The sad goodbye when you give up your Lord's seats after 15 seasons
Margaret, two seats away from us, married a man who didn’t like cricket. He hadn’t noticed that their daughter’s initials were LBW. Barbara and her pals in front of us, were in the rock business. When not doing PR for the likes of Madonna or The Duckworth Lewis Method band, they were to be found discussing Chelsea, world tennis, or lunching in the Warner Stand restaurant.
Terry and Marion to our left ran a heating/engineering company in Essex. We met and shared picnics with their daughter and future son-in-law, both cricket-mad in general and Essex-mad in particular, when they were courting. We saw them married, gave them a book of aerial pictures of the cricket grounds of England for their wedding, and visited Teresa in hospital the day she gave birth to the FEC (future England captain).
And there was us, me and my wife Anne or whichever of our sons took the two tickets. Both journalists, we were able to conjure a few media celebs to enhance proceedings, the likes of Matthew Engel, Amol Rajan, Roger Alton or Simon Hughes. They, like all guests, would be welcomed into the seasonticket family of the Upper Edrich Stand.
Deep into autumn last year I was invited to watch English Schools Cricket Association v MCC Schools at Lord’s. I sat with a friend in the president’s box in the Grand Stand in the near-deserted ground. To my left, workmen were in the process of dismantling the Edrich and Compton stands. Our seats, K94 and 95, had already gone. It was a sad goodbye.
Those seats had been ours for over 15 years, offering arguably the best view in world cricket – from behind the bowler’s arm, looking towards the Lord’s pavilion. They were guaranteed for every match, come rain or shine – and with no shade or shelter from any direction, we experienced any weather to the full.
Now they were gone, to be replaced by debenture seats to pay for the redevelopment of the Nursery End at a price we could not begin to afford. We pleaded with MCC to be allocated seats somewhere else in the new stand, but to no avail. They were polite but insistent that our time was up.
It had always seemed too good to be true – our own seats for every match at Lord’s. The cost was the combined total of every flagship game at the ground, with Middlesex games thrown in for free. MCC member friends were envious. There they were, having waited a zillion years to get membership, queuing up before rushing to secure a seat. We just turned up, said hello to our regular stewards, who hardly had to check our season tickets, which came in a neat little book in a different colour every year.
It had all started when my wife got a letter from MCC with words to the effect of: “Dear Madam, we notice that you are a frequent buyer of tickets at Lord’s and wonder if you would like to purchase season tickets.” You bet. And thus begun a wonderful rhythm to our summers with a ready-made set of friends – two Tests, a couple of ODIs, one-day finals and the occasional Middlesex match. The start of each season would bring news of births, marriages, deaths and new jobs plus Margaret’s account of a winter overseas with the Barmy Army.
OK, the seats were a bit tight if three big blokes sat next to each other. And when it was cold it was very cold up there. There was an early Test against the Windies one May when we had to buy an extra layer of clothing from the Lord’s shop, while the tourists shivered and froze on the boundary. And when it was hot it was very, very hot, requiring linen shirts, lashings of Factor 50 and wide-brimmed hats. We discovered late in the day the joys of going into St John’s Wood High Street to buy Evian facial spray. They were having a laugh over the price but it worked.
The High Street was a strange place, a 100 or so yards from the world’s most famous cricket ground and yet a world away. A couple of times when rain was forecast we ventured there for lunch. There was a Middle Eastern restaurant that had just opened – almost the closest eaterie to the North Gate. The manager was perplexed to find an influx of people on a Thursday. He had no idea about the ground, no idea of a Test match and was astounded to hear it could last five days. He got the message and was soon doing quick lunches.
But let’s get down to the nittygritty – the picnic and who had brought what. The most important matter, ob
viously, was how to keep the Chablis cold enough for the official opening, at midday. This became as competitive as the elevenses, salads and sausage rolls – and even the type of hamper they came in. My neighbour Joel and I decided the best thing was to get up early and put the Chablis (one bottle per person) into the freezer and take it out as we left the house and put it straight into a frozen sleeve and then into the thermal-lined bottle holder on the side of our Fortnum’s picnic rucksack. This had been a particularly popular Christmas present from my wife. It only ever went to Lord’s. Fittingly at the back end of the last season the zip jammed for good.
M&S was our supermarket for nibbles and I like to think we were the leaders in this field. Joel and Teresa were the aces at salads. Barbara was the master of ready-mixed Pimms for the start of proceedings.
We all knew the etiquette of when to head down the stairs for a pee. Certainly not when anyone was bowling from our end. The amateurs around us would get a kindly reprimand from the stewards to stay seated until the end of the over.
Then there was the timing of the afternoon top-up from the bars downstairs to make sure they coincided with the pee break. The compulsory stroll around the ground, where we never completed a circuit without bumping into someone we knew. And, on warm days, the ice-cream run, the challenge being to get them back to the seats without dripping. At Tests, scanning of the boxes was obligatory – Mick Jagger, John Major (often), the current Archbishop of Canterbury, queuing with us at the North Gate, and occasionally the Queen, her standard raised over the pavilion on arrival. We once heard someone pointing to the red and yellow flag over the Grand Stand and remarking that they hadn’t realised the Spanish played cricket.
If only it could have gone on forever. We started to read nervously about plans to redevelop the Compton and Edrich stands and were relieved when delays were announced. But the bad news followed soon after. Not only would our seats go, but with them our beloved season tickets. The summer of 2019 would be our last. We wrote to the secretary and had a sympathetic call with one of his team who agreed to review the decision, but it was clear that Lord’s had no appetite to continue the scheme.
So we are left with some fantastic memories and friendships – and the cricket. We saw a lot of it out there on a pitch that shimmered as if under floodlights, even when they weren’t on. Our favourite overseas performance was by the Kiwi captain Brendon McCullum, who represented everything thrilling and decent about his wonderful country and the game. We had a pantomime relationship with the Aussies, supporters and players alike – especially Shane Warne; we were there for 18-year-old Mohammad Amir’s deliberate no-ball and for one of the most disappointing West Indies displays. County matches too, away from the Lord’s murmur, where we could hear the players and have a chance to think over a Thermos.
We saw some great England Test players, from Andrew Flintoff and the 2005 victors to Ben Stokes peppering the stands. All with a TMS soundtrack in one ear. It was a privilege and a pleasure for 15 seasons. Summers will never quite be the same.
• This article is from the Nightwatchman. The summer 2020 edition is out now. Get the print edition for £8 plus p&p or the digital edition for just £3 with coupon code GSN30.