‘You’re an addict,’ said the voice.
I ignored it.
‘A hopeless, feeble addict, a dupe, barren of purpose, barren of willpower, a life-form in suspension, a dangling teat-sucker, a dependent, an adult baby, nappy-wrapped, close to foetal, curled on the sofa with the curtains drawn, passive as a bacterium, unable to...’
‘Are bacteria passive?’
‘Ah, so there is a brain in there somewhere. I thought it had withered from lack of sunlight.’
‘Will you please be quiet?’ I said. ‘I’m trying to watch the test match.’
‘No you’re not. You’re trying NOT to watch the test match. You keep saying to yourself, “Just one more over.”
‘And your point?’ ‘My point is...’
‘Oh did you see that? Did you ever see anything so lovely? Peter Fulton just strode down the pitch to Panesar and hoisted the ball onto the roof of the stand with the ease of a man opening a bottle of milk. The noise of the ball on the bat was like the ringing of a bell. It was pitch perfect, as sweet as a truffle. It was beauty in action, my friend. Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.’
‘Oh, so you just like the slogging.’
‘If I just liked the slogging I’d watch 20/20. But 20/20 is to a test match as Twitter is to Shakespeare. 20/20 is the game for the iPod lover, the gimme-gimme consumer. Whereas test cricket is like life itself. Its very duration, its stretched-out-ness is its glory. A game, a series, can wax and wane like the moon, the players with it. A month ago, for example, this same Peter Fulton was stumbling around the crease like a meths drinker and groping for the ball with hope and little else. Yet now, just look at him. He is lord of the greensward, magisterial, dismissive, treating the world’s best bowlers as Henry VIII treated wives. Over the course of fifteen days cricket I’ve watched him grow in mind and spirit.’
‘But it’s all so slow.’
‘There are slow bits, for sure, just as there are in life. But possibility lurks always around the corner, ready to throw off its drab cloak and astonish you with its rooster raiment. You just never know when. You can’t look away. And besides you can always while away the dull bits by inventing sentences that mention as many members of the England team as possible.’
‘Such as?’
‘When the prior rang the bell for his cook, who should trot out but his broad?’
‘Is that it?’
‘And her son.’
‘What happened to Joe Root?’
‘He got bowled by Tim Southee for 45. But there’s more to cricket than any individual game or player. I was dunked in cricket at birth. I’ve known it as long as I’ve known anything. The mere sight of men in white walking out onto a faultless mown arena with five days of battle ahead of them infuses me with pleasure, reassures me of continuity, tells me the world’s still the right way up. Just. Test cricket is to me as daffodils were to Wordsworth.’
‘And that,’ said the scorn-laden voice, ‘justifies wasting fifteen days of summer sunshine cooped up in a darkened room gawping at a screen and inventing feeble puns to pass the time, fifteen days of your allotted span, a chunk of time that you will never have again?’
‘To quote my old mate Larkin, “days spent hunting pig or holding a garden party, advance on death equally slowly.” ’
‘But you aren’t hunting pig and you aren’t holding a garden party. You’re doing nothing. You’re just lying there as a passive receptacle. You’re watching other people live, not living yourself. You’re getting your jollies vicariously. You’re cutting no capers and you’re swashing no buckle. You could barely describe yourself as a human being. You’re just a breathing lump, of no more worth to the world than the aforementioned bacterium. Was it this you were born for? Are you proud of your gawping?’
‘No.’
‘Good. So listen to me, the voice of your conscience, who urges you to be up and doing, to get out in the sunshine and swash that buckle and actually make something of the messy little thing you call your life rather than watch others doing so. Stop saying to yourself “just one more over,” or “I’ll turn it off when a wicket falls”. Get off your butt and live.’
‘Okay.’ ‘What?’
‘Okay, I will. Just as soon as Peter Fulton gets his hundred.’
‘You’re an addict.’