Middlesex v Warwickshire at Lord’s – match report

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Ged writes:

As the end of the season approached, it dawned on me that the pile of reading I had hoped to take with me to Lord’s and read on sunny days was mostly still waiting to be read. Not that there had been a shortage of sunshine in the summer of 2014 – indeed it was one of the best that I can remember, but there had been a shortage of midweek first-class cricket at Lord’s during that quieter (work-wise) part of the summer. Indeed Middlesex played no first class cricket at all, anywhere, between 22 July and 31 August.

Rant over.

I had arranged to take Charley The Gent Malloy to see the Durham game the following week, so needed to shop for some picnic food and did have space at least to take an afternoon at Lord’s at the end of the Warwickshire game. I grabbed a book, which I felt I really needed to read for work, then wandered over to HQ, arriving around half-two. I held little hope of making too much headway into the book before stumps in those circumstances, but I needn’t have worried.

I once wrote a book review for Strategy magazine, in which I elucidated a scale I named the FDA (faintly decent article) scale. My theory is that most business and management books inhabit a sort of limbo or purgatory, in which material worthy of perhaps two or three faintly decent articles has been relentlessly padded out into a whole book. Sadly (or perhaps happily in these circumstances), the book I had taken with me to Lord’s was worth a mere two-and-a-half on the FDA scale. Thus, I was able to finish reading it (or rather discern all that was useful to me from it) and close the book just before the stumps were pulled out of the ground.

Sated (book-wise if not cricket-wise) I wandered home via the Porchester Waitrose, in order to buy the picnic food for next week. I very rarely visit any supermarket, let alone one that close to Lord’s. I vaguely hoped that I might see Tim Murtagh weighing up the relative merits of Golden Grahams and Special K in there. Or possibly even Sam Robson asking an assistant to direct him to the shelf where he might find quinoa with bulgar wheat. But no cricketers were to be seen in that supermarket. Shameful. So I quickly bought the small number of items I needed for next week’s picnic and went home.

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14 comments

  1. Excellent report, Ged, especially for raising the oft-neglected subject of Golden Grahams. It’s an odd name for sure, and I was curious as to why they are so called. It turns out that it is because they are golden in colour. Wikipedia has a whole page on them, according to which Golden Grahams have been advertised with the following taglines:

    Try those Golden Grahams and have a golden day.
    You’re not just good, you’re golden.
    Crammed with graham.
    How do they cram in all that graham?
    Not eating these would be a graham-atical error!
    With ridges that rock!
    Golden Grahams: So happy together.
    It’s gonna be a Golden Grahams day.
    Golden Grahams: Go get your own.
    Yum yum, they’re Grrrahams, Golden Grahams.
    A bowl of Graham to help you through the day
    Sing about Golden Grahams and win a prize

    Everyone will have their own favourite from that list, of course.

    Strangely, the England squad is now a Graham / Graeme free zone, for the first time in quite a while. I feel that we’ve missed an opportunity.

    1. Grahamites, as Graham’s followers were called, accepted the teaching of their mentor with regard to all aspects of lifestyle. As such, they practiced abstinence from alcohol, frequent bathing, daily brushing of teeth, vegetarianism, and a generally sparse lifestyle. Graham also was an advocate of sexual abstinence, especially from masturbation, which he regarded as an evil that inevitably led to insanity. He felt that all excitement was unhealthful, and spices were among the prohibited ingredients in his diet. As a result his dietary recommendations were inevitably bland, which led to the Grahamites consuming large quantities of graham crackers, Graham’s own invention. White bread was strongly condemned by Graham and his followers, however, as being essentially devoid of nutrition, a claim echoed by nutritionists ever since.

      Graham believed that adhering to the diet would prevent people from having impure thoughts and in turn would stop masturbation (thought by Graham to be a catalyst for blindness) among other things.

      Some Grahamites lost faith when their mentor died at the age of fifty-seven.

  2. Sam Robson might have also asked you directions to his off stump? Only kidding!

    All the mention of stumps being drawn veered dangerously close to actual cricketing action there, otherwise a fine report.

    1. You know me, Mike – proper rebel – always sailing close to the wind on the “mentioning cricket” front.

  3. Wouldn’t your picnic food be rather tired having been purchased a week in advance?

    1. You’ll have to wait until the report of the Durham match comes out to hear chapter and verse on the potentially tired food front, alphamonkey. Don’t jump the gun, now.

      But all readers can rest assured that I always buy fresh bread from the bakers on the morning of a match and I never eat food past its “best before” date, let alone “use by” date.

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