Tetherdown Trundlers Cricket Club

Tetherdown Trundlers CC International Series 2013
Fuengirola, Southern Andalucía, October 11-13 2013

Prologue‪

Dateline: Sunday October 13, 2013. About 4pm, deep into the Trundlers’ second innings.‪

As a few of our number commiserated Gordon on his rotten luck with the Duck Shirt, Morris emerged from the pavilion, padded up, debonair and clutching that prince of bats, the Gray Nicolls Quad Scoop. 

“Padded up already?”‪ 

“Oh, yes: I like to be prepared,” he said. “Preparedness, like cleanliness, is next to Godliness, they say.”

Everett stroked his chin thoughtfully. Odd dictionaries in the Morris household. Warming to his theme, the next drop began pacing theatrically back and forth.

“Yes, that’s the ticket. Being on your guard. Ready for any eventuality. The petty calamities by which some fellows live their lives,” he chuckled, shaking his head, “why, they’re perfectly avoidable! Like being mugged; forgetting your passport; missing a flight: all perfectly avoidable!”

His eye falling on Gordon’s back, Morris continued: “Do you know, lads, I’ve not once had that duck shirt? Not once!”

He gave the Karoriman’s shoulder an avuncular pat. “Preparedness.”‪ 

Gordon sighed heavily and stared at the floor. Presently he looked up, hopefully. “I say; got any smokes, old man?” ‪ 

Morris gestured expansively at the table. “The Lucky Strikes. Help yourself.”‪

Like flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods: they drop us for their sport. Now and then they bend our earthly steps to their cosmic dance, whose heavenly cadence we can but hope to comprehend: here a Tarantella; there, a Waltz; elsewhere, the Mashed Potato. We know it only as a frame and marker: a time-keeper for our grim existence: the fair breeze which blows us home; the capricious gust that tosses us off upon the sea; the bittersweet melody to whose accompaniment we make our faltering way across this mortal coil.‪

Just such an obstreperous wind passed at that instant.‪

A chink of skeltering bails. Grainger, having flailed fruitlessly at a rising delivery, exhaled and began the long walk back to his brethren, his marvellous resistance over. At the sound of the death rattle, Morris turned abruptly in its direction. His bat, tucked under his arm, clipped the mirror he keeps in his cosmetics case. It tumbled, shattering into a hundred pieces upon a startled cat, black as the velvet night, which shot off under a nearby step ladder. The ladder toppled onto the pavilion a foot from Morris’ impeccably brushed hair.‪

“Golly,” said he, “I didn’t see that coming! Close Shave, eh?”

Morris pulled his cap over his eyes, ducked under the ladder and marched across the cracked terrace pavings towards the crease.‪

Gordon tossed the packet of Lucky Strikes back down on the table, disgusted.

“Empty.”‪

***

Day 1: Golf, Fishing and a curiously named hotel

Dateline: Friday 11 October, 2013‪‪: 11:15 am.

We Trundlers might not thrash every opposition, but we do go to some lengths to try. This weekend we went as far as Fuengirola, a sleepy, cricket-loving village in the hills of southern Andalucía. In a rag-tag procession of rental cars, Grays leading in a dented VW Caddy, we fetched up outside a grand brownstone called Nuriasol (pronounced “New Rear Ahh Sole”: Frais chose it) and prepared to explore the local terrain. Landlubbers set off to the mountains for golf, mariner types to the ocean for fish.

Now golf, at the best of times, is a preposterous pastime. It does, however, compel a certain sort of fellow to take it seriously. A couple of those types were among us. The party quickly divided itself into those who did and those who did not and we went our separate ways.‪

From the serious foursome (Binns, Grainger, Bonfield and Frais) there was, from the outset, much cursing and oathing as their swipes shanked into ponds, sliced over escarpments and skittered through impassable undergrowth.

