One such occasion cost me an entire day of my life. By chance I got to know an author named Frederick Covins (The Breaking Sword and TV adapted Battle for Badger's Wood) and his lovely wife Maggie from Worcestershire and before long had been invited to guest for Fred's cavalier "no-stars" cricket team.
Fred and Maggie had a particular way of making cricket matches interesting in that they marked the boundary with newly purchased barrels of scrumpy cider and strategically placed pint glasses alongside.
The preliminary lunch with all its free-flowing wine over, the match began and as my bowling required a decent run-up I was quickly all-a-sweat and into the cider at the rate of a pint every three or four overs.
Batting was wonderful too cos, instead of just the one ball to hit, you could see three or four and I had no inhibitions about dispatching any one of 'em into the nearby cornfields... including five in one over before being given out caught for the sixth... 40 yards into the bloody field.
Anyway, no-one bothered too much about this bending of the rules least of all me cos it was another excuse to have a rest nice and close to the cider barrels.
However, with the match over the fun was about to begin in the form of a whisky party and I was partnered with a diminutive lawyer from Lincolns Inn Fields by the name of Geoffrey. He's the archetypal Proper Person and I'm yer average bit of scrag-end so it was an unlikely pairing but we did share an affinity for Malt Whiskies and because of that our friendship has lasted 20 years and more.
The last thing I clearly remember that Saturday was Geoffrey putting his arm drunkenly around my shoulder and looking at the type-written list of whiskies we'd had to consume one nip at a time.
"D'yu know what" he said, "It's been bloody good fun drinking down to the bottom of this lisssst... how's about we drink our way back up to the top...?"
And so we did, and I swear on my life, Sunday never existed. I woke up Monday morning on hay bales in a barn and staring up into the eyes of the best looking teenaged blonde I will ever sleep alongside in my life.
Turned out she too was a lifelong friend of Fred and had cycled from Lincolnshire for the party en route to America and a career as a front page model for Vogue etc.
The irony is, I spent hours alongside her completely oblivious to the fact that she was there, and taking nothing more for the memory of her than a great, big, lingering kiss and the comment "thank God you've woken up alive" whispered into my ears.
And all the way home I was thinking. Fancy getting THAT pissed.
PS. The author of this story, Tony, was awarded the MBE last year! |
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