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The Heald Report . . .
Number 1
MAY 2003
Just back from a few days in Lancashire
researching my new book on Village Cricket for Little, Brown. What could be more
quintessentially English than sitting in front of the pavilion at Mawdsley with
a mug of milky tea and two veteran cricketers as the freezing rain comes
slanting in across the field of play and still the run-makers flicker to and
fro, to and fro, just like they did in the best ever cricket poem by Francis
Thompson a local lad from Preston, nearby? Gosh, the English take their
pleasures seriously!
It was a fascinating few days and I managed to
get a really useful cameo of three clubs - Mawdsley, about an hour's
drive north-west of Manchester; Chipping in the Ribble Valley; and Wrea
Green towards Blackpool where I had lunch in the Grapes with the vicar who
used to be secretary and opened the batting, and tea with 88 year old Dick
Wilson who was captain and president and got a valedictory letter from Prince
Philip when he chalked up his fiftieth year of active village cricket.
A major part of my motivation as a writer has
always been getting out into the world beyond my windows, meeting as wide a
range of people as possible and reporting them and their activities as
entertainingly and accurately as I
can. I never fail to be surprised and impressed by the diversity and complexity
of the people I'm lucky enough to meet.
Striking a balance between the loneliness of the
long-distance writer and the gregariousness of research (not to mention sales
and marketing) is always challenging but this was a good trip with all sorts of
incidental asides such as a visit to the Lowry in Salford, the Harris in
Preston, the Royal Exchange Theatre, Mancheter City's game against West Ham
(their last but one at Maine Road) and a
brilliant Indian restaurant on the "Curry Mile" in Rusholme.
The Lancashire experience was all the more
enjoyable for being sandwiched between a dinner hosted at Claridges by Veuve
Clicquot for their new Businesswoman of the year and the annual lunch for
ex-Chairmen of the Crime Writers Association at Soho House in London. I know the
line about Variety being the Spice of Life is a cliché but even so...
On Sunday I'm chairing a discussion at the du
Maurier Festival here in Cornwall. The subject is cricket writing and the
participants are the Bishop of Truro, who still bowls his leg breaks for the
Gentlemen of Cornwall, and Ronnie Harwood who has just won his second
Oscar for his screenplay for Roman Polanski's brilliant new film "The
Pianist".
But that's another story...
Tim Heald
May 2003
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