They say that people are fundamentally opposed to change (as in: the big life changes, not as in fear of the changing of the underpants. If you fear that, stop reading this blog right now and go get in the bathtub. Wash with both hands. Then burn all the undies you have.) I know a lot of people that do flip out if things change-Angus' mother is one of them. She fears change so much that I wonder if she would be reduced to a quaking leaf should she ever find out that not only have I been in love with the Spank Master for a long time, but that I am working on trying to have his illegitimate half-English half-American love child as well.

Oh yeah. That's got therapy written all over it.

As for me, I don't mind change. I really don't. My life tends to have the velocity of small hurricanes, so it's really more about trying to keep my arms and legs inside of my moving vehicle than it is about fearing what's to come. You don't get a name like Destructor for nothing. Even if, to be honest, no one actually calls me that. I just enjoy the childhood He-Man flashbacks.

But there is one area where I am now resistant to change. I don't want anything to be different in this one aspect. I will board up the doors and tell the hurricane to fuck right off, I'm not having any impending meteorlogical disasters in this house, thank you very much.

And it's about my lovely village, Whitney Houston.

I was always a city girl. Well, ok, when I was a child I was an Air Force Base girl, but as soon as I launched off the lily pad I smacked myself right down in the cities. I wanted to be in places where grocery stores never closed, where there was always a dodgy Mexican place open for a midnight burrito chased up with a two a.m. heartburn, and where I never knew a single one of my neighbors ever.

So I was filled with trepidation that when Angus told me about a little village that he had driven through, and would I like to see it?

When I heard the word "village", I envisaged people never getting off my front porch. Inbreeding. People having village fairs with apple crumble competitions. Andy Griffiths and Don Knotts getting into all kinds of zany small town sheriff mishaps. That kind of hokey stuff.

What I got instead was a little slice of heaven.

I am smacked upside the head on a daily basis how much I love living here in Whitney Houston. One of my favorite things to do is walk down to the village newsagent on Sunday mornings to get the paper. Every Sunday I love walking through the heart of this tiny place, and every Sunday I think: I am home.

Incredibly, I have a home.

The thing is, we are house hunting (if only that house in Brighton would sell! Sell, Mortimer, sell, sell!) and Whitney Houston? Yeah, the houses here cost a small ransom. Leave it to me to find the place of my dreams, only I will slowly have to sell off body parts on the black market to actually fund a home here. The houses come and go quickly in this market, and the range we're looking at is about £500,000 (that's about $1 million USD) and that kind of change won't get you much of a house in this part of the country, let alone in this village.

This village is posh.

Seriously.

It has a butcher, a baker (but no candlestick maker). Two banks. A tiny post office, a newsagent, and a small corner grocery shop. Four estate agents and a pet store. Two curry houses, one Chinese, and four pubs. But you know what makes it posh?

Six antique shops.

Six of them.

Plus a children's costume shop.

And two poshy wine stores.

So presumably you could lurch from the wine shop to the children's costume shop, buy yourself a fairy outfit, and then supplement it with costume jewelry from the 1920's at the antique stores. You know. As one does.

But the real reason why Whitney Houston is so popular is that it has England's oldest cricket green smack in the center of the village. Our home has one of the prime positions and looks out onto it. We are, therefore, very cool.

And the cricket season has begun.

Now, I'm an American, which therefore means that cricket as a whole makes about as much sense to me as a chocolate doorknob. You see the men running across the grass pitch wearing white pants, white shirts, and white sweater vests. This goes against my childhood upbringing: Jesus, Helen! You're wearing white! Get off the goddamn grass, do you have ANY IDEA how hard grass stains are to get out? Yet these men are deliberately flogging the Shout commercials-they have chosen to wear white and play games on a deep green manicured lawn! The insanity!

Simon once tried to explain how to play cricket. A guy at work once tried to show me using a whiteboard, but still, it no work. Cricket just didn't make sense to me. How can you play a game that can last 5 days straight, at which point it's possible that no one wins? I don't even want to have sex for 5 days straight, and that's way more fun that watching (paint dry) cricket.

But the lure is there. I watch cricket moms drop off their cricket sons, and I vow that if we have a boy he's going to be wrapped up in white sweater vests in no time. He's going to be given a cricket bat at birth and told that grass stains are A-OK in this house. I'm not going to be a soccer mom. I'm going to be a cricket mom. The lure is there-I very nearly have interest in cricket. I find something about it to be so diametrically opposed to everything I was raised with that it's almost an impulse to learn how to play a game that's nearly baseball, but without any athletic skill required at all.

On Monday the sound of leather on willow comes in through our windows, signs that a cricket game is in progress. It is time. Angus prints off these instructions for me so that I can try to follow the game. We look outside but suddenly the players have stopped-when I ask Angus what's up, he tells me that it's their tea break. They have tea breaks. Apparently, during this break they eat cucumber sandwiches as well.

I find this to be so hilarious that I nearly wee. Tea and cucumber sandwiches. Sheesh.

Once they start playing again, we walk to the green and sit outside the boundaries, opposite the cricket club.

I am dressed in paint-splattered clothing and a baseball hat. I have no lipstick on. I am clearly a model cricket fan.

We settle in on the grass, wearing shorts and soaking up the heat and the sunshine, and survey.

And I try to follow the game with the other cricket fans, only it's a lot of polite applause and thwock sounds from the willow bat. The men throw like girls. And I am mesmerized by one of the referees, who is, in fact, a little person. But still-I am nearly there with the interest. I keep trying to pay attention.

Angus, on the other hand, gets bored and explores the options on the camera.

I read the instructions, and although it makes a bit of sense, when Angus notices the last line of them he tells me that the cricket lesson is over. So we go back to the house, have a barbecue in the front garden (I had tofu "lamb style" grill. And wouldn't you know, it tasted like chicken.) and proceed to get very drunk on two bottles of wine.

