Out Now! “The Spirit of Cricket”
The cricket book you never knew you wanted!
The cricket book you never knew you wanted!
I am very pleased and indeed proud to announce the self-publishing of my fourth book which as per the link later in the article is available on all formats via www.amazon.com and free to read if you have an Amazon “Unlimited” package.
My silly 8 week odyssey of watching this Summer’s Ashes has borne a delicious bounty in the form of a compendium of my daily journals watching the cricket itself, but it’s of course far more than merely the leather on willow of sporting contest or the dots and dashes, maidens and wickets in any cricketing scorebook. I earnestly wanted to record a daily diary (with the cricket as an added, cricket in-joke, “extra”) so the reader will accompany me to my local cricket club and a game being played out adjacent to a field of grazing sheep and an elderly sheep-dog, sleeping the rainy day away beneath the scorer’s table. You’ll get to meet a beautiful pug-dog by the name of “Bear”, the day I shook hands with a lion on a bridge, watching a heron take flight on a canal akin to a Jurassic pterodactyl, fish, chips and contemplation beside the oldest iron bridge in the world, as well as saving the world at the cinema at least four times, maybe five, as my son and I helped Indiana Jones, Ethan Hunt, “The Flash”, and a host of other superheroes keep the world safe from those nasty evildoers!
There’s baseball (live by the River Severn as well as live from the USA) as well as some live “Saturday Night Footy” from Australia on a cold and rainy English morning. Glastonbury memories old and new are recounted as Guns N Roses pleaded for a little more “Patience”, there’s some “Pyjama Cricket Through a Black Mirror” according to my ridiculously overblown daily headlines, and I laugh at the absurdity of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg entering a cage to beat the living piss out of each other! There are “Giants” and “Metalheads” and the siren song of seagulls trying to out-do the nearby church bells and all whilst tales are told in the cricket commentary booth on rainy days of Shane Warne, overseas tours, England and Australian captains of yore and their determination to win that precious urn of ashes, as well as songs being recorded at Abbey Road, tinkling the ivories of a piano once played by The Beatles and naturally, the feeding pattern of crocodiles in the Australian rainforests!
Naturally cricket takes centre stage (sometimes) but hopefully, should you read it, you’ll agree that it blends into the background of a Summer well lived amongst many more tall tales to be told. I’m rather proud of the way it’s turned out and the printed book version reads exactly as my anarchic mind wants it to.
Oh, and if you were wondering about the inclusion of the coloured cards on the book’s front cover, well, let’s just say my son is a dab hand and obvious cheat at the game of “Uno” and I allowed him to beat me so as I could distract him and have the television and cricket all to myself.
I let him win, and as you’ll discover by the end of the book, he beat me rather handsomely the little cheat!
Anyway, here’s a link together with similar links to my mini collection of self-published releases since late Spring 2023:
"The Spirit of Cricket": An upside-down journal from the 2023 Ashes
Buy "The Spirit of Cricket": An upside-down journal from the 2023 Ashes by Blackford, Mr Stephen Patrick (ISBN…www.amazon.co.uk
The Eagles Have Landed!
But the writing odyssey continues.medium.com
“Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles” — Out Now!
The un-holy trinity is complete!medium.com
“Ashes to Ashes”
Out Now! Hot off the Press!medium.com
“Diary from the 2022 FIFA World Cup”
Out Now! Hot off the Press!medium.com
Thanks for reading. Three recently published articles are linked below for your pleasure and perusal:
“God is a Bullet” (2023)
Darkly grim true life tale.medium.com
“Unknown: Cave of Bones” (2023)
Welcome to a non-human graveyard!medium.com