” he says, excited

“I’ll check on a babysitter…” I say, drawling. 

I am excited; but without sleep and the sure knowledge that with no babysitter, there will be no barbeque for Bren: I sound bitter, harsh. 

“No need. We’re going child friendly” 

Fifteen minutes later, like Gregor Samsa, I awake from uneasy dreams. I am on the floor and Andy the Android phone is lying beside me. The Captain has gone. I try to recall our conversation. A child friendly barbeque. Has my social life returned? Like Gregor Samsa I am utterly changed. I have a social life again. I turn back to the flashing, beeping, OCD phone and reply as quickly as my shaking, unbelieving hands will allow. “Yes” I say, “I will, yes. And is there anything we can do?” 

I managed to get lost on the four mile drive from my house to The Captain’s family home. An hour and a half later, having had to sheepishly ask directions through horse country, we arrive. It’s been that long. 

Sunshine and Starlight are asleep, waking cranky; but cheering slow, like the children that found themselves in the Giant’s garden. All that space. Green grass. Trees! I am as excited as they; for I shall see friends I have not seen in too long.  

They are ‘all’ there…. ‘The Captain’, who is the one that organises these get togethers, keeps us in contact and points out the recent political, technological and cultural events that are shaping our lives; his fiancé – ‘the Leinster Girl’ who supports the rugby, always has a laugh on standby and has made the Captain a very happy man indeed. 

‘Chuckles’, who was given the epithet years ago due to a laughing matter, and might as well wear it for this post. He led the way; he and his wife, ‘Coach’, who leads sports teams to victory up and down the country. They had their children first, a few years before we (who were next) would have ours. 

Their children were playing in the garden – ‘the Boy with the Flying Motorbike’ and ‘the China Doll Girl’. Sunshine walks over, slow, apprehensive and joins them. She knows them from numerous previous meetings. I guess the mix of sleep and some disorientation – what with this sunlight and grass and space – she was a little apprehensive in all her moves. There was a tent and a swingball all set up, as well as a bag of dolls and lego that we brought. The kids chase each other round this Giant’s Summer Garden making the most of what they have. Not unlike an ad for a diet yoghurt or Failte Ireland, or the good bit before the bad bit in a road safety announcement! 

Friends, ‘all’ the friends… 

There was ‘FilmMonkey.com’, whose brain was the original architecture for the IMDB (ask him a question about a film; he will tell you the release date, summarise the Empire review, critique the film, discuss spin offs and sequels and cap it off with a summary of the most interesting career from the actors, directors and crew involved). 

‘Teller’ (FilmMonkey.com’s partner), who works in the bank, always has a good story and is very close to giving birth. 

‘iDad-to-Be’, the web designer extraordinaire (if pixels were power, he’d be ruling the world and we’d all be wearing ironic t-shirts featuring bananas or unicorns or b-rate celebrities, with some witty quip picked out in esoteric fonts). 

‘Kindly’, who always has a sunny disposition, made a man out of iDad-to-Be and is also due to have a baby. 

Then, there was ‘Sinatra’, full of style and energy and his lovely wife, ‘the Doll’ – and they had some news: they too were having a baby! 

Then, iDad-to-Be’s sister came over with her boyfriend. Another face I had not seen for a while. They put the hiatus on the whole “We’re having a baby” thing, at least until ‘Telco’ the telecoms engineer and his wife, ‘the Volunteer’ showed up, she due within the week! I haven’t seen them since they’d disappeared to some sunny corner of the globe to teach counting and what not to gun-toting children. 

After all this time, we turned out to be quite the fecund lot. We soon settled into our various and diverse conversations. Luckily for me, for my friends, I was too tired to ‘make an effort’. Lucky, because my social ‘efforts’ always end with me nervous and weird and just saying the wrong things. It was easy conversation; the kind where you can talk for hours and know nothing about what people have been getting up to – save for embarrassments and high jinks – yet look back on fondly remembering what everyone has said. 

They all ask about the kids – but with a different interest now: they’ll be living it soon enough. Sunshine is playing with her friends, Starlight is gurgling away, crying only when a toy is dropped or she sees me (or my wife), and pines (this despite the fact that it is one of us holding her).  I show her off a bit, making her stand up, making her laugh. In the recess of my mind I can hear her say “I’m not your monkey”. But she cannot say it yet. So the show goes on. 

It is great, meeting up with friends like this. The danger with children (as if there weren’t enough), is that your life, while dedicated to them, becomes also curiously sidetracked by them. Everything will happen “soon”, when you can get baby sitters and knock a plan together. But like John Lennon said “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. Although, he also said “I am the walrus”, so who knows what to think? 

It is one of ‘those’ moments. There are no ‘natural’ phases or stages in life, really. It’s when you take a moment to think about what’s going on around you that you set them. As a wise man (Elbert Hubbard) once said “Life is just one damned thing after another”. A wise young man (Ferris Bueller) once said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” This is one of those Ferris Bueller moments. When one uses quotes, it is a sure sign that they don’t really know what they are talking about. And who does in this life? Queue the song “Days” by the Kinks. 

Here we are, on the threshold of some made-up ‘next stage’ of our lives. We were together in school, college, early careers (well, in moving to Dublin at any rate). Then we separated, one by one, as we paired off with the various girls from various dances, calling into each other every once in a while. Some had children, some didn’t. Careers were careered through. Houses and apartments and homes were rented, bought, sold. Here we all are again, firm friends, in this strange place – about to be married, mortgaged, making the most of this time. Throwing TVs out the window of young adulthood; avoiding the slow steps up to middle age. It’s a dad’s life; it feels strange to reflect on it and be all grown up like that.