We carefree threesome that remained (Buxton, Grays and Everett) took tremendous pleasure in doing exactly the same thing. We tested the acceleration and braking capabilities of our trolleys (the former bad; the latter, once you got the hang of it, excellent) and, when we tired of that, had great fun raining down a firestorm on the serious four whenever we got within range. We couldn’t hit a fairway for toffee, but we had no trouble landing majestic drives within a tea-towel of Grainger’s elegant coiffure at every time of asking. O cruel and fickle game.‪

The fishers had mixed luck. At one extreme Hayward had not so much as a nibble on his rod all afternoon. Sage advice from Morris (“slowly, slowly, catchee the monkeyfish”) rang hollow in his ears as he watched a six-year old landing enough loaves and fishes to feed the multitude while his own line hung limp in his hands. Morris himself simply flung his out, wedged it under his seat, sparked a Lucky Strike, put up his feet and pulled his hat brim over his nose. In no time he had a 15lb albacore on the end pulling the boat to and fro. In between, Gordon was happy enough to hook a brace of San Miguels from the chiller and stare languidly towards Tangier, fondly recalling a prodigal adolescence spent romping among the souks.

Tall tales were exchanged back at the Nuriasol whereupon, to sample the charming local culture, we repaired to Fuengirola’s famous London Pub, took in an England victory over some footballing titans from the Caucasus (the place seems to follow us around!) and stumbled thence the few short yards to Restaurante Ponchos Argentino where excellent steak and brave Ulysses awaited.

Reunited with our warhorse, match preparation could begin in earnest. I have no doubt much was said and done, but in all honesty I can’t remember a great deal about it.‪

***

Day 2: Fuengirola CC vs. Tetherdown Trunders CC, Match 1 

Dateline: Saturday 12 October, 2013‪: 11:15 am.

Full scorecard may be viewed here.

Our first game was at the Cártama Oval, some 30 miles from our base, to which we were escorted at an ungodly hour (I believe it was 11 or even earlier) by Previn, the opposition’s voluble captain.

Cártama is a splendid cricket ground: a little piece of England, to go with all the other pieces of Little England which adorn the Costa del Sol. We were surprised to find grass beneath our feet not only on the outfield but on the wicket too, freshly laid a month ago. This was quite a change from the layer of compacted aggregate on which we were asked to work our cricketing magic a year ago in Mallorca.

Cártama boasts outstanding umpiring capability too. Whilst the frisson arising whenever a man is asked to referee his brother is to be welcomed – the odd terse exchange over a bat/pad decision is part of the fun of it – there are limits and, over two sweltering days in Andalucían sun, they are short.

So we were grateful that umpires were to be supplied, and in Fernando at one end and Ray at the other we found an agreeable yin and yang. There were many things for Trundlers to rue over those two days but the quality of the officiating was not amongst them.

Fernando is laconic, jovial and happiest with a beer in the hand that isn’t holding his ball-counting pebbles. You sense his main motivation is to get a good view of the cricket. He acquitted himself admirably, adding a good deal of levity in the field.

Ray is the technician’s umpire. Girded with ball clickers, walkie-talkies, bulldog clips and all manner of umpiring accessories, he gave of himself and his cricketing acumen tirelessly. He missed no detail, overlooked no protocol and, with the aid of his radio, ensured the scorers and scoreboard operators remained constantly attentive, a job usually assumed from deep long on by Mr Colley.

There was, therefore, none of the usual post hoc revision that follows from a batsman’s grandiose recollection of his own innings. If the score book said you got three, off one hundred and nine deliveries, then that’s what you got.

As various Trundlers experimented with the outfield ablution facilities, Skipper Gordon (not for the first time, the Ducksman leading the team) resoundingly won the toss and chose to bat.‪

Now the arrow of time points only one way. We cannot unwind the clock to find out whether another choice might have served us better. All the same, it is hard to see how it could have been much worse.‪

***

Trundlers’ Innings

The wicket was showing a bit of “pop” in early exchanges: something to do with the dew. Openers Phillips and Bonfield adopted a watchful outlook. There was the odd squirted single, but Phillips’ resolute forward defence seemed ill suited to testing the outfield, which we had been assured was lightning fast. We will never know.

We could not know, either, whether our run rate (when, eventually, we began to register one) would be competitive ‪but the appearance of vultures overhead and wild dogs in the cacti beyond the far boundary suggested not. 

Bonfield and Grainger fell before they could get a start. Colley poked around a bit, but couldn’t take root. Nor could Frais. Everett got in and then out again as if the wicket was a scalding bath. As ever, there was a bit of tail-end resistance: Your correspondent tried again to bull’s-eye Grainger as he reclined in his hammock behind the scorers. Binns, with his comedy running-about behaviour, made swift double figures before falling to the most spectacular dismissal in Trundlers history.

In fact, let’s play the whole episode out in super slow-mo. 

