Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It will never happen, of course. Cricket will not be taught in French schools, there may be
the odd after-school club run with the wide-eyed zeal of missionary-like expats in Brittany
and there's nothing wrong with that so much, though I'd suggest local variations like using a
three-day-old baguette as a cricket bat, but it will never catch on. When most English people
these days don't 'get' cricket you can hardly expect the French to pick up the baton to make
up the numbers, even if they did invent the sport. Yes, you read that correctly. The French
invented cricket. I mean they didn't, obviously, but in so far as most French people really
don't understand the English love-hate relationship with France, there are some mischievous
souls here who occasionally like to prod the wasps' nest with a stick and they'll release en-
tirely baseless statements like 'Hastings still belongs to France', 'Yorkshire puddings were an
Escoffier creation' or indeed, 'France invented cricket,' and then just disappear back into the
undergrowth and await the swivel-eyed 'How Dare They?!' over-reaction. Anyone who's ever
seen the reaction to me affecting a perfect forward defence shot with a baguette outside the
boulangerie
of a morning, something that happens with increasing regularity as some kind of
dementia takes hold, will realise that not only did the French not invent the game, if they did
they'd deny it. Besides which, just imagine how long the lunch would be?
I don't go out of my way to be different here, that happens naturally, but I prefer solitude
when I'm listening to the cricket. Imagine lazy, hazy summer's days lolling flamboyantly on
the hammock under an apple tree in the orchard while in the background the radio crackles at-
mospherically as it brings word of another backs-to-thewall effort from the English batsmen.
Sounds idyllic, doesn't it? Sounds like the stuff dreams are made of. Well it is exactly that: a
dream. With three kids, two horses, three dogs, two cats and two chickens, like I ever get the
chance to lie down in the orchard listening to cricket! In previous 'drought' months Natalie
and her fellow gardening friends had all been praying for rain, but now after the brief and
inevitable, 'Well, it's good for the garden,' they weren't happy. Too much rain, apparently -
too heavy, wrong type; I think it's pretty nigh on impossible to please gardeners. They spend
their time trying to harness nature and then give off when nature then throws a few obstacles
in their path, and they stand there under a helpful tree, shaking their heads at the whole thing.
The horses love it, though. Junior sees inclement weather as a sign that the Norse gods
haven't forgotten him and he stands there angrily facing the driving rain while Ultime, like
the wife who's had enough of this nonsense, stands just behind him seemingly tutting. Lo-
gistically, the weather was posing problems for them, however. Being that it was ostensibly
spring, they had more basic needs to attend to and while the horizontal rain no doubt added
to their sexual excitement, the extra ingredient of mud and no little surface water meant that
when Junior, as he sometimes does, took a little run up, they would end up sliding around
the paddock like some particularly filthy equine Torvill and Dean, all legs, snorts and heated
pouts.