As I write, it’s a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon and I’m on my way to a cricket match. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t know the difference between a googly and a silly mid off, and the nuances of a Seamer or a Yorker are lost on me, but I had won the tickets and I tend not to look gift horses in the mouth. Thank goodness I’m not going to a test match then. A game that lasts five days without a result is not my idea of fun. I have friends that love the slow pace and nothingness of the game, but whenever I ask them what the appeal is the most common reply is that it’s a great day out and a good beer-up.

Despite the strong allure of sitting in the sun drinking lager all day, the idea that I would have to keep an eye out for a ball that weighs the same as a small child and is as hard as a Duckworth-Lewis calculation seems a step too far on the dangerous side. I mean, if I wanted to combine stupid risks and drinking, I would just go for a beer with my Brother-in-law in the Czech Republic.

Nope, I’m off to the new version of cricket, Twenty20. I know purists hate it, it’s fun, it’s fast and you actually get a result, so you can see their problem with it. Plus all the teams get to dress in bright colours and not those dreary old whites. From the point of view of a person that has to do all the washing at home, I’m anti white anyway. After all, you can’t spray fabreeze on something white when you’ve forgotten to wash it and still pretend it’s clean. With colours I can and often do.

Luckily enough I had won a pair of tickets, so I invited my cricket mad mate JG to come with me. Not only could I pick his brain on cricket law and etiquette, but he was also a booze hound not unlike myself, so he would obviously know the best place to sit. Apparently you need the perfect combination of view and accessibility to the bar. To be quite honest I wasn’t too worried about the view, I was escaping from the kids for the day, so we could have been watching women’s darts for all I cared.

Walking into the ground I was struck by how much quieter the crowd was compared to a football match. I realise that you get a lot less fans at a cricket match, even compared to those small provincial teams like Tottenham, but everything seemed quite jolly and subdued. There was no tension in the air, just a feeling of calculated nonchalance. Missing was the smell of fried onions, instead replaced by a heady mixture of Old Spice and linseed oil.

Beers needed to be procured first, seats second. Those kinds of priorities are ones I am always happy to go along with. As we took our place in a very polite and organised queue, I looked around to take in my surroundings. Above the bar were photos of all the previous Essex Captains, proud, distinguished, moustachioed men. Oh, and Ronnie Irani.

We stepped out of the clubhouse with our pints of Oranjeboom, a lager I thought had disappeared with my milk teeth. I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked out at the pitch, which we were viewing side on. I then had to shield my eyes again as the Middlesex team took to the field to warm up, resplendent in bright pink. I had put my back out the previous day so we decided to stand against the clubhouse wall for a while, the fact that we were standing next to the nearest door to the bar was nothing but mere coincidence.

As I was purchasing my third pint, the teams decided to take to the field and a polite round of applause rippled around the ground, more of a royal wave than a Mexican one. Essex were fielding first, and the fine chap to my right obviously mistook my three pint mellow face for that of a cricket expert. He voiced the opinion that we should open the bowling with someone that was proficient in the art of in-swinging. I voiced the opinion that I had only had a few drinks and it was a bit early to be asking me to throw my keys into the middle of the table. My new friend decided to move elsewhere.

It was towards the end of the innings, and mid pint number six, that I heard the glorious sound of ball hitting willow in the perfect pitch. I knew the ball had been hit for 6 before I even turned around to watch its trajectory. I had been asking the new gentleman standing next to me how much a cricket ball actually weighed, this had become annoyingly important to me as I had had an idea for a blog. The next sound I heard as I struggled to find the balls trajectory, was the noise of something weighing 163 grammes (I googled it in the end) and travelling 60 mph, hitting the brick wall a meter above my head. The ball bounced off the wall and hit the guy 4 rows in front of me in the back of the head.

Despite the shock of a near miss, I still managed to laugh like a loon at the poor bloke, which seemed to be the correct etiquette as everybody else was. I looked up to see the mark where the ball had struck and realised I was standing under the O in ESSEX COUNTY CRICKET. Maybe the opposition were using the circle as target practise, maybe it was a fluke? Either or, I decided to take a couple of steps to the left and stand underneath the Y. I mean, why not?

The innings soon ended and it was half time, or tea. I had stopped caring about the correct terminology by then, and started on the spirits as the pint glasses were becoming too heavy to hold. The Essex innings went by in a bit of a blur. I do remember that the bowler we had been having a pop at had then turned into an excellent batsman, but I may be wrong about that, they all looked the same to me. It all got a bit tense towards the end, I could tell because the crowd had actually started to make a bit of noise. We eventually lost by 11 runs, but apparently it didn’t matter because Surrey or Sussex or Stockbrokers XI, I don’t know which, had also lost so we were through to the next round.

I can’t really remember much about the journey home, although I do know we stopped in a pub before we got on the train. I also know that I was 10 minutes from home at 9pm, yet walked through the door at 11pm? The next morning my head hurt, my only consolation was that it probably didn’t hurt as much as it would have had the ball actually hit it.

In conclusion, the only difference my untrained eye can see between a Twenty20 match and a five day test is that with one you drink all afternoon, and the other you drink for five days. Maybe that’s why they call it a test?