Cricket at the Balmer Lawn Hotel

Not an obscure P G Wodehouse novel, but rather something that always seemed to be an annual event: the sight of a cricket match being played in front of the Balmer Lawn Hotel.  Which, if you don't know, is a large country hotel just outside of Brockenhurst as you approach the village from Lyndhurst on the A337.  You can't miss it - it is right by the road, on the left as you go into Brockenhurst.  If you take the left hand turning just after it, not only can you access the hotel - they serve cream teas in the Summer - but if you drive on past and follow the road, you'll get to Beaulieu and from there to Lepe beach.  But to get back to the point, when I was a kid, there always seemed to be a cricket match going on in front of the hotel when we drove past on family outings to the beach.  Later, when, as an adult, I started making my own trips to the beach and the New Forest, on at least one of my journeys in the course of the Summer I'd see a cricket match in progress.  Then, suddenly, it seemed to stop.  For year after year, no matter what time in the Summer I drove past the hotel, the green would be empty, devoid of any sporting activity, let alone cricket.  But finally, this Summer, on my earliest trip to the coast, there they were, playing cricket in front of the hotel.

The funny thing is that I don't even like cricket, nor do I have any idea as to who the sides I see playing there are.  In fact, I don't even know if that green they play on actually has anything to do with the hotel at all, or whether its location is purely coincidental.  Yet I find the sight of that cricket match strangely reassuring.  As long as people played cricket outside the Balmer Lawn Hotel, then all was right with the world.  At least, that's what I felt as a child, a feeling that, for some unfathomable reason, persisted into adulthood.  My Summers never quite felt complete if I didn't see those cricketers.  But this Summer can draw to a close with me feeling irrationally content because I saw that bloody cricket match.  One Summer I might just stop at the Balmer Lawn Hotel when I see that match in progress and try to find out who the teams are.  Maybe I'll even drop into the hotel itself, as I've been promising myself for years that I'll do, and have a cream tea and scones while watching the cricket...