A halt by the way

Reading Observer, Saturday 26 August 1899

Sport and anecdote.

[by an Old Fogey ]

For two months or more we have been passing through exceptionally trying times—trying for old and young alike. In these stifling, oppressively hot days one feels inclined to pay the utmost respect to the opinions of the oldest inhabitant of immortal memory when he declares that it is many and many a long year ago since we had such a real, old-fashioned English summer. How some of the poor creatures who by force of circumstance are compelled to slave away from morn till eye under such terribly trying conditions is not easily understood by such as can loll and laze away the hours “under the olives.” For my own part I have found that wandering about in search of first-class cricket, in search of a little exercise by a pull on the river or a potter around on a bicycle—cither of these pursuits appears to be quite toilsome enough with the mercury in the thermometer being at something between eighty and ninety degrees in the shade. Watching a truly magnificent sunset a few evenings ago while resting outside one of our incomparable roadside hostetries, I found myself wondering whether it was really worth while hurrying back on my bicycle to the gas and glare, the dust and the bustle of the city. Here was I, a good ten miles from any town, with my favourite briar and all the refreshment any reasonable mortal could desire. Why should I bustle to get back to my club or to any particular region of staid respectability. Hero, at any rate, were frosh air, the scent of woodbine in the hedgerows, the delightful calm of a summer’s evening, and freedom from all restraint. After the melting moments of mid-day it seemed almost impossible to tear one’s self away from such repose. And there lolled one of your workaday scribblers, wreathed anon in tobacco smoke, dreaming the happy moments away, but with a feeling of semi-consciousness that in an hour or so, if he felt disposed, he could reach the interminable din of the streets. A cue in the game of “snooker,” or a hand at whist, with congenial company, are details in one’s daily round that are not to be altogether despised when the clammy fogs of November or the biting frosts of January are with us, but in August, an’ it please you, give me my trusty bicycle and a few hours to spare in the cool of the evening, and either the billiard-room or the card-room is not for the likes o’ me.