onionbagblog

One by one, and the Golden Days of my South London summer are starting to slip away from me.

I lost le velo last week. Herne Hill and the fine folk of Velo Club Londre will no doubt be rolling out each weekend until the Ride of the Falling Leaves. My velo days came to a close early September with the sad selling of my track bike.

Swimming @BrockwellLido is being stretched out until the end of September this summer. I have so far resisted the urge to slip into my wetsuit. An early morning water temperature of seventeen degrees is proving to be the perfect kick-start for the day.

And so having lost track cycling, and the days drifting for outdoor swimming, Friday saw Old Father Time ringing the final bell around The Oval. Time has been called on my South London cricketing fun - and I don’t mean in the bar at the Long Room, either.

@AnnaJCowen and I first started watching cricket at The Oval back in the heady days of the summer of ’95. We gatecrashed the @surreycricket Glory Years, and have been dining out (and drinking) on the experience ever since.

Drunken staggers down the Clap’ham Road back to Sunny Stockwell soon became a thing of the past. We loved our Oval experiences so much, we bought a house within earshot of the umpire’s bell.

Blimey.

Much like the weather, the memories over the past fifteen summers of South London bat and ball are somewhat hazy. Cricket is a sport that wasn’t invented to watch stone cold sober. Stats and figures are all well and good, but that’s what the annual Surrey Member’s Year Book is for in years to come as we sit back and reflect.

As for the final, final Oval trip - it wasn’t exactly over and out on a high. A solitary one run from the @surreycricket, um, legend that is Kevin Pietersen, and a second innings collapse on par with my Long Room slumbers. It should see us through the long winter months.

As for the future?

C’mon Notts the ‘rrey, um, the ‘Sex.

Oh Lordy.