A journalist's week

Apologies for the paucity of posts this week but it has been a busy few days in my role as a general, rather than just cricket, sports reporter. On Monday evening, having been at Lord's earlier in the day for the cricket season's launch, it was off to Varese, in Italy, to visit the GB rowing squad's training camp, arriving at my hotel at 2am thanks to the ineptness of Heathrow Terminal 5 and then up four and a half hours later to sit in a boat on an Alpine lake. You can read the first report on that here if you like rowing stories.

Then it was back to London in time to attend the annual Wisden dinner on Wednesday, which marks the publication of the latest Cricketers' Almanack. Mike Brearley was the guest speaker, who spoke about the IPL and began by saying that he was asked by Wisden's editor for advice on "how to ride the Indian tiger". It was ironic, Brearley said, because some years earlier he had sought the same advice from the editor when he was about to marry his Asian wife, Mana.

(On the subject of jokes, Brearley was also guest speaker at the Cricket Society's dinner last Friday. I don't shy away from dinners, as the picture above shows. He began with a story about Kevin Pietersen's wedding night. Apparently, the new Mrs Pietersen got into bed with her husband and then suddenly pulled away, saying "God, your feet are freezing." To which, KP said: "Darling, in bed you can call me Kevin.")

Anyway... it was up at 6am on Thursday to fly to the Netherlands, this time for a piece with the British canoeists and an interview with the big Olympic hope, Campbell Walsh, before flying home last night. Today, I'm writing it all up and hoping for some space in the paper. And some light blogging, too.

So that's my week and a fairly knackering one too. Not that I'm complaining for one instant. But it did suddenly occur to me this morning that in the space of four days I went to Italy but didn't get the chance to drink a fine red wine or scoff some superb pasta and then went to Amsterdam without smoking anything or paying a woman for sexual favours. It's travel, but it's lacking something. Like going to Lord's without watching any cricket.