19:40 NZT Mon 20th

The Deal – Seinfeld.

INT. NIGHT. JERRY AND ELAINE ARE SITTING AT EXTREME ENDS OF THE COUCH. ELAINE FLICKS AIMLESSLY THROUGH THE CHANNELS.

ELAINE
Hey, look at the naked people

JERRY
No, I don't wanna see the naked people.

ELAINE
Been a while?

JERRY
I have a vague recollection of doing something with someone, but it was a long, long time ago.

ELAINE
I think my last time was in Rochester. My hair was a lot shorter.

JERRY
I remember that it's a good thing. Someday, I hope to do it again.

-

I’ll admit it. Sunshine, hotel room, expense account. Christchurch pullulates with attractive, half-naked women and I’m randy as hell. That is, within the confines of my sex 'drive' which is monastically low.

For the record my hair was a LOT shorter. Australia were still clinging to the Ashes. As the World's Most Perenially Single Man this shouldn't be a surprise.

I really should rethink my strategy. This morning the dawn horn impelled me to take the laptop off to the upmarket café where I have breakfast most days. Jeans, crumpled light navy blue linen shirt, crumpled cotton Nick Ashley blazer. I did some work on Excel whilst playing Handel’s Orlando and daydreaming of Glyndebourne and Goodwood. Pretentious, moi?

Were some dazzling brunette with a fascination for posho life in Sussex and a penchant for crumpled clothing to wander by - well, she wouldn't know what had hit her. If I was a betting man I'd say 1.5kg of Dell laptop would be a strong favourite though.

As it happened beautiful women did smile at me, but only because I was gawping at them in the manner of Bingo Little’s lovelorn expression in Wodehouse – like a calf dying of dyspepsia. I may have felt like the bee's cheese sitting there with my earbuds, the Home Team % Expectancy Formulae in Column J and a four shot latte half-drunk but I must have looked like a royal wally.

I think probabilistically that the Monday morning breakfast pull is up there with seeing Elvis and Shergar win the Stewards Cup from a middle draw on soft ground, which makes it only fractionally less likely than any other non-event in my non-sex-life.

-

Having turned my face, neck and arms a vivid and shrimpy pink at the football yesterday I doused those parts with Factor 15 before heading back to the QEII, to go swimming and then watch some of the Canterbury – Central Districts 4 day cricket match. It was frustrating on arrival to find that I’d left the suncream in the hotel and couldn’t lie in the strong sun all day to get the legs and torso to match.

To borrow Marcus Berkmann’s analogy, Ingmar Bergman would have appreciated the pace of NZ domestic cricket for its fatalistic Nordic stillness. Canterbury were racing along at 99/1 from 37 overs when I arrived and 220/3 after tea when I left. Poor old Min Patel of Kent and England went for 59 from 15 overs, including a dismissively huge six from his second ball. It wasn’t the most thrilling game ever but I’m looking forward to going back tomorrow. The 50m pool is pretty good too, although I can't do two consecutive lengths of front crawl over that distance. I can run 7.2 miles round Richmond Park in less than 57 minutes but ask me to swim 100m and I have to use breaststroke.