A lively ball was dug in short and rising to Binns’ ribs. Never once taking his eyes off it, Binns swivelled, planted both feet and pulled magnificently through square, sending the ball with a furious report towards Grainger’s hammock. The umpire didn’t move a muscle – it may be he simply didn’t see it, for it was travelling like a Pershing Missile – and Grainger was already beginning to take evasive action when the home side’s short backward square (a small fellow with a banjo and flared trousers) launched himself to his left, flew horizontally twelve or fifteen feet with his hand held out before regaining the ground again with a spectacular judo roll, the ball safely held. It must have stung like hell, but he hung onto it.

Binns had already started that token trot down the wicket that batsmen affect after playing a shot they know is off to the boundary, only to turn in disbelieving horror at the sound of jubilation in the field. Binns is ordinarily an affable chap; it was disquieting to see him in such visible distress: his bat tumbled to the turf; he raised his gloved hands to his head. Although his he had his back to the pavilion I fear uncouthness may have escaped his lips. For a moment the local hyenas, increasingly bold on the far boundary, retreated behind a tree.

If that was the final nail in a coffin which really didn’t need fastening, no one told the lower order. As a team we’ve always had a great enthusiasm for the tail, and we were not stinting in our support here, no matter how hopeless the circumstances seemed. Messrs Hayward, Grays and Gordon rose impressively to the occasion and threw the bat around, scurrying between the sticks as if there was something to salvage other than the pride of lasting our allotted 35 overs.

Fate would deny us even that small satisfaction (now there’s a motto for the team – my classics advisor tell me it reads as follows: fatum nos privet etiam parvis victoriis). Gordon was cruelly run out on the penultimate ball when his bat, which he was sliding in the manner recommended by the coaching manual, caught an edge and dug into the turf an inch short of the crease.

When all was said and done defending 120 for 35 overs, at less than three an over, felt a faintly absurd objective.‪

***

Fuengirola’s Innings

Still, with our matching caps and shirts we do look the part and we have the best motivational speaker in the business. Grainger is a master. His thematic synthesis, his effortless weaving of locale and playing conditions into his material, is matchless.

There we were, Englishmen out in the midday sun and our toastmaster-in-chief was rabbiting on about polar explorers. He waxed enthusiastically about how the wastelands below the 42nd parallel could inform our catching. Looks around the circle suggested some were struggling to see it.

By the time we took the field Grainger was having trouble seeing it, too. For all Colley’s familiar exhortations (and everyone is getting into the act now: each time a ball is struck above the plane the field explodes like a puffin colony during mating season) Grainger spilled a crisp pull from the opener Nushan at midwicket. As has also become common, he smartly feigned injury, rising from the turf clutching his fingers. On the park, though, the damage was done. Nushan, who was to have similar luck the following day, was on his way. He didn’t look back.

In cricket there is the ever-present possibility that you might not get much of a bat, for reasons cheering or dire: the other side could obstinately bat all day; your openers may carry their blades so you are not needed; you might get there, but sky one before properly getting your eye in; having stewed in the sun all afternoon ferrying water round the boundary to thirsty fielders you could be outrageously run out at the non-striker’s end without facing a ball.

Usually, though, one has no such qualms about fielding: however it unfolds you’re sure to get a decent opportunity to broil listlessly under an unforgiving sky, periodically retrieving balls whence they have been walloped especially if, like the Trundlers, you’re not inclined to catch them on their way past you.

Fuengirola’s openers made us doubt that truism. They launched a blitzkrieg from the first ball and it was soon amply clear we wouldn’t contain them for anything like thirty five overs. Gordon, ever the pragmatist, called his men together to impart an adjusted goal: we must last to the drinks break.

It was like bowling in a highlights package. The first ball of the innings was cut savagely through point, and Morris, for four. When Morris picked himself up he had to check he wasn’t holed. We learned the Fuengirola opener is the head chef at a swanky restaurant: he bats like a butcher in an abattoir. At the other end Previn chattily tormented our charging kiwis. The usually parsimonious New Zealanders were belted out of the attack.

Now it is true it might have been a different story had we held a catch or two – with all their fireworks the batsmen gave us generous opportunities – but until Hayward started his master class, nothing whatsoever was sticking or stopping.

