As I have said before I think the greatest sporting compliment I ever got in my time on mother earth was something I didn’t actually get.
And that was a slap on the bottom with a cricket bat by the ex-England double-centurion legend Gilbert Parkhouse, our sports master.
Now I must admit that I was quite a canny cricketer back in the days of my early schooling at Daniel Stewart’s and Melville College and could bowl a fine swinger and had a pretty straight bat. Our entire gym class had been awfully naughty one lesson and Gilbert made us all bend over in a line and proceeded to stroll down the line giving each boy a slap on the bottom with a cricket bat. He came to me and stopped, looked up to the skies and declared with some trace of poetic timbre, for a man not habitually renowned for his traces of poetic timbre, ‘This boy can play cricket’ and refrained from delivering the said punishment to my back side and moved on to the next boy in the line-up.
This made a big impression upon me and I still look back nostalgically to that day and indeed all the dreamy days of my youth when the sun shone endlessly and we strode out joyfully in the halcyon fields of our childhoods.
Now I am that Gilbert Parkhouse of course. Not that I am going around lining up young boys to dish out corporal punishment on their back sides, but the fact is that I am now in the late afternoon, early evening stage and maybe just post tea-time of the cricket game of my life.
I suppose it’s witnessing the eager young bejants arriving for term again here in St Andrews that made me reflect so or perhaps the beginning of the fall with these clear beautiful St Andrean skies and brisk sea breezes.
I’m still bowling though and batting as straight as ever. But there is more joy in hitting that firmly struck boundary and much more laughter when we all stop for tea.