Monday 6 July 2009

1755 The Ice Age, Federer 15 and Lords in view

I begin the day with a feeling of mild irritation at having overwritten the outline of my writing for yesterday, but it became such a good day overall that the usual sense of frustration and failure did not occur. The day was marked by two bouts of good sunshine followed by lightening thunder and torrential rain. You cannot kid me that this is cyclical and not a fundamental change in the British pattern of weather for the summer.

The consequence of this and other competing attractions is that I did not get to see the free Toyah Wilcox in the Park concert, supported by Carol Decker of T -Pau who has appeared here before, and Sinead Quinn.

The first competing attraction was the semi final of the Friends Provident Trophy between Sussex and Gloucestershire at Hove. The heat wave on the south coast continued for another day after a successive week of such days and which has left the outfield brown and lightening fast. The visitors won the toss and decided to put Sussex in to bat on what was regarded and as a fast scoring and rue wicket which had been used before and glued with resin to stop it from breaking up during the day.

Sussex started well with a good flow of runs preferring to hit fours than take individual runs. At 62 Nash missed the line of a slower ball by Dawson and was bowled off stump. Luke was true to character and also played for the big hits making 36 before being caught on the boundary. It was then left for Joyce to continue his solid start with Murray Goodwin and they doubled they more than doubled the score to 263 when Goodwin was out for 60, Joyce having reached his century. However at this point the momentum of runs ended Smith and Hamilton Brown going for 6 each and Yardy 11 and then Joyce run out for a magnificent 146. The innings ended at 326 for 7 about 25 runs short for safety, given the wicket and the conditions.

At this point I went out for a quick shop at Asda fir milk, coffee, some Milano cut salami still £1.08 100 grams compared with £1.37 vacuum packed, some strawberries and sliced melon. I resisted more rolls and pastries but remembered some small tomatoes for salad.

As the sky had darkened with rain in the air I abandoned the idea of going to the Park concert and returned to watch the cricket and the men’s single’s final at Wimbledon. The cricket became a concern as Gloucestershire took a different approach going for every individual run possible but keeping to the run rate of 6 and over which brought them very much into contention as they also did not lose wickets after an early loss at 8 Gidman with Marshall added over 150 before the second wicket. It began to look as if the visitors had made the right decision to make Sussex bat first. However Sussex held their nerve and bowled well and the last six weeks fell for forty runs so that Sussed won by 34 runs in the 48th over with the last two wickets in two balls.

Meanwhile over on the centre court before some of the greats of the past thirty years, especially Pete Sampras an epic struggle unfolded as Federer could not break the Roddick service and all four sets going to a tie break and ending 2 sets each. Te the final set followed the same pattern although there were opportunities for both to reach match point. 66-6 became 10 10 and 14.14 and the players were effectively in their seventh set. It was here that Federer won his serve and then got to match point and the became the winner 16-14. It was his 15th major title beating Pete Sampras who had held 14.

The tickets for the Friends Provident Final will be available from Sussex from Tuesday or direct from the ECB depending upon the take up by the competing clubs. I hope to be there.

In the evening i watched Ice Age 2 brought to the TV screen with Ice Age 3 now in the cinemas. The film is subtitled the great flood and follows the flood causes by the melting of the ice age. As before it follows the adventures of a motley collection of creatures including a Mammoth who believes he may be the last, but finds a mate as well as a herd. Harmless family entertainment preaching individualism, loyalty to others and collective action for survival. It is also a tribute to the creative odd balls in our midst.

I did some washing and ironing and eat reasonably with gammon and roast potatoes for lunch with cherries and melon slices plus the remaining rolls with salami. There was not as much walking activity as I should or work.

There was much game playing where I am unable to progress more than 16 consecutive wins against the computer at chess but achieved 1234 wins at hearts and had been progressing with spider but with a run of over 50 until accidentally closed a game at the wrong time. Drats.

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