It was my weekend off from cricket duties. Planned for months.
Lesley and I celebrating 23 years happily married with a trip to the West Country.
I’d booked her a photo shoot session with fancy be-frocked models at an unfathomably posh public school near Tetbury (fees 57,000 pa) as a present but also allowing me and Rollo a few hours to maybe rock up at a local game, weather permitting.
The best laid plans.
Five minutes from home before we’d even reached the M6 junction on the 65, my world fell apart.
There are only a few things more important to me than cricket. Family, love and friendship. Love eluded me for years at times so friendship becomes paramount.
The voice on the other end of the phone was the sister in law of my great pal Edward Grant, a man with a famous name but far better known in the borough of Hyndburn than the singer.
Eddie had been found dead at home aged 63.
I’d spent the previous Sunday afternoon peering out of the scorers’ room at Thorneyholme Road to see if he was among the Church and Ossy contingent. No sign.
Perhaps he was off on a motorcycle jaunt or at a festival or something.
Although we shared many interests he had many strings to his bow which didn’t overlap onto my slice of the Venn diagram. I didn’t really know his partner Our shared passions were football, music, travel, reading, in times past going out and socialising but most of all cricket.
There’s a picture of Eddie aged about 11, with the impish grin we were still so used to seeing and loving up to last week, as Church pro Ken Arthur holds the Worsley Cup aloft. He looks so happy.
He had some wait for another trophy, but T20 triumphs came along in 2014 and 2016.
He didn’t come into my orbit until about eight years after that.
There’d been a bit of drunken high jinks in Fleetwood CC’s clubhouse on a rainy afternoon a friendly was due to take place. I think a few items from the players’ buffet had been scoffed early by beery visiting fans.
Eddie’s name was mentioned along with others with a measure of opprobrium at a selection meeting I attended.
I had to meet this guy! He didn’t disappoint.
By the end of the season we were firm friends and have been for 40-odd years since.
Rovers home and away, Church and Lancashire ditto, gigs, wild nights out as daft lads who probably ought to have known better.
Growing up, learning a bit about life and how to live it.
A couple of auto-didacts with an interest in everything around us. Pound store polymaths.
I remember one month we saw Chubby Brown, Hawkwind, Portishead and Frank Sidebottom all at King Georges in Blackburn. Nothing was above or beneath us.
The memories flashed by through my tears as quickly and one-after-the-other as motorway milemarkers.
Sitting on a bench at Rochdale in 2019 a few of us discussed everything over a few hours from Shane Wayne’s nocturnal proclivities in Hyndburn, who exactly were the Ton-Ton Macoute and the Druze Militia, the Cricket World Cup final which was going on that day, and Argentinian football fan culture. My friend Mike Floyd of the Rochdale Ob on the next bench said: ”Blimey, you don’t get this conversation when anyone else comes.”
A choir of us well refreshed singing Smiths lyrics in the bar at Rammy during that Worsley cup tie against King Viv’s Rishton which went across about four Sundays.
A rainy day at Grace Road in ‘86 when we sat in some seats at the corporate tables inside the pavilion to get dry and they served us three courses thinking we were sponsors.
The two of us, disillusioned with Rovers, the only two Church fans at Milnrow one August afternoon as a few of the regulars opted for an early-season game with Millwall at Ewood.
His inevitable leading of a ‘Church and Ossy’ chant on occasion of a victory.
His inimitable ability to come up with a damning yet hilarious new way to describe a defeat.
That feeling you get when you take a bud to his first Springsteen gig and see the jaw drop open. We went again the night after.
But almost best of all just quiet nights during lonely years I spent living on my own down Church. Ed would come round on a Monday and take me for a couple of low-key pints down Accy knowing I could do with company.
Talking, laughing, neither judging the other for our multitudinous foibles.
That meant so much to me.
He was a diamond but everyone in the towns of East Lancashire already knows that. If you weren’t a particular mate he’s probably fixed your car or been in a pub or club you were in, larger than life making the whole place rock with laughter.
We needed another 20 years of having you around, mate, I’m going to miss you so much. I didn’t think I’d ever have my heart broke again but I’ve cried more this week than I have in a long time. I’ve read every text I can drag up which he sent me, unable to comprehend yet that there won’t be any more.
Your brother Pete and his wife are among my besties. I don’t know Fran the youngest too well but you’re all hewn from the same granite your late dad knew so well. Your poor mum, I’m thinking of her too.
