Hot to clock

The morning cycle was harder yesterday due not only to the late night, but the fact that I did not realise the front brake was slightly on until I got half way to the Black Rabbit. I suppose the excesses of the night before were in part to blame and here I know Simon”who ate all the pies” Barrett is culpable. It was he and his lovely wife Debbie who has conspired to keep me up drinking wine until the early hours.

The four of us decided that we needed some sea air yesterday morning and took a stroll along the beach at Elmer Sands. The last time I was at the seaside could not have been more different. Barbados it was not. It started in sunshine and at first was not unpleasant but as the skies darkened, we only just made it back to the car before the onslaught of a hail and sleet tempest. Don’t you just love England and its weather?

I did learn something from the Pieman. It was just as we were considering to which pub we should go for a restorative Sunday lunch pint when I witnessed a splendid piece of driving avoidance. Obviously, with some distance to motor back to Buckinghamshire, just short of the Arctic Circle, the Pieman and his beautiful wife had to decide who was going to drive back, precluding the intake of more than one drink, and this is where my education began. The Pieman appeared to go over on his ankle and it quickly became evident that, limping like a man with a seriously damaged ankle and despite his feeble protests, he would be unable to take the wheel. They say every cloud has a silver lining and his particular lining was more to the benefit of his enormous stomach, in that he was able to have a large Bloody Mary and several pints of beer whilst his stoic wife limited herself to a small tomato juice. Genius at work.

The burning issue of time management

One they had set off, we left the White Hart, to which we had gone for a farewell drink and whose cheese and snack platter which is placed on the bar at Sunday lunchtime was sadly depleted, in search of a pub with less meagre rations adorning its bar. The Kings Arms in Arundel fitted that particular bill and so we stocked up with some cheese and biscuits, plus a scotch egg or two for lunch, accompanied by a pint or several of London Pride. The Landlord, Charlie Pistorius Malcolmson, who suffered a fire in an upstairs room recently, has a striking reminder of this event now hanging on the wall of his pub as my picture today shows. It is perhaps poignant that a landlords most famous refrain is “time, gentlemen please” when it is chucking out time.

Earlier, with the Pieman and his wife, we had popped into the Holly Tree at Walberton which has a truly eclectic selection of bar areas, ranging from the bizarre to the really weird, but has a nice feel, and one at which resolved to take lunch some time soon.

Cricket practice this morning is back in the agenda now that a proposed trip to London to do something called work has been postponed. I shall now be able to concentrate on honing my cricket skills and searching for more customers for Currencies Direct, rather than sitting on a train and fretting about my off drive. Less than two weeks to go before I make my Cypriot debut on the cricket pitch. However, today is an inevitable diet day, with calories limited to just 600, so I shall be weak and feeble by tea time.

Chris France