It`ll have to be a quick whip through this week as even by my own standards it`s been a manic few days.
Everyone knows how stressful moving house is but few make more of a drama of it than me and with thousands of books, CDs, records, clothes,guitars, magazines, and general clutter accumulated down the decades I find it completely overwhelming.
Thank heavens I have a wife and two daughters and a son in-law - well he will be after the wedding on Friday, I told you it was a busy week - who actually get on with it all while I take repeated fits of the melancholic vapours over the seeming impossibility of the task.
So it worked out that Saturday morning I left an almost-but-not-quite stripped house to go to my match at Cherry Tree before returning to a new address.
Simple as?
Well it might have been and I was even due to make a visit to my dad`s care home near Corporation Park before the game only for my oil light to come on within a quarter of a mile. I returned `home` - stilll just about -to top up and set off only for a separate warning light to come on along the M65.
This is precisely the sort of thing I`d have text my late pal Ed about. Deprived of his sage counsel I decided to risk chugging along to Cherry Tree and pulled up with about two hours to kill.
Rollo and I had a walk around childhood haunts. I lived from age 11 to my early twenties a few yards from the cricket club so most of the environs are familiar and tinged with warm nostalgia but I am fascinated to see there`s a `community apiary` behind the library backing smack on to one of the two houses we lived in during the 1970s.
This would have come as a surprise even if I had realised before later googling that an apiary was to do with bees and not monkeys but for once my vocabulary let me down and I sauntered back to the club convinced that chimps now roamed where boyhood footy and cricket games took place before even the library was built.
There hasn`t been too much honey at the core for Cherry Tree of late and Saturday proved another disappointment as already-promoted Earby provided a sting in their tail to set up a victory which clinched them the North West Cricket League title.
Some terrific bowling and catching had the visitors in various perilous states - 19 for three, 48 for four, 128 for six, 144 for eight - as Ross Bretherton, Min Bhada and Kurt Smithson were among the wickets but even amid the early carnage overseas amateur Nandus McLean hit out extraordinarily to contribute 80 of the 112 on the board when he was fifth out with seven 6s and six boundaries.
Then with eight down Cherry found the durable Sam Parry (who made a patient 43) in tandem with Jake Hargreaves putting one of those soul-destroying late stands of 78 on, undoing so much good work.
Not many seasons go by without Hargreaves making a couple of fifties and he’s had a hundred in first team cricket so he`s a genuine all-rounder and by the time he`d got to 68 not out his team had added almost 100 in 14 overs to post an imposing 242 for nine from the 43 overs a slightly-delayed start had allowed..
A further shower at tea-time reduced Cherry`s target to 235 off 40 and with further rain looking entirely possible the Duckworth Lewis par which I somehow miraculously and quite accidentally managed to display continuously on the scoreboard seemed of great importance for a good while.
The Bhada brothers then Ross Bretherton managed to keep Cherry Tree ahead for a while but the target leaps up/when you start to lose wickets and in any case the rain never returned so the 235 needed became an increasingly distant destination.
Earby wrapped the hosts up for 183 and deserved their celebrations. I’ll miss playing them next season.
They are a grand set of people from president Steve Hipgrave to their lovely scorer Jodie, the most calming influence I have ever been in the presence of since my old sweet-spirited Springer Spaniel Pippa. I cannot tell you how frazzled a state I was in on arrival at the ground but happily becalmed, even my car made it home to the new home even via a slight diversion when I got lost on a Leyland industrial park.
It’s been a dispiriting second half of the season for Cherry Tree but I hope they can finish the season well, starting on Saturday when they welcome another club I regard as close to my heart, Brinscall.
As you may imagine I havent been sleeping that well with all that’s going on - factor in a couple of us in the family with important clinical/medical appointments in coming days - and after Accrington`s defeat to Nelson last week I admit I’d spent waking moments worrying if they`d hit a wall. That`s me, a Church fan.
At least Sunday`s fixture away to East Lancs meant I could have another go at visiting dad and Mrs Wilky kindly ran me to Blackburn to avoid any more fraught business on the way.
I even had a walk across the park, another regular childhood haunt, to the Meadows.
