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Friday night, The Grapes public house, Belper.  I’ve just fielded some text messages and calls regarding an angry young man who wants to know why he hasn’t been selected to play cricket this weekend.  My pint arrives, the first of the evening.  I sip it.  It isn’t what I ordered but I don’t care.  The phone rings.  The girlfriend.  Long-suffering, I roll my eyes theatrically and answer.  “Hello?” 

Girlfriend [in hysterics]: “I think Malcolm’s got myxomatosis.”

In all seriousness it was quite an upsetting call to take.  Not only was my girlfriend sobbing uncontrollably, but I was about an hour from home and probably pushing the drink-drive limit (I’d had a couple of warm-up beers at my mate’s house).  A couple of phone calls later and we were pretty sure it wasn’t myxomatosis, which was some small comfort, not least for Malcolm’s hutchmate, Poppet.  We got hold of a spare cage and separated the two.  Malcolm—not very well at all from what I was told—stayed in the hutch outside while Poppet was put in a cage in the dining room.  Malky tragically didn’t make it through the night.

Malcolm

As I had predicted in my last post, Friday and Saturday were not healthy days.  Friday night I had an enjoyable crawl around Belper, finished off with a curry.  Saturday morning my mate’s lovely partner cooked us a full English breakfast; just what the doctor ordered.  Saturday afternoon I played cricket at Lullington.  Those who know me well will know that my favourite part of playing cricket is when we stop for tea in between innings.  I won’t bore you with details of the game (although we won a thrilling contest by 2 runs), but I must say that the tea was magnificent.  A resplendent affair including more varities of cobs/rolls than you could shake a stick at, chips, pizza, sausage rolls, bhajis, samosas, crisps and so on, plus a whole other table covered in cakes.  Absolutely superb.  The diet went out the window.  Saturday night I checked the internet to find that our victory had taken us from 3^rd in the league to top, with only two games to play.  Much celebratory Guinness followed, with a “mix kebab” on the way home.

Today has been better.  I basically haven’t eaten anything.

But back to Saturday night.  I received a text from one of the guys I’d been out with the night before, asking how we’d got on at cricket.

Me: We won by two runs!  Ambergate and Heanor both lost too so now we’re top of the league again!  What a day to be alive.

His reply: Not for the rabbit.

My response was unrepeatable.