May 18: guest entry

Adam Carroll-Smith says:

Today, I am lucky enough to be covering the Hampshire vs. Ireland day-night cricket match, at Hampshire’s impressive Rose Bowl. While I have visited the ground before, today is my first work-based visit. As such, it is the first time I have graced the Rose Bowl press box. The box itself is pretty spartan (i.e. particularly simple and bare as opposed to being full of bronze shields and helmets) but thankfully the drinks are free.

Anyway, cricket correspondents tend to be quite elderly, and as such, I have just had the pleasure of spending the last half an hour listening to an old man send what must have been a 10,000 character text on his mobile – with the key tones left on. After a while it began to resemble really miminal techno played at about 4 beats per minute. I swear at one point he even pressed the right combination of keys – albeit very slowly – to play the first few notes of ‘Funky Town’.

As he finished texting he said – to no-one in particular: “This texting is brilliant isn’t it; so fast.”