44. Sleepless Nights

Cricket: The Test Series started on Thursday.   Australia play England at the Gabba in Brisbane for five days with four more matches to follow over the next three months.   

With typical Aussie bloody mindedness and lack of consideration, they decided that play should start at midnight, UK time.   Consequently, for the last week I’ve been rescheduling my body clock to turn myself from a diurnal into a nocturnal being – a creature of the night.   

On Thursday I got up from my afternoon slumber at eight o’clock in the evening, had a light breakfast/supper and got everything ready for the marathon ahead.   I lasted until teatime there, which was half past four in the morning here. 

I remember that some years ago when I was working, I looked forward to one day being able to stay up all night watching the Ashes series from Australia with no need to be up at any particular time on the following day.   But I was younger then!  I had stamina.   Maybe tonight I will make it right through until the close of play.

It was very different not so long ago.   I remember in the middle of the night in the early morning of New Years Day, January 1995 watching on Ceefax the changing score from Adelaide.  I watched as Mike Gatting’s score went up digit-by-digit, putting together big partnerships with Gooch and Atherton.

Two years ago, when the Ashes series was played in England, I was in Cayman watching the cricket there on Cayman TV.  I paid an extra $25 a month on my subscription for the channel that promised to show “every ball of every game.”

Cayman in August is six hours behind British Summer Time and the start of play was at 11:00 a.m. in the UK.  I set my alarm for 4:45 in the morning.   “Why don’t you sleep in the other bedroom?” Caroline whinged.

The decisive and eagerly awaited fifth test match started on a Thursday and I saw every ball bowled over the first two days.   But on the Saturday morning at 8:59, just after Jimmy Anderson had bowled the third ball of his over, the TV screen went blank for a second or two.   When the picture was restored we were at the City of Manchester Stadium just moments before the kick off between Manchester City and Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Not a word of explanation; no voiceover; no elucidation and certainly no apology.  Bloody football in August!

I was straight on the phone to Weststar TV, my cable supplier.   All the lines to customer services were busy and a robot informed me that I was eighth in the queue to be answered.

“Hi Mr Terry.  This is Cindy.  I recognise your voice.”   

Cindy and I were old friends and after a twenty-minute wait on hold, we were renewing our acquaintanceship.   She is an American from Alabama, married to a Caymanian businessman and is employed to placate stroppy customers like me.  She seemed now to be an old friend.   We go back three years.

The first time that we ‘met’ was when I phoned to make the observation that on BBC America that evening, the entire time from 7:00 p.m. until half past one the following morning, was taken up with showings of Gordon Ramsay’s “Hell’s Kitchen” programmes, one after the other.   “I do not pay an additional subscription for that kind of rubbish,” I told her.

“He’s very popular in the UK,” she assured me.  “The English here on island like him.”

“Do they really?” I asked incredulously.  “I think that you and your bosses should know that my scientific survey has come up with the result that 100% of the English people in this house, don’t like him.” 

“And anyway,” I continued, “The language is so heavily censored that all you ever hear is a succession of bleeps.”

“Yes, he does seem to swear a lot,” agreed Cindy.

“On top of all that,” I said, putting on my best English upper crust accent and trying to sound like Prince Charles attempting to be posh, “He’s a poor chef.  Have you eaten at Claridges recently?”

“Yes, last Easter,” Cindy said “and we both rather enjoyed it.”

Cindy had calmed and soothed me in the past when I had phoned in to complain that the England v Italy rugby match was not, despite trails that it would be, shown live.  At other times she had tried to explain why neither Wimbledon nor the Ryder Cup was not of sufficient interest to be shown on Cayman television.

“I’ll look into it.   I’ll just put you on hold,” she said after I had told her that the cricket had just disappeared without warning or justification.   After a few minutes she was back.

“I’ve got some good news for you,” she said, minutes later.  “There’s another cricket game coming on at eleven o’clock.”

“It’s the same match,” I said, grumpily.

“No, it’s a different game,” she said, “and it starts at eleven.”

“No, it’s the same game,” I said, wearily, dreading where this conversation was likely to go. 

“No,” Cindy said patiently, “The game that you were watching that finished at nine, started at five o’clock and the next game starts at eleven.”

“It started on Thursday.”

Cindy’s laugh was genuine and infectious.  It quite cheered me up.

“Oh Mr Terry, you’re so funny.  And I suppose that it finishes tomorrow?”

“Well it could do but it’s more likely to end on Monday,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be silly.  Look, I’ve got a lot of calls waiting.  Anything else I can help you with?”

At eleven o’clock, as Cindy had promised, the cricket was back.   Jimmy Anderson bowled the fourth ball of the over he had started two hours ago.   There was no justification or explanation from Weststar.   Anyone switching on then would have assumed that this was live cricket.   I resisted the temptation to go to the BBC website to see the current state of play but instead I sat back and imagined that I was on a far distant planet, where radio signals take two hours to travel from the Earth and watched the rest of the day’s play ‘as live’.

As they promised they would, Weststar had shown, “ every ball of every game.”

Manchester City 1 (Adebayor 18’)  – Wolverhampton Wanderers 0, in case you’re interested and I bet you’re not. Hardly anyone ever was.