barefoot earlier

I have finally found somewhere to buy household product refills. on www.ecotopia.co.uk you can buy Ecover in 5l containers and get them refilled - you just post the empties, they come back full and the postage is refunded. Only snag I can think of... how long do you think it will take to use 5l of liquid hand soap?

At the weekend I reflected on how much of a cliche "life is so hectic" has become and vowed to slow down (though please don't get the idea that I listen to the royal family on these matters). At 6.15pm today I got to my 'to do' list for the first time, to check what had been put aside to solve various crises and dash between meetings.

And worst of all... at 4.45pm I got a call from the MD's PA to ask whether I would be coming along to the 4.30pm meeting that I had organised with him and others. That I had completely forgotten about it was bad enough, but the reason for the meeting? To present my proposal for improving our company's 'late to meetings' culture. I had to laugh.

It amuses me that people who have the patience to watch test cricket through day after slow day feel they have to do something else when it hots up. My Dad heads for the garden with cries of, "I can't bear to watch: it's too tense!" I wondered if this was just his peculiarity until I heard that one of the cricket pundits at the Oval went to sit in his car on the final day: he just couldn't watch after Kevin Pieterson was nearly out a couple of times. Later he lamented he'd missed the whole innings: apparently a cricket superstition says that wherever you are when a pair start to bat spectacularly, there you must stay or you'll 'break the spell'. So he spent the whole innings in his car.

I've been gripped by this remarkable test series; an unfamiliar experience. My childhood summers were full of long North-South car journeys in the days before joined-up motorways and air conditioning: squabbling, bare legs stuck to the plastic seats and bored fractious by endless cricket commentary on the radio. It didn't foster interest; just endurance (with back-seat whining).

Today, as I leapt in the car for the ten minute drive from a half day meeting to the office, delighted at the chance to catch up with progress, I found myself begging Radio 4 to tell me the score and not witter on as if I'd been listening all morning. Quite a change.

I've enjoyed much about it but best of all the phone calls with my Dad. As a cricket fanatic in a family of cricket indifferents he's always been starved of camaraderie and as this summer's story has unfolded and we've spoken on the phone to be downcast or jubilant, I've loved sharing it with him. Cricket has been so much part of our family history that I'm glad to be reminded it's important. It's brought back the excitement of rummaging in the scarf drawer and asking over and over again to hear the tales behind Dad's England caps. It's made me feel fond of the familiarity and tradition of little-understood words like googly and silly mid off. It's even made me feel like getting out a bat and a tennis ball (I never graduated to a hard ball) and having a go again. We used to play and play until the light had gone and our bare feet were chilly on the lawn.

I believe this isn't the first time that a sporting event has got to me lately and been mentioned in this blog: surprising but welcome.