I`ve written often about how from age nine in 1968 to becoming a Church player in 1981 at 22, `HQ` was the cradle of my youth.
I had a little walk across the square after entering via the scorebox gate which was manned in my spectating days by a lovely old guy called Michael Hobin who I always assumed was about 100. I cash still see him sat in a chair collecting admission money, those were the days eh?
I stood for a second where I’d just about be in the delivery stride and wished myself back to age 24 or 25 when I held a spot in Church seconds and played full senior games here at last.
The Meadows is full of ghosts for me. Where the QEGS swimming pool now stands was an old covered scratching shed where me and my dad stood with a bunch of wits and wags most of whom are gone now. Gordon Horne, Arthur Baron, Norman Booth….as are many of the players we all revered. JIm Kenyon, Brian Ratcliffe, Brian Bowling, Ray Kelly, John Morley, E W Cooper.
We boys collected their autographs. These guys were as much sporting heroes to me as the likes of Shearer, Hendry, Speedie and co down the road became for the next generation of Blackburners.
I even almost expect to see the long-departed old committee men, every one of whom I can still see now, walking round in their club blazers and ties.
And of course the first thing I look out on as I took my place besides Harris Hussain, East Lancs absolute gent of a scorer, is the spot where my Grandad Matt who passed away in 1993 sat at the bowling green end all the years I was lucky enough to know him. In contrast to the Grammar School end barrackers he never had a loud, derogatory or bad word for anyone.
We got off on time and it was a pleasure to meet umpire Liam Cope from Leeds officiating his first Lancashire League game.
The East Lancs innings, inserted by stand-in Accy skipper Jonny Dack, was twice briefly interrupted and truncated to 46 overs.
Ammar Baig and pro/captain Amar Ullah got the home side off to a decent start and when rain coincided with a drinks break after 25 overs they were 66 for one, not threatening a huge score but a competitive total.
As often happens though a stoppage was followed by a couple of wickets and following another short shower the match turned on a miraculous Graeme Sneddon catch to remove Ullah one short of his 50.
It was a proper Stokes-like effort diving one handed to grab a full-blooded cover drive and if he’s taken a better one in the 170-odd in all competitions for the club I wish I`d seen it.
The home amateurs took another 41 from the remaining six and a half overs but Sned`s catch probably saved 20 or 30 more which a well-set pro might have carved out.
Simon Hanson ended with four for 42 and Sri Lanka sub pro - I shall say this only once in full - Tilaksha Malshan Sumanasiri Anthony Baduge - bowled his 15 overs as economically as his previous appearance in the first game between the clubs this season had suggested.
Duckworth Lewis slightly `upped` the target to 167 from the same 46 overs and Sneds went early but I was delighted to see two lovely lads who have been great acquisitions but perhaps struggled in recent week, Dack and Sam Molloy put on an authoritativeand accomplished partnership of 69 on for the second wicket. It didn`t win the match but certainly broke the back of the task.
Both fell in the thirties and while a slight wobble might have been possible, Emile Haratbar inevitably looks just the man to calm it all down and in partnership with Malshan he took the responsibility you dream about a number five or six regularly assuming.
There havent been many half-centuries for Emile this season but he’s averaged 33 with a series of calm not outs to steer his team to victory and this was another such occurrence.
Malshan fell for 42 with the victory just 20 runs off and Hanson flayed most of those to send Accy back into a promotion spot thanks also to Rishton`s remarkable win over Crompton.
The final home game of the season v Middleton on Sunday now assumes massive importance but that`s what being in contention for prizes to the death means - every game is an enormous one.
I hope to be a calmer less troubled soul at my games this week.
The company and camaraderie of cricket folks has certainly helped me through a fraught time. I need to be a better person for my family now.
Last week`s quiz answer - Fred Trueman stood in for Neil Hawke (famously his 300th Test victim) v Church at The Meadows in 1973. Steve Metcalf whose funeral takes place next week was his first of three wickets that day.
This week - In Accrington`s first league meeting with Middleton in 2018 a partnership of 111 between pro (41*) and amateur (69) won Accy the game at Towncroft chasing 136. Who were they and which bowler who also played for Ramsbottom and Rawtenstall took four Middleton wickets?
