I am Root

Now, after a full week at work and a late night performing on stage last night, you think I'd get a day off. But no.

Jof's work has this thing called Cricket Force where you do 3 hours of voluntary community service helping out a cricket club of your choice. 2 years ago, we painted Fareham Cricket Club's pavilion which was an oddly satisfying job. There were free T-shirts.

Last year we destroyed obsolete bits of Portsmouth Cricket Club's building and also repaired the practise nets and the rain covers. And of course you can cycle to that one, extra brownie points there. This year it was back to Portsmouth CC so we got the bikes out and left at 10am - frighteningly early for a Sunday - and met up with some almost familiar faces from previous events, well they certainly knew me.

Initially I mopped the away team's dressing room floor. Then there were sinks and toilets and large communal showers. Then we discovered the home team had roughly the same arrangement so I mopped a bit more before heading off outside into the bright April sunshine.

Over by the 10th Hole Tea Rooms, the boundary rope hides a long flowerbed of Rosemary, Cherry blossom and brambles. While it is no doubt good to eat free blackberries while retrieving the ball after the batsman has scored a 4, it does rather shred your skin. So we chose to destroy all blackberry bushes to save the epidermis of the nation.

They were quite tough. We had to send Bud home for more chopping tools and then we dug the roots out to stop them coming back and it was sweaty difficult work in the sun so we got rid of our shirts. This meant that all the customers at the tea rooms had to admire my bronzed torso for entertainment while they ate. I teamed up with a fellow of similar age and we slashed and burned and killed and dug and in the end, the compost heap was liberally scattered with some really quite big bramble roots. A good job having been jobbed, we sat back and had bacon butties forced upon us. They were so good we had another. We'd done 3 hours of voluntary work (towards my Scout badge) and I felt good about it: with the destroying and the chopping and the mopping and the free Vitamin D. The changing room shower curtains are now on our washing line, hope they want them back.

Later, Jof went back to bed so I got undisturbed Minecraft time, ho ho. Also later, the Air Ambulance helicopter landed right in front of the pavilion.