Cricket in the Park

I’m trying to bring back light and breezy posting - ones that are short, sweet, and drive a little habit creation. Today, like every Friday, we went to our local park/cricket club and our eldest did his cricket lesson while the middle child played independently on the park.

It was great.

The eldest got to cycle to the park by himself, found some friends, and played until their lesson started. More than half of his school year does the cricket lessons, and so he’s got a bunch of pals that he gets to play with. After the lesson, they all decamp to the park, have sweets and generally live their best life.

The middle child goes to the park where there’s a collection of supervising parents (often not the child’s own) and she finds her nursery friends and they run around after each other.

The parents go to the bar and buy a drink and enjoy not parenting of a Friday night.

The cricket lessons are run by teenagers - my guess would be 13 - 17 year olds who are presumably getting experience, getting paid (a small amount) and are getting a bit of responsibility handling 30-odd 6 year olds.

What a wonderful thing for everybody involved. Probably something like 5% of the entire village goes to the cricket club of a Friday night. The bar is run by volunteers, and I’ve got a feeling that I should join that team at some point. The pitch is maintained by volunteers. The park was funded by volunteers and is probably maintained by volunteers.

It takes a small army of people to make some magical village life. But at least to me, all their hard work is worth it when you see what it brings every Friday evening.