H is for... Hove; and Human kindness

I still need to tell you about the other bits of Knit Nation and Fibre-East, and the Knitted Maze at Saffron Walden; but while this is still fresh in my mind and I'm making the pics available for Hove Daily Photo; What I Did on My Holidays.


Wibbo and I had an absolutely lovely day at the cricket at the Sussex County Cricket Ground at Hove on September 1 - watching Durham bowl out the home team and then have a bit of a bat themselves. We were at the second day of a 4-day match (which Durham won. Yay. Yes, I'm partisan; Durham's Riverside/Emirates ground is about 5 minutes' walk from my old primary school and less than 15 mins from my parents' house... But ahem. Hove.)


Not knowing what we were doing, we walked right round the ground (the entrance is near the block of flats to the left) and sat ourselves at ground level. (Sadly, there isn't a corresponding JETS stand at the other side of the stadium but that's because the local T20 team is the Sharks.) This was actually lovely - very peaceful, and a couple of sections' seating was in blue-and-white deckchairs - and we absorbed much additional cricket knowledge via the chaps (and they were mostly chaps) in front and behind us.

At lunchtime, the spectators occupied the outfield, and whacked tennis-balls about. Hugely encouraging number of boys and girls, mums and dads with bats and balls. I understand this is pretty standard practice, and it must be a huge encouragement to want to play on the ground...

And proof it's never too soon to start.

In the afternoon, we moved to the SHARKS stand; which turned out to be only marginally less atmospheric but a much, much better way to watch play. And to observe favourites as they fielded on the boundary.

Paul Collingwood!

Monty Panesar!

Callum Thorp signing autographs! This was a feature of all the boundary fielders - the Durham ones were slightly mobbed but then of course they would be; presumably the keen kids have all the Sussex ones already...

There were seagulls...

There was knitting...
And there was a somewhat inevitable seagull-on-knitting incident. Suffice to say this project is registered on Ravelry as the Seagull Poo Socks.

It was a lovely day and I hope we'll do it again.

In fact, it's only posting this which reminds me it took five hours to get home afterwards due to some mindless wazzock wandering about on the lines at Thornton Heath. Scenes at Victoria, after I staggered off the train nearly 2 hours late, were insane; one woman screaming "this is just unacceptable!" in a cut-glass accent, over and over and over again, as I tried to get through the throngs of people hurling themselves against the barriers... OK, she was obviously a bit of a Special Snowflake; but I hope Mr Anonymous Trespasser was happy with his evening's work.

Otherwise, though, my faith in human nature is currently at a bit of a high. I managed to lose a very lovely knitting bag on a train the Friday I started my week's holiday, complete with Jan's half-finished birthday present (I should say this was a second attempt, the first having come out too small despite blocking), several Addi needles and my little toolkit box; and reclaimed it the following Friday after understated heroics from the lost property chap at Cambridge station.


And then on the train between Brighton and Hove on the intervening Wednesday, I texted Jan and then promptly left my phone on the seat - it was retrieved by the conductor and we collected it at Brighton station that evening before knitting due to Brighton station being really sensible and texting Jan with the information on where it could be collected... Finally (I thought), I bought a fantastic bargain pair of purple suede Hotter boots while in Norwich with Rosie and due to a moment of extreme excitement in a second-hand bookshop, left them there. An hour later, I got those back, too.


I thought that was the end of it. However, sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning the Bug went missing, and turned up finally lateish on Friday night just before I started printing flyers; and on Thursday afternoon I had a meeting with a colleague, after which she left her knitting bag in a public area, and retrieved it on her way home...


I know there's some horrible stuff out there. I've travelled through areas hit by the riots and there are some mindless thugs around; I listen to the news. But sometimes you just need a reminder that most people are honest and kind, and I've had that over the last couple of weeks.