A word about Hayward. He has spoken many times over the past year of this mystery, debilitating injury; some of us speculated that his playing days might be over, but if we are to take a cricketing positive from the tour (and lord only knows, we need one) Hayward’s reintroduction into the playing XI is surely it. He was magnificent throughout. Word has it he once trialled for Scunthorpe, and his fleet-footedness around the playing arena – crocked Achilles tendon and all – suggests this to be no exaggeration. Nothing got past him and when finally a lofted stroke floated in his direction Hayward covered a league or so to take a comfortable catch and provide Colley with a consoling wicket.

As the drinks break neared we had from the umpires a solitary concession to pragmatism. Ray proposed we delay drinks, it seeming a bit pointless, seeing as the batsmen were about to pass our total.

“Pointless? Speak for yourself,” thought Gordon, for whom it represented the only measure of achievement left to his captaincy. Fatum nos privet etiam parvis victoriis. But then it dawned on him: this would bring forward a longer and altogether more agreeable kind of drinks break. Gordon’s disappointment vanished. All it would take was another couple of crashing boundaries. No doubt thinking the same way, the Fuengirolans obliged, and before we knew it the beers were flowing.

Day 3: Fuengirola CC vs. Tetherdown Trunders CC, Match 2

Dateline: Sunday October 13, 2013: 11:15 am.
Full scorecard may be viewed here. 

We returned to Cártama on Sunday morning under the leadership of Everett. It was a solemn moment: a popular player’s last match, for the time being, as a “town member” of the club. He has been a loyal servant and, on his day, a devastating strokesman. He will be sorely missed and warmly welcomed back when eventually he has had his fill of Wellington’s wind and rain. We expect this to be in time for the start of next season.

Everett’s first act of captaincy was even more triumphant than Gordon’s of the previous day, and that was to ensure that this time we field first. Harnessing formidable negotiation skills acquired over two decades in the city, he achieved this without even a coin-toss. (He pointed out it meant the Fuengirolans would at least get a proper chance to bat. They appreciated the offer.)

Grainger, perhaps observing how the Shackleton analogy worked out, felt some evolution was called for in his pep-talk. So he started babbling about Darwin, beagles and continental philosophers. Heidegger got a look in (the possible ranks higher than the actual), as did Nietzsche (that which does not kill us makes us stronger) but with Kierkegaard (every human being is spirit and truth is the self-activity of appropriation) we began to lose the thread a little. Nevertheless, it was an arousing speech, and we took the field with stiffness to our bearing and a great sense of ardour.‪

***

Fuengirola’s Innings

Speaking of evolution, it is an axiom of that theory that mutations happen only between generations. A single organism can only adapt. Having been traumatised by Nushan from the uphill end, Buxton thought he’d have a go from the other, and this time pitch the ball on the batsman’s half of the wicket.

Alas, for this wanton boy, the Gods were still in playful mood. In his first over, on nought, an in-swinging yorker creased the opener in half and feathered his leading edge, spooning the cherry twenty feet in the air in a gentle arc back to the New Zealander. The bowler saw it early, made good ground to prepare for receipt, only to find the Iberian sun stationed exactly the other side of the ball which, like a diving Zero in the Pacific theatre, was nowhere to be seen. Still, Buxton held out his hands out in blind hope – the ball must drop somewhere, after all – and was so overcome when it fell into them that he quite forgot to close his fingers and complete the transaction.

As his sun blindness cleared, his keeper strode toward him. “When you said,” remarked Phillips drily, “that you’d drop everything to be on this tour, this isn’t quite what I had in mind.” Nushan didn’t seem awfully bothered, and went on to complete an unbeaten century over the next 35 balls he faced. Fatum nos privet etiam parvis victoriis.

Gordon, chastened by his previous day’s fielding experience (short, but nasty and brutish too), had contrived another injury, so our trusty Champion opened from the downhill end, as he did on the Sunday last year in Mallorca. (This year, however, our efforts to find a local minstrel with a whippy right arm action to tear through the top order – and be assured, we scoured all kinds of establishments in search of one – was fruitless.)

As Nushan and his fellow opener Kason hit their straps an optical illusion took hold: out on the field we seemed to be faring much better. If I do say so, the bowling was tight and, by the odd ball, the batsmen were genuinely troubled. But the scoreboard persisted in ticking over like a dicky fruit machine anyway.

Out in the middle, Buxton even recorded his first maiden of the day.* Yet no matter how niggardly our bowling, the runs kept piling on.

