Celebration, Carols and a Conundrum

London Leprechaun tells us about the final event of the 150th year Celebrations, including a moving celebration for Philip Hughes.  It ends with a conundrum. Well done if you can work out Ian Lovett's prediction for the first match of next season!

A packed Long Room looked very Christmassy with a huge tree and snowflake ceiling.  Mulled wine and mini mince pies helped  as well.  Lots of familiar Middlesex faces which was nice along with the usual number of people I had never seen before.  There was also very symbolically for a Christmas Carol Service, a very young baby in attendance. Her parents are already working on her opening the batting for England one day. Watch this space. 

Ian Lovett started off with a very nice few words about Philip Hughes and we were invited to celebrate his time with us with 42 seconds of applause: the number of days he was with Middlesex. It really is amazing what an impact he made in such a short time. It was a lovely and moving touch to start the evening, and was then followed up with the good news about Nick Compton’s return. Which helped the feel good factor for the rest of the night.

The music was mainly performed by the Mosaic Chamber Choir who sang a range of Christmas music beautifully and made the Long Room feel very intimate.  Alongside that and familiar Christmas readings we had a wonderfully comic turn from Eric with a novel recipe for Christmas cake.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/lancashire/fun_stuff/2003/11/26/recipe.shtml  will give you the drift.  Just imagine Eric acting that out. 

We also had Clive Radley and a few brave souls singing one verse of “See Amid the winter’s snow” when after the usual verses alternating ladies and gents, the conductor suggested one verse be sung by anyone who had ever played at Lord’s. Very few people there had but they made a good fist of it. 

And just before a very enthusiastic O Come all Ye Faithful finished off proceedings we had a very breathless fast paced twelve days of Christmas.  There must be some link between that and a cricket squad.  Answers on a postcard please.

To finish the night Ian mentioned how good the year had been as a celebration and how he had hoped to say the cricketing year had been incredible as well.  Well actually, some of our cricket last season was incredible in the literal sense!

But heigh ho its Christmas, the summer has been and gone and it’s all about goodwill for next year. 

Ian Lovett’s final piece for us was a prediction for April 12^th next year when we will be playing Nottinghamshire.  He predicted that there would be seven people playing in that match who had just returned from playing in the World Cup Final. If you can work out who they are you will realise that it will be an incredible prediction if he’s right. . One clue – four will be from England he says. Now there’s a Christmas conundrum for you.  Meanwhile in the words of the final song from the brilliant Mosaic Chamber Choir;  “We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” Lord’s certainly did that for us tonight.