“Well, well, well.”

It had been a year since we first challenged Wallace to a game of bowls.

At Mrs Big A’s birthday party. We had been drinking. He had scoffed at our taking-up-bowling status. “You?!? Get out of here! You’d be rubbish!”

So we had challenged him. To a duel, like they did in the olden days (but with bowls).

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. We mocked each other, drinking further. And as we both left the party we were pointing at each other: ‘you wait!!!’

Wallace is very, very, extremely good at bowls. He plays most days, for many of the local clubs. But we would teach him a lesson and beat him to within an inch of his life (with bowls).

Plans hatched over a lot to drink tend to go one of two ways. Either they get completely forgotten and never mentioned again, or they sort of take on a life of their own in an alarming sort of way, and the next thing you’re doing is waking up on the Aberdeen sleeper/arranging to set up a windsurfing school in Finland with two mates from school/setting up a national register of ID cards, etc.

Our plan kind of fell between these two stools. So actually plans hatched over a lot to drink tend to go one of three ways. Three. Nobody forgot about it. There was a lot of banter over the garden hedge. This banter tended to consist of Wallace saying ‘so come on then, when are you going to arrange this match then, boys?’ and Short Tony or I saying ‘oh yes, soon, definitely soon, we will arrange it, oh yes, we are not scared of you, nono.’ And soon it got to a point when I was disguising myself in women’s clothes and wearing a bag over my head every time I walked past his house just in case he jumped out with a date and a venue all arranged.

But then the challenge was gradually forgotten, as happens.

“Well, well, well,” repeated Wallace. “Fancy you playing for this lot.”

I cursed Short Tony and his allegedly sore toe. I ought to have twigged that you can still play bowls with a sore toe. He must have received insider information. Sure enough, he had been drawn against Wallace. So I, as his replacement, had my fate sealed.

What goes around comes around. I trudged on to the green knowing that I was going to be stuffed, humiliated; I was going to be ground into the ground; I would get a good kicking; dogshite was going to be rubbed into my face and my pants were going to be pulled up into my arse crack.

But with bowls.

“The thing is,” explains Short Tony, “that I have injured my toe. I can hardly walk.”

I make sympathetic noises at him, down the telephone. “Ahhhhhh; ohhhhh.”

“Another time, maybe,” he offers.

I have a different idea. “Do you fancy a game of tennis?” I ask.

“No.”

This is disappointing. Short Tony usually beats me at tennis, but I am feeling particularly fit and lively this morning. It is a shame that he sees fit to bottle my challenge.

We discuss his injury. To my disgust as a sportsman it is not a hairline fracture of the metatarsal, but a small amount of mankiness exacerbated by wearing deck shoes dipped in Norfolk Broad all weekend.

“Or gout,” says Short Tony. “Apparently it’s a bit like the first signs of gout.”

I reassure him that gout traditionally affects only old men who play bowls, are a bit overweight and unfit, and eat and drink too much.

“Speaking of which, you couldn’t fill in for me tonight?”

I agree to take his place in the bowls team. I make more sympathetic noises, and we ring off. He hobbles away from the telephone in a comical fashion. (NB I do not actually see this as I am at the other end of the line but it probably happened, it is called writers’ license, or something).

Later on, I park at the pub next to the bowling green. His block will be very pleased to have an excellent substitute. Grabbing my things from the boot, I hear a familiar voice from the car opposite mine.

“Hullo. What are you doing here?!?”

Wallace emerges from the driver’s seat!!!

We go for a walk!!!

Leaving the car the abandoned side of parked, we head off down the grassy track, towards the large metal gate and the downs. Pushing the three-wheeled baby buggy, I pretend that I am driving a rally car. I do not tell the LTLP this.

We encounter a grey-haired lady at the gate. A scrawny dog scampers by her side; we let them through the gap before us.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” I say.

“Oh, it’s wonderful isn’t it?” she replies.

“Bit of a black cloud up ahead though,” I caution.

She heads off into the distance, our conversation about the weather complete. Below me, sat in her imaginary Audi Quattro, I know the baby is absorbing this. Soon she will be able to make pleasantries about the weather also, and thus be admitted into English Society.

Further up the path, a couple cycle tentatively towards us. On our right, a small field is enclosed within a wire fence. Its grass is a deep, deep green – lush – almost artificially so in comparison with the rest of the meadowland. I feel that I ought to say something about it. It is truly remarkable.

“Lovely day,” I remark.

“Beautiful!” replies one of the cyclists.

I do not mention the grass. It would be somehow wrong. They would consider me odd. We walk on.

