The Buzz of a cricket box

There was a predictably full response to my piece yesterday about the value of an abdominal protector, or cricket box when playing the finest game man has ever invented. Cricket practice at the Arundel Castle indoor cricket school was so much more relaxing once one has inserted the inverted soap dish into the trouser department so that it could carry out its vital work. The limericists who, with almost no encouragement from me, have made this column their home, had a field day with a very fine collection of limericks, all aimed at the testicles, a bit like a fast bowler will aim if irked.

The fact that my personal protector (each discerning cricketer has his own as sharing is not something a gentleman would contemplate, and I pretend to be a gentleman, especially if it comes down to borrowing one) is bright green also brought out the worst or best in some contributors, and was so popular, that it took the total number of hits on this website close to 130,000. Thus I feel duty bound to show a picture of the offending item today, mainly for my coterie of French readers who are fascinated and confused in equal measure about the game of cricket.

Thats Buzz on the right, sporting a very fine green cricket abdominal protector

Obviously, I had to purchase the extra-large size due to, well I think it must be obvious. I am a big chap with big prospects. The traditional colour of these boxes is white, but the only one they had in the store in my size was in a quite fetching, some may say virulent green. You can see it here, being modelled rather startlingly by Buzz Lightyear,  in besides of some of my cricket trophies, which That Nice Lady Decorator has banned from the house (they now languish in my shed office on a shelf cluttered with other unwanted – by her – memories of earlier days. Note Woody, also from Toy Story, taking little interest on the left). As you can see it matches his plastic uniform perfectly. I think he might have made a cricketer. Too infinity and beyond!

With a sprained ankle, caused by leather soles slipping on the street last week in the eternal wet, keeping me from my usual march around the new bogs of Sussex, I took to my bike for some exercise and to see just how bad it is becoming, and also to decide where to build my ark. The rain is so unremitting that It is that or move abroad, in which case the services of Currencies Direct will be of enormous benefit to you. I would say I wished I was at my house in France, but it seems this pesky jet stream which is causing so much flood havoc in England, is having a similar, if less dramatic, influence in Provence. I trust that will have changed by mid April, when I intend to spend late spring and early summer in my house in the gorgeous village of Valbonne to dry out.

Last night then, as it was not a diet day, but a day of plenty, sandwiched (unfortunate description?) between two 5:2 diet days, we decided that a pint of beer early doors would be an agreeable way in which to build up strength for the trials and tribulations that will face us tomorrow. We therefore popped into The Swan for a pint of the best beer in the world, Fullers London Pride, before settling down to the roast chicken dinner that had been scheduled for Sunday afternoon, but was replaced by left over, warmed-up curry due to inability of That Nice Lady Drinker to coordinate sufficiently to pull it all together. I ate heartily knowing what will happen today.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News