My Wife and the Lord

We live at the outer edges of London and so the Tube stop is busy with people going down in the morning and coming up in the afternoon.  And so on a Thursday I was surprised to see the queue going the wrong way.


Even the escalators were both coming up, only stairs for those going down.

The universe was in reverse.  Usually this means a problem with the trains.  It wasnt the train, it was the first day of Cricket season and we are just down the street from the home of Cricket, Lord's Cricket Grounds.
A place where they started playing cricket about the time America was founded.


Getting to Lords was on my list of things to do one day and so I followed the crowd, scalped a ticket and found myself in the midst of England against the West Indies.


The crowd is proper, all carrying baskets, wearing ties and hats, sports coats and salmon-colored pants.  The Test match will last through Sunday.
I watched for an hour or so, walked the grounds, saw the school children emulating their favorite players, amazed that a sport with such wide appeal is so foreign to me that I couldn't really follow the scoring.  


After a visit to the gift shop I headed back to the tube.  When I got home that evening I told my wife where I'd spent the first part of my morning.  


There are a number of reactions she could have had: "Maybe you shouldn't be playing hookey," or "Maybe if you worked more..." or some other retort that I would make had she told me she spent the day on a shopping spree.


But instead she said, "Why don't you do that more often?"


"Why don't I go to more Cricket matches?"


"I hope this is something we bring back to the States with us," she said.


Me too.