Round the corner, some cows are meandering around a hilly bit. There are probably only six or seven – a herdlet – mooching the day away on grass. They are, I realise, perfect cows. Spotless, friendly-looking and black-and-white, they are the epitome of cow. If you were commissioned to photograph a cover shot for the front page of ‘Cow World’ then you would come here and select one of these ones. Pristine cows. Hollywood cows.

“Lovely and sunny now, isn’t it?” I remark to the middle-aged couple who pass us at this point. I do not mention the cows. If I start talking about perfect cows, they will probably call the police. Best stick with weather. That is what We Do.

The doctor stares at his screen in some bafflement. “Have you any idea what to press?” he asks.

I do not. Neither does the baby. “I’ll get my secretary,” he mutters.

I am impressed by this. I had no idea doctors had secretaries. A lady materialises and clicks a few links.

“Good oh. Right. Yes – I remember this bit. Now. Prepare yourself for patient choice. Would you like a hospital: down the road in King’s Lynn; over in Peterborough; down in Suffolk – Bury St Edmonds; or a nice trip to Norwich?”

He pauses. “It wasn’t really designed for areas like this, was it?”

“I think I’ll have… down the road in King’s Lynn,” I informedly choose.

“No no no,” he scolds. The next thing you say is: ‘which one would you recommend, doctor?’ That’s what everybody says.”

“Ah. Which one would you recommend?”

“Down the road in King’s Lynn, of course. You’d have to be bloody mad to go to any of the others.”

“Right.”

The secretary does some more IT work. Truly she is earning her salary. A extensive list of an appointment date appears.

“One appointment available all year. October. That’s nonsense. I’ll ring them up – they’ll be able to see you next week.”

This seems a far happier arrangement for all concerned. “I haven’t actually got my diary with me though,” I confess.

The doctor raises his eyebrows. “Like you have much to do during the day.”

I resolve to report him to the General Medical Council for his insolence. The secretary arranges an appointment. We leave the surgery to buy fish.

Continued from yesterday

Staring at me from beneath the sheet and within a cracked frame smothered in dust and what looked like mouse droppings: a watercolour painting of Fred Trueman’s cricket boots, signed by Fred Trueman.

I’d forgotten I had it; hadn’t seen it for years. And I’d just come from the Village Shop, in which I’d purchased a newspaper, the front page announcing that Fred Trueman had just died.

This seemed like a bit of a coincidence.

The picture had been stashed away since – well – the turn of the century, I guess. Nothing against Fred Trueman or Fred Trueman’s boots, but I’d never really fancied the thing on my wall. There are houses in which I’m sure it would sit excellently with the décor, but I’ve always been a bit conservative-English in my taste in art – Constable, Lowry, girl tennis players scratching their arses, etc. Pictures of cricket boots would come a reasonable way down my personal list, just above male nudes and crayon drawings by other people’s children. So I’d stuck it in the loft and forgotten about it.

Yet here it was, having reappeared on the day Fred Trueman’s death was announced.

(Incidentally, for those readers not from England or the colonies, I should explain that Fred Trueman was sort of the Abi Titmus of the game of cricket, having the undeserved misfortune to be known by many not for his achievements in the early years but for subsequent loud moaning onscreen.)

I replaced my painting thoughtfully. If I am going to have spooky haunted coincidentally-appearing Fred Trueman boot paintings then I would rather just leave them be than start prodding about with them.

I do not want lots of alien Fred Truemans appearing from the divide in order to go on about how our fast bowlers aren’t as good as those in their dimension.

I inspect my building work.

I tend to do this at the weekends, when the builders are not there. If I go during the week, I have to be complimentary about bits of carpentry, plumbing work etc., whereas at weekends I have a bit more leeway to drop to my knees in horror and let out long, long primal screams of rage and despair.

This time, I am particularly worried about the radiators. Some of the pipes have not yet been connected. I have been watching a lot of Doctor Who recently, and I am worried about things crossing over from the divide. This seems to happen quite a lot, almost every week in fact, and regardless of whatever bad economic or social situation there is on the other side, I would prefer the things to stay there and tough it out rather than using my pipework to flood in to this world.

There is no evidence that this has happened so far. But I will talk to the plumber. You cannot be too careful. We cannot afford to send out the message that this dimension is an easy touch.

In the lounge there is a pile of my stuff, heaped underneath the most ineffectual dust-sheet in the world (and probably in other worlds as well. I do not know. I am too courteous to spend my life migrating between dimensions). I originated this pile, stacking it with the heavy things at the bottom; it has been moved several times since. Looking for a particular light fitting I need, I remove the covers and rootle around.

I find something I haven’t seen for some time.

Continued tomorrow.