There is something truly magnificent about the feeling that you get when you wheel into a cricket ground for the first time in the year, and all the players preparing for their match greet you like an old friend. It feels like all the woes of the world have suddenly lifted, and summer has at last begun. That was the feeling I had this afternoon, and it was truly joyous.

To be honest I had already had quite an interesting morning: I thought I would go see the what I could of the marathon, so after breakfast I went to where it starts in Blackheath. I then decided to trundle along the route for a bit, just to see if there was anything interesting going on. I followed the runners along Shooters hill, past Charlton and Woolwich, and then back to Greenwich. That is quite a way, and quite amusingly it reached the point where people seemed to think that I was actually participating in the marathon; but at Greenwich I decided it would be unwise to go any further. Besides, I had somewhere far cooler to go.

Yesterday when out on my daily trundle, I thought I would pop in to the cricket ground to see if there was a match on. There wasn’t, but I was told that the Mighty Eights, the team I first saw playing in Charlton park when I first moved to London, would be playing a pre-season warmup match there this afternoon. That, then, is where I headed, and I instantly found myself among friends.

It was incredible. My Australian friend Tesco was there, preparing to bowl. They kept offering me beer, but I’m still abstaining. I got chatting to a couple of the new guys, including one who has a disabled son. The atmosphere was warm and friendly, and with the sun beating down and all the talk around me being about overs and innings, yorkers and maidens, it seemed like summer had definitely begun in the most glorious, reassuring, optimistic way possible.