Barn Owls, Cottaging and New Wheels

Fucking Owls.

The Preston Faithful for the last two weekends have been rolling up their sleeves and pulling down their trousers to make the pavilion ship-shape, clean and tidy for the impending season that will kick off in the next two weeks.

Their is a subtle scent of Bluebells on the wind, the cuckoos are rutting somewhere in Doggers Wood behind the ground and the gang-mowers don't work. Must be April.

Every year we paint, burn, scrub, push, pull, bugger and bend in order that our immaculate ground looks like a new pin; and we have but we have an owl issue. It seems that some sort of Owl is using our guttering as a roof level, mid air, feathery bog. By the looks of things whatever he's eating isn't agreeing with him and it looks like a agricultural shit truck has exploded up the side of the pavilion.

We actually had a our first two games of the season this weekend, a couple of friendlies.

First cricket net of the year. You betcha. Done.

Running in to bowl was like running through chocolate and now every time in sneeze it's like a hand grenade going off in my rib-cage. It was good to get it out of the way though. It can feel a bit sad knowing that when you do something, you will never be as good as you once were at it. It's a bit annoying but there you go. We all get bald, fat, slow and shit.

The 2012 season nears. Like most cricket clubs countrywide, Preston is starting to yawn, stretch and fart itself awake from its winter hibernation. Snow still covers the ground but the faint taint of ionised air on the wind, the sound of the wood-pigeon's in the woods and the fact that I have already bowled a cricket ball into the roof of a sports hall means that the season and indeed spring will soon be here. April is the magical month, when we don the whites again, try and hit a slow moving ball with a piece of wood and relish in the spring and summer ales at the Red Lion.

Having recently been on the receiving end of a particularly aggressive, snatch and grab Kronenbourg session in Bedfordshire, it would be better to ease off and settle for some milder beers. After all, I am in training. Driving in the front seat of someone's (don't know who's) car, it was like being at the steering wheel of the Enterprise and Starship Command had advertised that there was free sex at HQ for one night only. To be frank, Mr Zulu could well have been driving for all I knew. The streaks of light whizzing past and the lurching cornering made me hang on to lunch for dear life.

A new dawn possibly at Preston. We have had to manage a lot through the winter months and some changing of the guard at the Club. But we will still be there. We must look to encourage the younger members to get more involved and I am pleased that some are beginning too. This is essential or we will indeed whither on the vine.

The younger lads want to make it more professional which makes sense to be fair. Get to the ground early, look the nuts and doing warm-ups. Before, the idea of a warm-up was forgetting your lighter and having to walk back to the cricket bag to get it. You would have to hurdle over the other bags of course and long jump over the puddles of pee that collect in every cricket changing room corner. Warm up done, right?

Soon the outdoor nets will start. Every 5th ball you get will smash all three out of the ground while the rest of the 3 and a half minutes you get in bat will be picking the dog-digested cricket balls out from the stingers or off the top of the nets themselves. Soon, the fielding practices, the high-catches, the re-opening of hairline fractures, the falling over, etc.

So, ever efficient to haven't updated my Blog here for over a year.
Has anything happened over the course of the year.  Yes, loads.
Can I remember any of it?  Nah.
The cricket season 2011 saw an amazing 3 out our 4 sides at Preston gain promotion which is a huge success and testament to the hard work the Captains and the Vice's contribute. We now have sides fielded in Div 2, 5, 10 and 13.
The club went through some ups and downs last year and indeed in the subsequent winter months leading up to Christmas 2011 and the New Year.

We started afresh in 2012, with renewed spirits and new optimism.  Then it rained.
It rained so much that the people of North Hertfordshire started growing gills.  Gills, on top of the gill's that they already have along with their one eyebrow and webbed feet.  I didn't mean that.  I'm very proud of where I live and indeed grew up in.

The season has jumped around, jittered, pulled some punches, and kicked us squarely in the knackers as well.  The Firsts continue to do OK, the Seconds have found the going firm, the Thirds, even firmer and the Fourths have really been the shining light for the Club and have won 99% of their played games so far, which is of course brilliant.

