There are inevitably incidents in life that presage a change of tack and one of them happened to me a few weeks ago: I fell asleep before finishing my story book reading session with one year old grand-daughter Isla. I am told that she then looked at me in astonishment. The following day I was invited to play a couple of games for a West Sussex cricket club called Hurstpierpoint; sadly I reckoned that if I could no longer keep awake - once I had established that the ice bear could indeed help the little boy to skate - I could no longer walk out, with any conviction at all, to face what might have been fizzy pace bowlers. Old age smack in the eyes and far removed from the young boy in Ushaw Moor.
The young boy in Ushaw Moor would no doubt have wandered down to the cricket club with a view to starting off in the second team during bank holidays, when some players were in Redcar or Blackpool. But it never worked out, despite members of my family's long history of playing, captaining and administrating the club. All because we moved to Workington when I was fifteen. I missed out on playing with the Ferguson brothers, and who knows, Norman might not have been the only player pushing seventy and helping out the young ones.
WB
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