I can hardly move.

Sunday morning was the first cricket practice of the season, and for me, the first in five or so years.

I started stiffening up yesterday morning. By lunchtime, bits of me had locked immovably into inconvenient positions, and by the end of the day I felt like a ninety-three year old who’d recently been given a good seeing-to by men with baseball bats.

I’m now loping around the house like an extra in a Hammer film. My neck doesn’t seem to be working properly, and one side of me seems to be longer than the other.

To cap it off, there is a big cricket-ball shaped bruise right in the middle of my stomach, the result, I suspect, of a ‘let’s welcome the new boy’ conference amongst the fast bowlers.

As fit as one thinks one is, cricket exposes the fact that there are esoteric muscles one just doesn’t use to their full extent, sitting down at the PC all day.

My current condition makes me all the more admiring of my father, who is in his seventies and still plays several times a week. Still, being retired means he’s got time to lay about being stiff, whereas I am a thrusting executive professional who can't afford to be in less than 100% shape.

The LTLP had a lousy commute last night, and arrived home half an hour late following a train cancellation then vomiting incident in the packed carriage. She was immediately cross at the state of the kitchen, taking no account whatsoever of my Christopher-Reevesness, and the evening was not improved by our lousy score of 50 points at ‘University Challenge’.

I am down, dear reader. I am down.