As is so often the way (and I will spare you one of my bitter treatises on the cosmic injustice to pace bowlers) it required a bowling change to make a breakthrough. The agent of change was Bonfield, and the delivery was a pie.

Bonfield’s action may have been cribbed from Battle Picture Weekly. It owes much to the hand-grenade lobbing technique depicted therein. He breaks cover with a crabwise shuffle, pulls the pin out with his teeth, growls “have a pineapple, Fritz” under his breath and flings the ball skyward. The innocuous look of the parabola it describes tends to be borne out when (and if) it pitches, but every now and then one goes off unexpectedly, and with devastating effect. It took an over or so of pyrotechnics from the batsman before one of Bonfield’s devices finally exploded. To this day, none of the implicated parties has been able to explain how it broke Kason’s wicket, but it did and he departed the theatre of conflict with 26 to his name. The arrival in his stead of Asad, however, suggested we had a little way to go before we were “knee deep in the tail” as we devotedly aspire to be.

Asad quickly made it clear it was to be business as usual. Before long he had 31, accumulated through spectacular hitting.

And that was about it. No sooner was he out then and even more lyrical striker of the ball arrived. The field worked tirelessly, as did Morris, uncomplainingly trotting around the perimeter with water for exhausted fielders, rather pleased, I should say, to be spared the aggravation of having to actually field anything. By a quirk of our “rotating 12th man” system, Morris was in the luxuriant position of getting a bat without having to bowl, while poor old Grays, who spent much of the afternoon scuttling halfway up a gorse bank to prise the ball out of the sod it had just augered into, got what looked like the rough end of that trade. By the time stumps were drawn he had a different view of it.

It seems churlish to abbreviate a fine innings from the opposition, but on the other hand it is painful to give much more detail. The metaphors that come to mind all invoke extreme weather or armed conflict. We tried in vain. We suffered an afternoon of prolonged aerial bombardment, studded with paltry nuggets of consolation for persistence. Binns was rewarded for consistent line and length (& he would be the last person to blow smoke up his own behind – let alone anyone else’s – but we should not forget he is our club’s leading wicket taker), as were Colley and Bonfield, and eventually even your correspondent, who saw a wayward ball dragged back onto the stumps, but – fatum nos privet etiam parvis victoriis – we could not even contain three hundred runs, and eventually returned after the longest thirty five overs in history to a fine lunch facing the absurd prospect of sustaining a run rate, from the off, of just under nine an over to win.

Our only solace was, through serially careless running on the wicket and fastidious umpiring, (in other circumstances we may have found this patronising, but in this one were overjoyed by it), Ray had kindly penalised the locals to the tune of 25 runs, so we at least had them for a brief moment at the start.

***

Trundlers’ Innings

Everett, ever a leader out in the front, marched out like a fearless wartime General. Custer, for example. Or Lord Cardigan. Riding with him into the valley of death was ever-optimistic Lieutenant Gordon, who had looked lively with his blade amongst the tail the day before.

Now at this time Gordon was the prevailing holder of three inauspicious Trundlers’ batting records (current Ducksman; absolute number of ducks achieved; highest ducks-per-innings batted), none of the kind you’d want your opener to have. That said, he carried on with the same brio as on the evening before, and raced quickly to 13 before getting one right up the block hole. Everett, in his last innings, was no less swashbuckling, but our hopes of a fast Launcestonian double ton were dashed when he was caught short on the pull on 8.

This time we had stacked our order for maximum impact.

“Go hard or go home”†, muttered Grainger to himself as he made his way to the middle, where he was to form the backbone of our token resistance.

Grainger is an elegant stroker, and in the Andalucían heat compiled a fine 43, pairing delicate singles with brutally-meted boundaries, along the way mentoring those agricultural types such as your correspondent as we briefly joined him, to set about hoiking the bowling. With Buxton making 17, Colley 23, a happier and more expansive Phillips at 6 putting on 32, our batting card looked healthier than ever before.

In any other circumstances 190 would be a good total on 35 overs – nearly 5 and a half an over, after all – except when your opposition has already compiled the best part of double that.

In any case, eventually Grainger’s long resistance ended.

We pick up the story at the conclusion of the prologue. There were wild cheers, of course, at our hero’s return and great expectations as Morris embarked, pausing like von Richtoven for a photograph before climbing aboard his kite, ready to light up the skies.

“Lucky” Morris has always looked a compelling proposition with bat in hand, yet often has been cruelly deprived by fate of the chance to flash his balls about. Perhaps this would be his day.

