barefoot earlier

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.