Perspective

When I get frustrated or out of sorts generally I always like to try to understand the reasons why. And I often do that while I'm out walking or running or cycling. I took a run on the moor at lunchtime today and that certainly helped sort my head out. I've always found that getting up high doesn't just put the landscape in perspective.

Just before bed last night the boys and myself were discussing when we would try to get up in the morning. England are playing India at the moment in the first test match of the winter series and we are getting stuffed. We lost three quick wickets at the end of the second day which had brought KP to the crease. Now, if KP survived the first hour then he would be worth getting up early to watch. He may be a flawed human being but there is no doubt that he is a genius with a cricket bat. But none of us really wanted to set the alarm early to find out that he'd been dismissed cheaply, which - despite his genius - was the most likely scenario in the circumstances of the match.

I chirped up that I could actually write a bit of code to poll the scorecard from the cricinfo web page, parse it for KP's runs and arrange for the alarm to be sounded if he, say, got to fifty. Roam was genuinely impressed that I could do something like that. I think, for the first time, it gave him a handle on the kind of fun things you can do with programming skills. But this also highlighted my current frustrations. Whereas I once would have gone and just written that bit of code for the hell of it, and been able to make use if it within an hour, I fear that KP would have been and gone long before I'd finished if I had started last night.

My brain just doesn't work as quickly as it used to. Solutions to little challenges like this used to come to me whole in a flash of inspiration and the code just flowed from the keyboard. That just doesn't happen any more. I still manage to get there in the end but there is now a lot of stumbling about in the dark, bumping my head against obstacles, losing my way, forgetting things. That's what is frustrating. But I'm also beginning to realise just how good I once was. Like with my fitness, it's impossible to appreciate these things at the time. I just need to learn to take retrospective pleasure from that more often!

Thanks so much for all your kind words yesterday. Today has been very relaxed. And we did well to sleep in. England were a shambles in the first innings, but Cook and Compton have a century opening partnerhip following on in the second. I've a hunch that this opening pair may well become famous in the history of English cricket. They looked very much the part this morning. Now I really wish I had written that software last night. We are being faced with the same dilemma!