A brief digression, if I may. I have been asked by Trundler Freeman (on a toad-eating tour of the East and thus unable to be present) if there is any truth to the rumours that the tour included a trip “to watch a poor animal get brutalised by some camp Spaniards”.

I chided him: That’s no way to talk about Trundler Morris.

It is true, though, that as part of the cultural odyssey which every Trundlers tour constitutes we do like to educate ourselves about local customs. Andalucía is famous – or, according to our wives and liberals infamous – for la corrida, the bull fight; romanticised by Hemingway and dressed up by locals as an honourable tradition, but in reality an accretive form of ritual torture.

It starts with mere humiliation of a rutting beast and ends with unspeakable acts perpetrated on a wounded and defenceless animal by, as Trundler Freeman intimates, an effete Spaniard (the torero) wearing pink tights, arse-gripping pants and a bolero jacket (his “suit of lights”, or traje de luces) and his similarly-attired chums (los banderilleros).

There is certainly some style in how this is carried out (a favoured move is la Veronica, whereby the cape is drawn over the animal’s passing head in the manner of St. Veronica’s veil, while the torero strikes an effeminate pose) but it is positively barbaric to the bull. It is also a dying art. Opportunities to witness it first-hand are rare indeed. But, on the Saturday night, the ever-resourceful Phillips had found tickets to Fuengirola’s one corrida of the year.

News of our outing was mixed. Some instinctively celebrated; others fretted about what would happen should their wives find out. When we got there, reactions amongst the watching Trundlers similarly varied: one or two passed out and were obliged to take airs: we found them later reviving themselves in a local cantina across the street. Others were better able to dissociate: it takes undisputable skill for a man in the saddle (a picador) to coax a filly into acts of athleticism while a raging horn is thrusting just inches from her tail.

We comforted ourselves with that faint “roadrunner” hope, that a bull would one day get his man, though any chance of that was snuffed out by the blessed banderilleros running out to save the their boss’s backside – fatum nos privamur parvis victoriis. Those of us with a journalistic bent steeled ourselves and stayed to record this all for posterity: personally, I found la Veronica a quite captivating spectacle, and was glad to be able to take home some camera-phone footage for my collection.

Digression over. When I left you we were watching Morris make his way into the plaza de toros. He didn’t fare well. Before so much as enquiring about his guard, Morris found himself treading the familar camino de deshonra back to his brethren, by his expression still not entirely clear what had just happened.

Phillips had egregiously run him out is what had happened.

Bonfield passed, grinning impishly on his way out to bat, but resisted the temptation to enquire after the bowling.

At the boundary, Morris’ return was met with sympathetic sniggering and chortling from most, but with beneficent delight by a bare-chested Gordon, waving a certain emblazoned shirt before him in his own serviceable impression of a Veronica.

Proving it is not just Grainger who can be philosophical, Morris collapsed in a chair and sighed: “well: at least it can’t get any worse than that.” He was not to know his travails with a gang of louchely dressed banderilleros weren’t yet over, nor that we hadn’t seen the last of la Veronica.

Not long afterwards Phillips, his sun-kissed fizzog perhaps sparing blushes, relinquished his wicket and Hayward joined Bonfield to see the innings out. Another masterful show yielded a further 5 not out a piece. As a result Hayward joins Trundler Ritterband in our most exclusive club: men never yet dismissed in Trundlers colours.

We may have finished 125 runs short of the required total, but we had at least wickets intact at the end of our allotted overs: this counts as what our learned friends might call a “constructive” draw – a result that, by all rights, should have been a draw but by strict application of rules wasn’t: fatum nos privamur parvis victoriis, once more with feeling.

***

Epilogue

While the cricket may have been sobering the after-match celebrations were not. Poor old Morris who, by his own testimony, was to score a number of firsts over the following 24 hours to go with his duck, woke up with two more headaches than he was expecting. By the time he arrived at the airport minus his passport, he had acquired a third.

Happily it can be reported he is now out of gaol, back in the country, with a new phone and a salutary police report filed. Those nasty banderilleros and their tormenting Veronica? Just a horrible memory.

Mean time we Trundlers trundle on, yet older, yet wiser, ever more enthusiastic about their geriatric winter exercise regime, looking forward to next season’s bluebells, which mark the time the whites can come back down from the attic.

***