Can't repeat the past old sport? Why of course you can!

I don’t like the sounds cricket makes - the love signals of the bat attracting the ball, the click, the clop, dead airwaves filled by the noise of the sun, and then, worse, the low murmur of the commentator. But these sounds are linked with my childhood summers, the background soundtrack to hot days running in and out of the house.

I learned the rudimentary rules of the game from front yard cricket. I was invariably the fielder, my brother - the batter, my father - the bowler (when I questioned my father recently as to why I was only ever given the role of fielding, he said without a pause: well we probably let you bat once but we saw you weren’t any good). In any case, I had the riskiest position as my brother batted from the top of our sloping driveway and I was stationed on the road, dodging cars while I waited for the ultimate howzat! I'd always been quite good at Frogger.

Although the word cricket might come from the old French criquet, living outside the Commonwealth I certainly don’t hear it talked about much anymore. And as for the summer clips and clops, probably the nearest sounds in France are those of petanque, and they don’t even come close.

But holidaying in Australia in December it was hard to escape the hoo-ha over Australia’s win against England. Despite all those expert, bare-handed catches of my childhood I still remain fairly ignorant of the terminology and rules of the game, as well as about how to hold a bat and bowl. I’m generally quite curious about many things, but a combination of the sounds cricket makes and the wedding-whites worn by the players – I've always been a fan of off-white, leaves me listless.

When I complained to one of my male friends about too much cricket, he recounted that when he was at his new girlfriend’s place recently he turned on the tv and was aching to switch on to the cricket. She said "you can watch the cricket if you like". But he didn’t want to dent her with a bad impression at such an early stage in their relationship, make her think he was just one of those cricket guys. In the end, after he'd been ogling the ballroom dancing for half an hour she said "actually I'd prefer it if you watch the cricket".

This reminds me of early in my relationship with H, when my shadow would pass over the computer and he'd quickly flick away the open web page. I found this a bit disconcerting, after all, search engines can lead us all kinds of places. Later I saw that it was just an online Portuguese newspaper. I assumed it was like most newspapers – with news, entertainment, sport. It’s only when I was diagnosed with World Cup fever last June and H found out that he has a girlfriend who, as well as liking high brow dresses and pretty literature, also likes talking football, that he came out and admitted that the newspaper he looks at every day is dedicated solely to football.

Then he lamented that unlike Portugal, France has no culture of football and that the French only talk about football when France is playing and mainly just during the World Cup. Point taken – when I was in Portugal out of the season, nearly every bar had a television playing a match, and if there was no match on in the world they just showed re-runs of the matches of the 1970s or beach football or ice football or snow football.

Since the World Cup I'm afraid H has found me to be rather French in my relationship with football. Although he tries vainly to keep me updated on the moves and shakes in the European football clubs, for the moment I remain as listless as I am with cricket. Without any countries to support I can't re-find the passion I had in some of the posts from my old blog, which I've re-posted at this juncture.