I always imagined that one day there’d be a text from my wife or someone saying ‘Eddie Grant has died’ and I’d breathe a sigh of relief if it was the other one.
I used to take a pic every year of a bunch of us stood on our favourite railings at Church but after a few of the soldiers fell to old age, the boys banned me from doing it anymore. Bad karma. Nobody expected probably the youngest of us to go next Farewell my friend. Thick as thieves, it turned out just for a while.
Almost inevitable that Church went down to defeat to Bacup on a rain-affected Sunday. I can just hear him invoking some outrageous metaphor to curse their reverse.
He’d have been magnanimously diplomatic too at me enthusing about another great Accrington win while I was in the South.
I spent Sunday in relentless sunshine recreating a day out I had in 1977 visiting Weston-Super-Mare (this time visiting the ground there which staged Somerset Sunday League games in 1969 and 1970), Cheddar Gorge and Wells.
All the while watching Play-cricket Live updates hoping the weather up north wouldn’t rule out a game.
Although I wasn’t there it followed a formula that’s becoming well-established - bowl the oppo (Colne) out with patience, persistence, clever bowling changes and fine fielding and catching, knock them off no problem. Good to see Oliver Lowe and last-minute call up Nathaniel Young back and contributing.
I can’t wait to be back in the saddle at home to Crompton on Sunday.
While my Cherry Tree boys went down to another rain-affected defeat on Saturday to Atherton I was guest-scoring for Tetbury Seconds!
I went to look at Tetbury and Charfield, two grounds Church Under-25s (a loose and somewhat inaccurate moniker back then) played on during a riotous tour in 1983.
The Tetbury folks said they could do with a scorer for their twos game with Swindon United Churches (now that is a good name to rank with long-defunct Church Total Abstinence CC) so with Lesley occupied a mile or two up the road I obliged.
It was a lovely relaxed afternoon until the gazebo I was stationed under blew away on the breeze and their iPad ran out of juice at one point necessitating the skipper to come off the field and locate a power pack. It made for a second tough gig in three days as I didn’t have a great day at all scoring a County Women’s Under-18 game at Clifton CC, Manchester last Thursday after a harrowing night at hospital with my dad who’s very poorly. At least I had the incomparable and incredibly patient Mitch Cregan as co-scorer to bail me out. Thanks, mate.
Tetbury Opener Ciaran Taylor told me he had played for Stand CC alongside Jim Kenyon back in the day. Wherever you go in cricket there’s a Lancashire League connection.
They were lovely people there just a mile or two from where the King has a house - he’d just moved in with Lady Di when I was there 43 years ago and it was great to see the First XI skipper’s young son Alfie Meacham claim three wickets - one a stunning caught and bowled - on his debut at that level.
On the way home on Monday I called in at equally gorgeously-situated Tewkesbury CC in he shadow of the magnificent abbey.
Groundsman, former player and general club stalwart Dave Allcoats told me it was a devil of a job keeping the surface decent so parched - like all the other grounds I visited - through lack of rain for weeks, save for a couple of hours while we all slept in Sunday’s early hours.
He had a clean-up on his hands, too, the club having staged events and tribute bands for ‘Tewkesbury Live’ at weekend.
“We took 16 grand, mind, over the weekend,’ said Dave, showing me the Red and White roses on the club’s emblem linked to a battle, bafflingly, between followers of houses of York and Lancaster which is restated by thousands each year.
‘I retired 20 years ago and I’m here every morning pottering around ,’ he said, ‘there’s plenty to do but where else would you rather be? I’ll have a pint at lunchtime.’
Amen to that.
And amen to cherishing and valuing every minute spent with your pals. Make that call or text, give them a knock.
You never know when it’ll be your last chance.
Sleep easy, Eddie mate. I don’t really believe in afterlives or reunions beyond this world.
We’ll keep your memory alive in this one, starting at Baxenden with Cherry Tree tomorrow, another place you were a legend. I’ll be thinking of you as I pass The Alma and for as long as I have till the day with my name on it.
Last week’s quiz - Cec Pepper was the one-off Accrington sub pro This week - In tribute to my friend Eddie one of his favourite cricketing days in May 1986 saw Church bowl Haslingden out for 25 before the home side were ordered into ‘naughty boy nets’ in front of the bar to the delight of the carousing Church ‘Barmy Army’
Each team that day had one player who played for Accrington during their career. Can you name both?
