More West Indies

Thursday 25 th February

Suffering from sore feet from last night. It was an amazing reception, very formal with lots of protocols but very tiring. We are all suffering from standing for so long in shoes and suits that we are unaccustomed to.

I woke early this morning so I started with a before breakfast swim in the outdoor pool. It was a delightful way to start the day and was followed by breakfast with fresh fruit. Onto our coach to travel to the UWI which is the sports university. Here we were to coach about 60 children for the day. We all lathered on loads of sun cream but as we realised later in the evening, it was not enough!! The children were of all abilities and quickly attached themselves to one of our younger coaches who had to spend half an hour at the end of the day signing autographs. It was hot all day but we were treated to a lovely lunch in an air conditioned room so we were fevived for the afternoon.

We travelled back to the hotel for a brief freshen up in the pool before we donned our second, slightly less formal suit for our reception with the British High Commissioner and his wife. We asked our liaison officer to ring and ask his PA if our 2nd uniform was acceptable and were very relieved when he said yes. The Britsh High Commissioner had met us the night before so had seen our full uniform. This was a lovely evening and was hosted from his house. This is up on the hill and has splendid views out to sea and over the Port Of Spain city. There were some important West Indian sporting women there, the World hammer throwing champion, a contender for the world boxing title and a beach volley ball player. It was a lot less formal and we all had a great time. We went from there to a famous bar in town called 'Smokey and Bunty'.

I finally manged to round them all up and we came back to the hotel at a reasonable time as Bev (the captain) and I need to be up early as we have a TV interview on local breakfast TV tomorrow.

West Indies

No pictures yet, they will follow, but sitting on my bed in Trinidad where we are on tour.

Monday 22nd February.

Drove to London where the touring team, the MCC Ldies Cricket team were meeting for the start of their tour. We had designer suits made for us as a touring uniform and this was to be the first time we had seen them. Paul Costello is the designer and the suit consists of a navy jacket with red and yellow ribbon trim and a navy skirt. Very smart but not quite my sort of thing. Paul came to see us all and we had several photos taken with him in the Long Room. We also had head and shoulder pictures done (have not seen mine yet but have seen the team ones).

We also had a net session, packed our bags, including a mangers bag which weighed 32kilos and was/is my reponsibility. This is filled with cricket balls, a flag and miscellaneous presents to be given to officials. Off to the hotel in the airport for the night.

Tuesday 23rd February.

Up very early, into suits and high heeled shoes and walked, or staggered to the airport. I had a big shoulder bag with paperwork,laptop etc a cricket bag and a managers bag so I was struggling ! We managed to get all our luggage through, (massively overweight) and went through to departures. There I said the team could change into official tracksuits, which we had hidden in our hand luggage. The flight was long, 11 hours but it passed uneventfully. I knew we were being met at the Trinidad airport so I thought we could change while waiting for our bags. What I didn't know,was that the Zimbabwe men's team were travelling with us and so the press were waiting as we got off the plane! We all had to dash into the loos and do a quick change. With the change and the heat, I was a dripping mess and had 'bed hair' from the flight and was caught for interview! The first interview was with Colin Croft who is a famous retired West Indian cricket player. I then had some sort of television interview. Next we were met by our Liaison officer and taken to the carpark - mistakenly, I thought it was to get on the coach, but no, it was to have cold beers from the boot of his car!! The heat, the flight, the small amount of food and beer are not a good mix for me. We moved to our hotel and ended up eating a meal at 22 30 which is 02 30 English time.


Wednesday 24 th

Leisurely breakfast after a swim in the outdoor pool and then back into the suits to go to 'The Oval' for photos and a press conference. Had our photos taken and then the captain and I had our conference. We were taken to a room and when we opened the door it was to see a row of cameras and microphones. I do not remember much about all the questions but we got through it without making too many mistakes. We were told at this point that we had featured on the tele and also in the Trinidad Guardian. I think if you google it you can find the photo. We then had a lazy afternoon around the swimming pool before getting into our suits yet again to go and meet the Trinidad President and his First Lady. Very formal affair and standing for two and a half hours in high heeled shoes !!

Convent(ion)

This last weekend I had an adventure. Many months ago a chance remark on here, https://www.ravelry.com/account/login

led to a group of us gathering in a converted convent in York for a knitting/spinning/crafting weekend.

This is a picture of my bedroom. Not the largest imaginable and apart from having to virtually crawl on my knees to get there, it was very comfortable. It was up in the eaves of the building behind the bell tower and this is the view from the window.

The weather was bitterly cold, but dry and sunny and there was an opportunity to explore York. I walked the entire wall, both ways. The first time I was alone as I was competing against 'The Archers' and Andy Murray for company, but the second time, I had company in the form of my friend Natalie. This talented lady dyes yarn and below is an example of her yarn. It is now a sock for me to play cricket in on my tour to Trinidad later this month. This is how you can find her work. http://www.theyarnyard.co.uk/
The sock is plain knitting, toe up, but when I came to the leg, I purled all the coloured stitches that I came to. This really makes the colours 'pop' out and gives a lovely random texture.

Apart from exploring the wall walk, we went to a quilt exhibition, ate loads, knitted, chatted (lots), learned to tat, learned to crochet, spun on wheels and spindles, laughed and chatted some more. We were known as 'the knitters' but at one point we were mistaken for nuns.

As I don't know how to upload more photos half way through a post, more can be seen here http://www.flickr.com/photos/paraknit if you are interested.