The beach is a sure bet with 2.3 year olds. And Cockleburn is a hit especially on a sunny still day. But whatever Global Warming has done to warm the cockles of our hearts in north Northumberland it has done nothing to warm the marine variety nor the water of the North Sea. Fortunately Ms KB was not interested in getting out of her depth so Huttonian is only numb from the knees down. It could have been a lot worse.
By happenchance the Hutton Think Tank (Sport techo section) has just produced its long awaited report on 'Ball Tampering in Berwickshire Cricket' Commissioned by a member of the Manderston Team in the 1930s but put on the back burner because of the pressure of other work. Its findings are ground breaking in that the techies have found that cow pat judiciously applied to a cricket ball will engender impressive reverse swing-down side being that fielders will have great difficulty in catching a slippery ball. These findings apparently cast new light on a (once) famous controversial match in the Merse when the visiting side -(townees to the Twelth Man) were skittled out by a local village side for under 20. The visitors were puzzled by local insistence that the cows remain on the field during the match as long as they kept off the actual pitch and did not move behind the bowlers arm. This was explained to the townsmen as being necessary for the welfare of the ruminants all of whom were in calf. The controversy at the time was actually over allegations that the village side had strategically placed 40 very pregnant cows in the covers thus saving a lot of runs whilst the town team were in and having them removed for 'milking' during their own innings. No one at that time suspected the real use to which Cow effluent was being put.
One of the village side subsequently attracted some notoriety in India in the late 1930s A member of a Scottish touring side he nearly started a riot for 'interfering with a cow' during a match against an Indian selection-he did not realise the sacred status of the beast in the sub-continent and his attempted ball tampering never got off the ground. It was an account of the incident in a back number of the NagaLand Herald which alerted researchers at the Hutton Think Tank, pointing their enquiries in the right direction
Well done HT2