The last line of the instructions?

The winning team is the one whose members are still conscious after five days. In the event that both teams remain conscious, Australia wins.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:16 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
Post contains 1378 words, total size 8 kb.

1 I might point out the long tradition of "cricket babes". If you had been sun-baking in a bikini top you too could join the pantheon of such women, forever immortalised in the world of cricket lovers and as much a part of the game as cucumber sandwiches. Angus's instructions are almost right: Australia always wins!

Posted by: Simon at May 03, 2005 08:10 AM (OyeEA)

2 gorgeous photos Helen, it really is great to see you smile! bises

Posted by: stinkerbell at May 03, 2005 10:21 AM (ZznPv)

3 Tea breaks? Sorry, but I'm speechless...

Posted by: ~Easy at May 03, 2005 01:05 PM (npJc/)

4 Helen, Cricket babe or not , you have just discovered the best thing about England. Keep it up and you will never love any other game. Don't believe me. Check out my blog By the way, wonderful photos. Sex is better but only by fraction ! p.s. : Yeah, true Australia always win. In fact they won the most recent Women's Cricket world cup also.

Posted by: Gana at May 03, 2005 01:32 PM (dHPoL)

5 I learned about cricket from an indian movie that actually got nominated for an Oscar. I think you might enjoy it (though it is long and can be a bit slow). It's called Lagaan. I know that in the US our blockbuster has it with subtitles, so I'm sure you won't have a problem finding it over there

Posted by: Jadewolff at May 03, 2005 02:13 PM (8MfYL)

6 I'm in the "What a wonderful Smile!" contingent. Everytime I read one of your posts about life in WH, I get so damn nostalgic and homesick for England that I could just throw up. Vomit aside, I am so happy that you're no longer on "mute" and that you have such a wonderful place to call home.

Posted by: Elizabeth at May 03, 2005 02:46 PM (q6wXP)

7 You are back in rare form, Helen. The photos are great - and I agree about the smile - it is wonderful.

Posted by: kenju at May 03, 2005 02:50 PM (Z0YaI)

8 You know, the apple crumble competition sounds like fun! abs x

Posted by: abs at May 03, 2005 03:47 PM (SrwBH)

9 ya know, out of all the pictures of you that you have posted, i honestly think you in the baseball cap is the cutest. tea breaks? so...perhaps at the end of a great tournament they then dump a pot of tea over the coach's head ? yowch. the pics look lovely and watching it sounds fun, but my heart will always belong to hockey and gatorade.

Posted by: h at May 03, 2005 04:29 PM (4dWnl)

10 And there are people that think baseball is boring

Posted by: livewire at May 03, 2005 05:51 PM (Ty5IB)

11 Hi! I just surfed my way to your blog and it looks like fun! I'll come back to visit often! Kristi

Posted by: Kristi at May 03, 2005 06:12 PM (axxuF)

12 Don't they have a lot of shorter one-day and even four-or-five-hour matches these days? I recall the Samizdata people going on about them. I, like all decent god-fearing Americans, don't understand Cricket either.

Posted by: Sigivald at May 03, 2005 09:59 PM (4JnZM)

13 I fell in love with cricket when I was in South Africa and spent many a long, long night watching the Test Series in Australia with my flatmate's boyfriend (and getting utterly pickled again and again). Its a great sport precisely because it can last five days and then there can still be no winner! Any sport that includes tea breaks is beyond cool in my book. I like the sepia pic of you though, nice smile!

Posted by: Johnny Huh? at May 04, 2005 12:05 AM (YkElu)

14 you said: "You don't get a name like Destructor for nothing. ". If people are still calling your "desctrutor" please consider getting a roll reversal and have people call you the "Constructor". I've learnt through bitter experience that what is good at the beginning of your carreer, is not a good thing to carry into your maturity. (after all you are on your way to Forty). I just returned from Australia where I tried to understand Cricket. It does help you go to sleep at night, and the Aussies always like to get the better of the English. Have a fantastic day.

Posted by: Iowa at May 04, 2005 12:53 AM (i/5Q1)

15 Holy Crap, Helen. Your picture of yourself in this post... you could be my damn sister. Good Lord.

Posted by: Boudicca at May 04, 2005 04:15 AM (z7nbM)

16 You're kidding, right? Cucumber sandwiches? You can make sandwcihes out of cucumbers? Tea breaks? I know the English were weird, but ... Beautiful pictures, I really like the sepia toned one. You look so happy. Good for you! :-P

Posted by: Hannah at May 04, 2005 12:38 PM (0tNIc)

17 mmmmmmmm chocolate doorknob. What'd you say? I lost you after I read chocolate doorknob. Oh and that picture of you with the hat? So.cute. Seriously, you look like you're 16 in that picture.

Posted by: sporty at May 04, 2005 05:39 PM (NsnoE)

18 Don't feel bad... as a South African and former SPORTS REPORTER no less (even though I was grossly miss cast in the position) I'm STILL unable to fathom cricket. One of my sweetest memories of my days as above-mentioned sports reporter (the poor sports pages had never witnessed so many "the person behind the sports star image" profiles) was when I walked into the Springbok cricket team (South Africa's national team) locker room... accidentally, of course. Oh, speaking of stains... do they still rub the ball, making those red marks along their crotches? I don't think South African cricket players eat cucumber sandwiches during their breaks. P.S. This didn't help my understanding of cricket at all, but if you haven't yet, watch the Bollywood movie Lagaan. It's about the British colonialists teaching and then eventually playing against the Indians. VERY entertaining, as all Bollywood movies are.

Posted by: redsaid at May 06, 2005 01:34 PM (svXbf)

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