Sunny day puts paid to diet

Following my comments yesterday about a crapulous cricketing catastrophe in old Ceylon, where The mighty England were thrashed on the cricket ground in the 20:20 World cup by a part-time team of tulip growers from Holland, I happened upon the display in today;s photo at the entrance to Arundel Castle. Very pretty and much prettier than the cricket.

I thought the whole world was against me. 5:2 diet day number two on the trot had me contemplating chucking the bathroom scales out of the window. Clearly they must have been made in Holland. How can you go 24 hours with only 600 calories, cycle hard for 40 minutes, walk a mile and a half at a brisk pace and shed no weight whatsoever, not a gram? I was thinking that there might be the clanging of broken weighing machine in the street this morning if another starvation day goes by without any change. Someone needs to examine my constitution, extract the fat genes and manufacture them so that the starving of Africa will lose no weight when they get no food.

Tulips at the entrance to Arundel Castle

Other than my spat with all things mechanical (even the chain came off my bike when I was cycling) and the Oliver Twist rations, it was looking not a bad day as the sun reappeared quite unexpectedly. It had been dank and drizzly and awful as I mounted my steed but by the time I had cycled a couple of miles, the sun was beginning to burn through the mist and, although still damp underfoot, it became quite pleasant. I was thinking that it would have been a perfect early evening for a pint of beer in a country pub, but those vicious bathroom scales had conspired to deny me. Then I was rescued from this slough of despair.

Perhaps That Nice Lady Decorator spotted my wistful look at a picture of food, or my dribbling when she mentioned something about taking wine to France, because suddenly at lunch time she said “bugger the diet day, you don’t get too many sunny days in England, shall we walk to the Black Rabbit for a pint?”.

Was it a test of my resolve? Was the correct response to mention something along the lines that my body is a temple and I am at worship? However, regular readers will know that these misgivings evaporated in a nano second as I thought about a two and a half mile walk along the river on a beautiful spring day in England, with a pub at the end of it. I agreed.

The Black Rabbit is a splendid establishment, pretty as a picture nestling beside the River Arun. It is well run and the food is as good as it can be when served on such a massive scale. My reluctance to go there is based only on the beers available. Hall and Woodhouse make some of the least edifying beers on tap, but they must be becoming aware that their policy of only selling their own beers has had a negative effect as they now have a new brew, Holy Moley, which is quite decent. Before that, a trip to this lovely pub was often gazumped by a trip to a different pub based solely on its beer offering. Anyway, with the floodgates open, we walked back the short way (only a mile and a half). It was as we walked through the garden of The White Hart that things began to unravel.

This morning, will be the last net practice with the newly affiliated with Currencies Direct, the Sussex Seniors, before we fly to Cyprus on Thursday morning for their cricket tour. We shall be playing at a ground called Happy Valley, a military base where they have splendid sporting facilities for the troops. It reminds me of that is Monty Python sketch where a soldier is complaining about the basic training and using guns and the like. When asked why he joined the army he did it was “for the sport and the travel”.

Before that though, there will be the vital debrief following the nets. This will commence over a few pints of Harvey’s in the late afternoon, prior to a mad inebriated packing experience ready for the off at, wait for it, just before 5am in the morning for a 7:40 flight to Paphos. I need to find out who booked these flights.

Chris France