Cricket tour to Bristol, always the highlight of the year, was executed with grace and some good cricket played as well as STD's caught.  Wonderful grounds such as Hinton Charterhouse, Painswick and Malmesbury entertained us around the Bristol area.  Beers were drunk, trousers were set on fire, and the usual shenanigans were encouraged. No one lost their pubic mound, snorted vodka and violated any animals which was slightly disappointing - although one of the younger lads needed a grazing licence to take one such trophy home after she was almost unconscious through drinking about 20 blue WKD's.  Great catch.

The rest of the season looks like it will bring some challenges - availability being the main opponent to beat.  Summer Holidays and younger guys wanting to ride around on shitty scooters to watch girls in local parks being the main two obstacles to overcome, I think.  We have always set a standard though and we try very hard to adhere to that.

So, I will try and update more regularly and keep on documenting Preston CC for reasons of prosperity, sodomy, evidence and the lash.

Will's Nuptials and Big Bird's Bhuna

Easter's come and gone and we now hurtle towards Prince Williams impending nuptials - which is what I suppose Kate will be doing after the free bar closes on the wedding night.

"OFF WITH HIS HEAD"

The Royal Wedding is on Friday and we have a loaded calendar of cricket for the weekend. There's nothing better than drinking all day to then play the first league game of the season with a headache that feels like you've just nailed a picture to your eye and a throat as dry as a nun's nasty.

The club's looking OK with some good performances in the pre-season friendlies. With last years heart attacks, cricket tour, hernia operations, swollen testicles, loss of lighters, pubic shaves that went wrong and everything else hugely drastic, I hope the new season brings success. We must look to bring in the younger blood of the club, all of whom have real spark and it would be good to turn that effervescence on, on the pitch. Early signs are full of promise.

Preston CC veteran, the Big Bird turns 50 this weekend. The man that has spent most of his adult life exploring the effects of shit beer and prawn Bhuna has on the human digestive tract, has made the big 5/0. I'm told a barrel has been purchased which means that most of us will be going home in a box that evening, which will be good. Big B, a legend in his own lunchtime. The man who wore only a plastic lobster for a night out in Deal, the man who classifies Luther Vandross as a "Like" on Facebook, the man who hospitalised Clarkie by simply running into him, the man that bats with a 4 pound cricket bat and the man who has got Preston CC 3rd Eleven promoted for the third season turns 50. Well Done Bird.

The season will soon be in full-swing. We will soon be in the bosoms of our Preston CC cricketing brethren on the veranda of the Red Lion, supping on some glorious summerish ales as the heat of the day gently lows in the late evening. The sweat of day's hard cricketing yakka disappearing as quickly as the beer. What news of the second's, the third's, and the fourth eleven? With the bats swooping with insect chasing abandon and the midges start to infuriate, we will talk crap about season's gone by; of glorious innings knocked, of wonderful strokes made, of unplayable balls delivered, of amazing catches snaffled, of willies painted blue, of minibuses reversed into other minibuses and other heady tales of great season's gone by - wonderful stuff - and whilst all this goes on and the merry chit-chat of a fantastic cricket club at rest in the company of great people, the pub's pea-hen will be shitting on Bomber's bonnet.

Marvellous.

The thwack of leather on testicles..

I don't know what tempted Casey to take all his clothes off and simulate having intercourse with the very field that we we're all standing in but, as you know, people do the strangest things having drunk a few pints of Abbott very quickly.

The sight from the passengers windows of the landing Easyjet's must have been a very strange sight. The sight of six men walking across a field of young rape, one of which was stark naked, waving his johnson up and down like a dead man's handle and running around as if his hair was on fire. Meanwhile his clothes were being stolen by the other guys and being sprayed over every hedge within a mile radius. It must have been a particularly disturbing scene indeed, even to the Doggers and rarer dog-walkers that frequent the local countryside.

Anyway, we'd had a few. Preston Cricket Club amuses itself in a variety of ways when there's no cricket.

Our nets have started, or rather nearly finished, in time for the onset of the 2011 season which starts in a few weeks time.

Bowlers have bowled, batsman and batted and all seem to remember what to do-ish. I attended myself a few weeks ago to test out my recent hernia operation and to make sure that my entrails didn't explode onto the popping crease if I had been too premature.

