Not the start to pre-season I was looking for...
I knew everything was going too well. The usual Friday night panicsurrounding the following day's programme hadn't really materialised; both Andy and myself had been calm, composed and - perhaps more surprisingly - pretty well organised (now there WAS a first!).
Aside from a bit of design work on page 3 (oo-er) the new-look match programme was just about wrapped-up and both of us were happy with the end result. Of course I'm not going to claim it was all our own work...in fact I've got to say most of it was Lewes FC's work - well, their design ideas at any rate. But we'd tweaked certain bits to our liking - we're not simple plagiarists you know.
And so with Mrs Slush out for an Indian, the Slushettes away with the fairies and the programme (almost) put to bed, I treated myself to a large glass of Chilean Red and sat down to enjoy Fire In Babylon, the brilliant film account of the glory years of West Indian cricket. Ooh, and while you've got to say Michael Holding's bowling action ("Whispering Death") was a thing of great beauty, it was still bloody painful to look at the footage of what it did to Brian Close!
I woke up the next morning in fine spirits. The day had dawned fine, I was in good time to get a hectic Saturday underway and despite the rumoured defections of a few faces from last year, I was in quietly confident mood about the season to come. Then I got into the office.
One "Security Patch" upgrade on my PC and a dodgy printer later - some two hours in time - I was behind schedule and with only 16 completed programmes to show for my "efforts". All had an annoying red flash running down the right hand side of certain pages. My tourettes kicked in big style.
Three hours later - having delivered the Elder Slushette to her dance class and back, and having laid out the kit in preparation for the arrival of the players - I was back in the office to have another bash. This time I managed 25 copies, 3 of which were "red-free". They would have to do. I raced back to the ground - avoiding the Easington Wedding of the Year" which had drawn a small crowd of well-wishers to the Square - hoping the players would offset my darkened demeanour with a performance to savour. Thankfully, they did.
