The Heald Report . . .                                                                  Number 6    SEPTEMBER 2003

Major Rodney's XI lost the great cricket match against the Chairman of Fowey's Select, I'm afraid. (see The Heald Report No. 5)

I lost the toss which was a bit of a disaster... I've written it all up at some length so seriously interested parties should prepare to purchase the book which Little Brown should, dv, publish in April next year. Suffice it to say that out star player was Bishop Bill of Truro who bowled an immaculate ten overs and took three for sixteen.

The team. Back row, LtoR: Alexander and Tristram (Tim's sons), Hemish, Joe, Neil, Joshi                Front row: Steve, Doctor Mel, Tim, Bishop Bill, General Charles

No-one else came close and they made 209 for seven. Our fielding rather let us down (I was covered in bruises later) taking one first bounce ball on the chest, diving/falling over and pulling some sort of thigh muscle.

High-spot of the innings was when the Bishop had their captain, Ed Leverton, stumped by Steve Hewlett, Head of Programmes at Carlton TV in London, who kept wicket very stylishly throughout.

I thought the runs were gettable given reasonable luck but we got off to a disastrous start with the General (Major-General Charles Vyvyan), the Bishop and the TV mogul all back in the hutch for about seven runs. I'd been expecting great things of Charles who used to open for Winchester and the Oxford Authentics but this time was comprehensively bowled after playing a typically elegant forward defensive shot and missing the ball completely. I made what I thought was an incredibly courageous half-dozen which would have been more if I'd been able to run properly. My former GP, Mel Henry, was hit on the toe by a fast yorker and had to have a blood clot lanced a few days later - serve him right for being so unsympathetic to my strains and sprains. The tail wagged a bit but we were all out for 79. And so to the Marina Hotel for a splendid barbecue and more filming. 

We had the cameras on us all day and for much of it I was wired for sound. Very disconcerting. David Taylor has now finished filming and is into the editing process. Pretty scary. We've been busy since with lots of visitors for Regatta Week and two quick trips to London, one of them an "up on the sleeper and back on the sleeper the following night".

My Independent piece on the French caviar farm was about to run and then got held out. However I was commissioned to write a piece about Falmouth's new Literature Festival which went in to the Independent on Sunday last Sunday, uncut and with a shameless puff for my own performance on September 11th at the rival St. Ives' Festival.

But perhaps the best news is that I've finalised an arrangement with our excellent local bookshop "Bookends of Fowey" run by Ann and David Willmore. From now on they will carry a modest stock of Heald titles and do their level best to help people to find out-of-print titles. They are fully geared up to mail books anywhere in the world and can be found at:

Bookends of Fowey
4 South Street, Fowey, 
Cornwall PL23 1AR, United Kingdom

Ann and David also specialise in such Cornish authors as "Q" and Daphne du Maurier. When I spoke to them this morning they'd already sold one of my books, the first we all hope of many.  Now I have to finish as much as possible of the cricket book before nipping down to St. Ives to give my talk and then taking the sleeper to London and on to Heathrow and Miami for a Tatler travel piece and, much more important, my grandson's christening in Coconut Grove!


Tim Heald

September 2003

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