Cricket, football and banoffee pie

Last weekend was a fabulous family sporting and supporting session.  Starting with cricket: Somerset vs Kent at Canterbury.  Cricket is therapeutic; you don’t have to keep watching but can be certain that when you turn your back a wicket will fall.  The fanatics sit on the edge of their director’s deck chairs, score cards in hand, looking at the clouds scudding overhead and recalculating the Duckworth-Lewis in their heads. 

The more relaxed sit back gaze at the clouds, listen to the trees thrashing, the sound of leather against willow and screams of OwZat.  Canterbury is a lovely ground; cars can pull right up to the boundary and part of the excitement when a ball is hit for six is wondering if your car will take the ‘catch’.  The old Lime tree is now performing secondary duties as material for souvenirs and the new tree is developing well, this time outside of the boundary. 

Canterbury allows spectators onto the field during the interval to play ball games and aspiring players young and old practice their bowling and catching techniques.  This is the perfect time too for the picnic.  The banoffee pie and quiche travelled successfully to the match and the left over pie was voted ‘the best ever’ by an independent group of university students so thank you @easternsparkle for the recipe, my only adaptation was to use a biscuit base.

We stayed at the Falstaff Hotel, proper old English Inn with eggs Benedict for breakfast and a stroll around the town before making the long and anxious journey to Wembley for the Blue Square promotion battle.  Nerves were jangling, Torquay have been there before; more than once.  This is the team whose fortunes have previously been won by the bite of a police dog called Bryn.  

The atmosphere even in an only half full stadium was terrific and the total despair of Cambridge fans leaving suddenly at the end was heartfelt.  The Torquay fans, by now pinching themselves in disbelief, did not want to leave the ground and the team played their part by performing various dives for the cameras. – For the record Torquay won 2.0