I HATE wet summer Saturdays. No games are played, cricket teas go uneaten, carefully prepared pitches are unused and a chance to play a much-anticipated game is gone for ever.
I have not played properly for 30 years but that feeling has stayed with me.
It was especially strong when I was at school. With ‘Polly’ Holgate for maths, and ‘Froggy’ Hockridge for French on a Monday morning, I needed my weekend cricket fix. I still do.
Undecided whether to go back to my Sheepscombe roots or to pop in to Cirencester Park or Fairford, I soon realised as the rain swept in it was the sofa rather than any local cricket. For Mrs Light’s sake, I tried not to be objectionable.
My mood was made worse by what had happened on Friday evening. Let me set the scene. On Thursday evening, Gloucestershire had a T20 game at Chelmsford. It ended at 10.15pm.
The team coach arrived back at Bristol’s County Ground at 3am on Friday morning. Then the players had to get home.
At 5.30pm the same day, there was another T20 fixture against Glamorgan. Saturday was a day off but on Sunday it was on the road again to play Middlesex.
Three matches in four days is bad enough but when one of them is an evening fixture at Chelmsford, the demands on the players are unacceptable.
The ECB fixtures’ guru is about as popular as Sunday morning traffic wardens – the first is clearly incompetent, the second totally unnecessary.
Gloucestershire lost to Glamorgan in the Bristol gloom. Quite frankly, the team bowled and fielded in a fashion consistent with their lack of sleep, then with the bat it was only Captain Michael Klinger who took the battle to our opponents, who were fresh following a week with no cricket.
Missing Hamish Marshall and with Aussie Peter Handscomb yet to fire, success has been evasive of late but happily there was a win at Middlesex on Sunday.
Craig Miles was brought in to boost the attack and did so splendidly while David Payne was back to his wicket-taking best. A vigorous innings by Ian Cockbain put the game beyond the reach of Middlesex.
Although success has been hard to come by of late, two individual feats have excited me. Jack Taylor scored a fine century against Derbyshire and Craig Miles took 10 wickets in the game against Lancashire.
News of these two genuine, talented lads doing so well reached me as I enjoyed a holiday on the shores of Lake Garda. I have to inform you no Italian shared my joy at such news as they were all glum at the defeat of Juventus in some obscure irrelevant game of football.
The ‘Gravel Grandee’, as my good friend Roger Cullimore is known, shared my delight, however. Roger will share with me a bottle of Champagne when one of our youngsters plays for England.
You can watch them on TV this Friday as we entertain Somerset. It is hard to get near the dressing room mirror as certain individuals are already applying hair gel.
The Rev Bill Davidson, known to the cricket world as Mr W W Davidson (Oxford University and Sussex), has died and his funeral service is at the Parish Church (at 1pm on June 22). Bill played cricket at a time when amateurs were called Mr and always had their initials in front of their name.
Bill was special. My first cricket heroes were him, his colleagues and opponents. He played against Bradman’s Invincibles and he was the Oxford wicketkeeper when the young Tom Graveney made his county debut.
How good a wicketkeeper was he? He must have been very good to play at the level he did. He missed at least half a dozen years at the top because of the war, and after Oxford a distinguished career in the church beckoned so that question can never be answered, but in so many ways he was the greatest.
As a lover of the best of games, he was always a custodian of its values, talking of it with love and wonder. To visit Bill and Sally in Calmsden was a delight for Penny and I.
I miss talking cricket with my father. In the twilight of his life we talked about the years preceding the Second World War. Dad could remember those years clearly and I was just learning about the magic of the game. I missed those father-and-son conversations.
Bill Davidson helped me fill that gap and, like so many others, I have much for which to thank this gracious, understanding and essentially human man.  He will be missed by so many, for all the right reasons.