Monday
Never say never. My retirement from playing cricket went unnoticed by everyone, including myself. My performances hadn’t tailed off, mainly because they had never previously tailed up – I had been a third change bowler who could fill in with a few overs when everyone else had got fed up with being hit all over the park, and could be relied on to make a useful two runs batting at number nine – but after I had a knee replacement my only worthwhile contributions had been to sledge my own side. Soon even that began to pall and for the last six years I’ve been reduced to a spectator. Until yesterday, when a friend tempted me into a game. It would be no big deal. A 25-over-a-side match on the local common. Nothing serious. I could just stand around and make up the numbers.
I realised something was wrong when I saw the opposition who were all – on average – 30 years younger than us. Nor were they just fit; they even had their own equipment. After 18 overs, they had scored more than 200 runs for just four wickets and the afternoon was already beginning to stretch into eternity. Then the ball came near me and I bumbled towards it only to feel my hamstring tear. To make matters worse I was then mown down by one of my own team who was also trying to get the ball. The upside was that I got to bat with a runner and finished on eight not out – my highest score in 25 years – as we were all out for 50. The bad news is that my wife is barely speaking to me. She regards the hamstring injury that has left me barely able to walk as an act of deliberate sabotage on our holiday that starts next week.
Tuesday
The last day of parliament and one on which the government traditionally tries to bury unwanted pieces of bad news by releasing dozens of ministerial statements that it hopes the lobby hacks will be too dopey to read. It never works, but it’s become a rite of passage and everyone would be very disappointed if the government gave up trying. The top item this year was that Theresa May has decided to demote her newly appointed Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, who had only just taken over from David Davis, and take charge – along with her favourite civil servant, Olly Robbins – of future negotiations with the EU. From now on Raab will have the title of official ‘Bag Carrier in Chief’. Raab had only learned of his reduced circumstances minutes before he was due – with Robbins – to appear before the Brexit select committee and struggled to put a positive spin on this unwanted turn of events. “We are one team, with one chain of command,” he repeated brusquely on several occasions. Robbins gave him a sorrowful glance. Indeed there was one chain of command. And he was at the bottom of it. Raab also let slip that the government was stockpiling a few tins of out of date tuna at Felixstowe and would be releasing daily recipes for badger roadkill in the event of a no deal. Not so long ago, the Brexiters were telling us Britain was heading for years of untold prosperity. Now they are putting us on a war footing.
Wednesday
After 40 years of marriage, Tini Owens, has come to the conclusion that enough is enough. She can’t stand her husband, Hugh, whom she says has constantly belittled and criticised her in public for decades and she wants a divorce. Hugh, though, seems to think that the couple have never got on better. For him a loveless relationship in which they have slept apart for years and in which his wife has had an affair and moved out of the family home three years ago is the benchmark of a successful and happy marriage. Bizarrely, the courts seem to agree with him.
Tini has even taken her case for a divorce to the supreme court where she has been told she has yet to prove her marriage has irretrievably broken down. It makes you wonder what kind of relationships lawyers and judges have with their own partners. The psychodynamics of the Owens marriage have gone way past the abusive. There can only be one reason why a man who has spent a lifetime trying to control his wife’s behaviour could want to remain with someone who now treats him with outright contempt. And that is because the last pleasure remaining to him is to deny his wife the happiness and satisfaction of a legal separation. If that is the law’s definition of a workable marriage, then the law needs to be changed.
Thursday
A new report showing that cats are far more unpleasant than dogs will come as no surprise to anyone who lives in a household where both are present. Our cats are now well into their teens and have never treated us with anything less than indifference. They will pester us for food from time to time and occasionally invite themselves to sit on a lap if they are feeling in need of a stroke, but mostly they are happy to totally ignore us. Though not the dog, who arrived in the house seven years ago, and whom the cats take every opportunity to abuse and bully. They block the door to stop him going out into the back garden because they know he’s too scared to go past them. They guard the stairs to prevent him going near our bedroom for a lie down. And they inch close to him when he is trying to wolf down his food in order to make him feel as anxious as possible and spoil one of his pleasures of the day. They mock his frequent demands for affection and take his willingness to be put on a lead as a display of abject weakness. Occasionally, this all gets a bit much for Herbert Hound and he gives a half-hearted bark in their direction. Which they completely disregard. Talk to the paw.
Friday
Next Tuesday is our son’s graduation ceremony and he has just sent us our instructions for the day. We are to arrive at 8.30am so that we can have breakfast on the beach with him and his friends. We then watch him get his degree before going back to his house for lunch and a party. It feels like the end of an era. Unless, as his sister did, he decides to go on and do a master’s, my wife and I have now reached the point where both our children are no longer in full-time education. They are now adults – their own people, with their own lives ahead of them, free to create their own successes and failures.
Though mostly I feel excited for the possibilities that lie ahead of them, coupled with a sense of achievement that my wife and I have been able to help steer them to this point without too many dramas along the way, I also feel a sense of loss. Of time passing. What has been a whole lifetime to them seems to have flashed by as an act of survival without me having appreciated it as much as I should. Story of my life.
Digested week: Chequers checkmated
