There are drawbacks in living in these necks of the marshes when great events of national importance are unfolding. Hutton lacks cricket enthusiasts. I was once asked by someone in Paxton about forming a local Hutton and Paxton team and had to report that present company excepted we were eleven players short of an, er, XI. So should I rush out into down town Hutton to seek out a kindred spirit to share today's good news from Edgbaston and to look forward to even better news tomorrow I am likely to draw a blank. Even with a packed pub at Paxton it is unlikely that the news that England need only to take two Australian wickets to win a famous victory will raise more than a polite eyebrow before the conversation returns to the Scottish Football season already well and drearily underway. Yet Scotland recently won the ICC cricket tournament, and is now the first amongst Cricket's minnows. An astounding feat and you would think that they would talk of little else at Fogo or Unsettlington. Even the appointment of a Borders Cricket development officer-page 124 in the Berwickshire has not even raised a yawn amongst the local cognoscenti who are utterly uncognoscent about many of the finer points of life and what can be finer than Australia 176 for 8 chasing 282? So I have to leave excited messages on reli's answer machines and scan the Australian press on line in the (vain) search of reports of mass suicides to burn off my excitement-silent triumph in an empty room is not very satisfactory although the wife, bless her, does her best to look pleased glancing over the knitting of indeterminate article no 25 for a grand child, towards channel 4 as yet another Australian batsman takes that long walk back to an early bath and a late tinnie.
Mind you it could all end in tears.