When I was asked to don the pads, I was bowled first ball - so all good there.

The only worse batting performance was Tommo who was hit in the testicles on a fairly regularly basis it seemed - like a young Mark Ealham, and was out more often than not - either bowled or caught behind trying to dab yorkers between point and gully. Typically, and rather amusingly a quiet comment from him that he wasn't wearing a protective box to a close mate, then saw the same close mate running up to the bowlers end and broadcasting this to everyone and consequently every bowler tried there level best to bowl their deliveries as fast and as straight into his nuts as they could. Small 14 years old off spinners all of a sudden come hurtling in like Malinga the Slinger, aiming their new, schoolboy red cherries right at his exposed and very probably bleeding gonads. It was like watching a seal clubbing session.

That's a cricket club, right there.

In the next few weeks we will start to bring the ground to life.

We'll need to throw fag ends all over the patio, placing half used and urine filled bottles of shower gel in the showers, and putting those weird, dangley legged spiders you only seem to get in cricket pavilions in the corners of the changing rooms. We'll need to break everything of any use in the kitchenette and leave only some spectacles in the medical box. We'll need to cut the grass and roll the wicket on our diesel powered roller that will invariably be filled with petrol and will likely explode at the point of throttle. We will also have to erect the outdoor nets just so the local kids can have a goal to play football in. We'll also have to throw a jockstrap on the roof, lose all the spare balls, write TWAT on the team photos and complete other pre-season tasks that we have had to do since the dawn of cricket seasons so that we are ready to play.

We will also have to find a tea-lady or two; another season of banana and Marmite sandwiches, pasta with margerine sauce and satsumas, I don't think will be stomached as a substantial tea any longer. Never ask players to cook.

But, do it we must for the season starts on April 17th 2011.

Bugger.

Bugger

I can't type any more.

2 years ago I could - well, sort of. My fat sausage like fingers would fly round the keyboard like one of those "C" list celebrities does around the ice-rink on a Sunday night.

But now, look at me. I'm poking the keyboard like I'm trying to find out if a cat is alive or actually dead. 3 hours that bit took.

Anyhoo

2 years ago I took part in an event that made some impact on some of the world for a while. It was a great adventure without any form of pre-notion of whether it would succeed, in a land far, far away to raise cash for some great causes.

The team did it and I did it and everyone made it home safe and sound. Some of us were pleased to come out of it in one piece but for others it significantly changed the course of their lives, careers, personal hygiene and outlook.

Job done and mission accomplished. We raised about £150,000 for the Lord's Taverners and the Himalaya Trust UK.

Yesterday - literally two years later, I have just been asked to present the expedition to friends' son's school. ( I doubt my use of apostrophe's is right there. ... Or there. )

Since then, several people have suggested I carry on writing the blog - Induckers on Everest - as it served to cause some amusement in their lives - reading about me in various states of distress, undress and er, stress and, to be honest, I quite enjoyed writing it. So here I am, two years later and having another lash at it.

Not sure what I'm going to write about as yet, mind you and I'm not climbing up another mountain in the near future so I think I'm going to look to my own life, world, etc for inspiration. I play a lot of village cricket and live in a wonderfully rural community which usually presents moments of sheer amusement so I think I will use my Blog as a type of diary of notes and commentaries of who I am and where I live.

You still awake?

Final Analysis

Apologies for my Blog silence to my reader.

It's been a few weeks since the wheels touched down at Gatwick; and then 2 hours later at Heathrow and since a line was drawn under The Everest Test 2009; or has it? As far as the Nepal bit goes - Mission Accomplished but in some respects and for many people on the trip this is the beginning of some brilliant things.

