At this time of the year I watch my son and local grandson play cricket. Son is now 48 and no longer plays in the top echelon but can still bang the ball around at 2nd eleven level. Last Saturday he scored 86 of his 96 runs in boundaries and was caught on the boundary going for another six to get his hundred. In over 30 years of local cricket he's scored around 40 centuries and taken a lot of wickets with his slow off spinners that barely spin. He says it's the flight that gets them. I think they are so slow that batsmen lose patience waiting for them to arrive.
He used to watch Viv Richards with me at Somerset CCC when growing up and realised that Viv rarely ran for runs, preferring to deal in 4s and 6s. He took that to heart and has always done the same. His biggest compliment was in a match at Lansdown at Bath when he hit 14 6s in an innings and a spectator told him it was the best hitting he'd seen there since Viv played for Lansdown in the early 70s.
Local grandson is a more correct batsman than his father and not a big hitter but nurdles the ball around. He's also a decent off spinner and there are far worse wicket keepers when he dons the gloves at times. In winter he plays football at County League level so that's my winter sport spectating. I rarely watch professional football these days except on the telly. The same applies to rugby union, the other major sporting interest of mine.
Other than that I do a lot of walking - at least 100 miles every month at an average speed around 4 mph - and we have a decent-sized garden and even an allotment. My wife is the expert. I'm the labourer but she has a back condition that means my labouring is becoming ever more prominent. She's still not confident that I can spot the difference between weeds and plants.
Our Australian grandsons have unfortunately given up cricket there - they have so many interests that something had to give and university for the older one means he has lots of calls on his time. Our local grand daughter's sporting interest is netball, although when in her early teens she played cricket for boys' youth teams and for the girls at county level. Until I watched her playing netball I hadn't realised how fast and skilful a game it is.
I also read a lot but no longer do any videoing. I have a huge collection of family video going back to the 60s, with all the early stuff originally cine film which I later copied to video. It's all catalogued and edited, and is around one hundred hours' worth. There are a lot of airport and aviation scenes going back to the 60s but it's all on analogue tape.
Other than that and spending probably too much time in front of the computer it's a pretty boring existence, or would be if I had the time to think about it, as the end of the life innings gets ever nearer.