I am not going to regurgitate the trip, step by step or potato by potato, as there is too much to write for now, but I can honestly say that I have come out of it firstly alive but secondly a more rounded, fat, ginger-haired person. The event didn't just last 3 weeks; it lasted 1 year - a little over in fact. The first meeting conveniently held in Fulham, the start of my fitness runs, the stopping every 10 yards to wretch and the promise to cut back on everything bad. The freezing fog, the skintight spandex Ron Hill jogging strides clutching my nads like Monty Panesar clutches an Ashes-winning skier. The 5km "fun-runs" and being beaten by a 4ft high old lady with home made running mittens and my desire to push her under a bus. The upset at the not losing weight. The Fantasy Farm Fcuked Up Challenge at Kimbo's house, the porridge and the inflatable mattresses in the village hall, experiencing the Joe Williams Symphony for the first time. The silent, breathless cricket in Oxford, the ball copt in the knackers by Dave Christie in Oxford, the worst film footage ever recorded in Oxford, the uphill shuttle running in Oxford. The Bath Half, nipple chaffage, Hillsy running like a bandy, arse-buggered trawlerman. The goodbye's to my little girls in the morning and the realisation that I had bought completely the wrong rucksack in the afternoon of departure day. The departure and the realisation finally that I was flying to Nepal to trek to Mt Everest and break a world record whilst actually landing in Nepal. So many great and brilliant memories.

The trek was tough; I mean seriously tough. Not, like, doing a run and thinking that was tough or like stubbing a toe and thinking that hurt. This was bull-buggeringly, serious risk of major illness, debilitatingly tough. Experienced medical experts telling us that we are doing a very dangerous thing, tough. But worth it.

The Everest region belittles you. You think you've seen landscapes or been up big mountains skiing or whatever. It's indescribable how big this land is and it is hardly surprising that the the local people have such reverence for the mountains alone. It's a place that makes you feel very, very small and it's not only because it is very, very big. There's more to it than that. This coming from me too; Mr. Idontbelieveinthsistuff. They say that there are 3 natural phenomenons in the wold that don't disappoint. Mark Waters' natural ability to gain weight, The Grand Canyon and the Khumbu region of Nepal. Having not been to the Grand Canyon, I can definitely vouch for the other two.

The task itself of actually playing the cricket (joint top scorer for Tenzing by the way) actually came second, slightly for me anyway, and the bigger picture of what was happening here needed to be also have a look in. The achievement of playing the cricket medically and physically at such an extreme altitude was a hard challenge but hugely enjoyable but it was achieved and achieved safely. Personally however, I had also managed to participate in this incredible journey with 50 or so extraordinary people with the same values, outlook and personal missions as I have. Great friendships I hope were forged and an example was set for anyone wishing to get something quite extraordinary achieved. I am glad the world, or at least some of it, watched. We should feel very proud of what went on in April but also what every one of us achieved in the lead up to Nepal. The lions share of the buff-rub obvioulsy needs to go to Kirt, Wes, Cuzza and everyone else who gave so much to get it off the ground but we all did what we had to do to make it happen. I'm seriously proud of being part of this and my personal objectives were pretty much all achieved. Yeah, we didn't bukakke Team Hillary on the cricket pitch like we had planned but in every other direction, for me, the trip itself was the out-and-out winner.

I can feel a Lionel Ritchie song coming on..........

Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm am trying to say but those that haven't heard - Team Hillary screwed Team Tenzing with their pink trousers still on. Team Hillary 151 all out - D.Kirtley 50 odd, Glen Lowis 20 odd, Staveley, Campbell, Kiwi all stirred with bat. Team Tenzing bowled out for 116. Weather conditions were a little "iffy" to say the least and the game probably should have been re-scheduled ad Team Tenzing had conditioned their training for higher, harsher altitude's, to be honest. We just couldn't be bothered to win, either. All that publicity.........

Anyway, back to reality. It is weird and from what I am reading in some other Blogs I think everyone has got the same feelings about being back. Nothings changed, but I suppose that is always how it was going to be. The memories and the endless photos and emails will keep reminding us about Everest for many years to come as I hope will the friendships now made and the beer that will invariably be drunk. Some from the group will go back and do it again. Others, like me I suspect, probably won't.....do the Everest trek again, anyway. But it will go down in everyone's life as a major personal goal and a monumental achievement. I am very proud to be a part of it.

Cricket is back to normal for - 7 for 19 at the weekend -y'know, the usual standards.

Lowis - you couldn't hit those tracer bullets if the ball had a bell in it.

Altitude, damn you....................