I finished editing Part 2 of my book chapter about visiting Lord’s Cricket Ground. Now I can share the little stories I can’t tell, won’t tell, or tell in such a wholly different way that there’s no overlap with my guidebook, Forty-Two Places.
My GPS was confused after I exited the St. John’s Wood tube station. It doesn’t like the underground, so for a few blocks, I went the wrong way. I didn’t mind. I had no time constraints, which is the best way to knockabout the universe.
By the time my phone found a satellite to talk to and the GPS recalculated, I was headed down residential streets, passing red-brown brick duplexes. Each separate entrance was painted bright white, highlighting the glassed-in entry cubicles that I assumed were the English equivalent of mudrooms. Mudrooms? I think that’s what they call them. They have them in places with weather, which is why I don’t know much about them. I’m from California.
I found a lovely park, with paths and trees and flowers to walk through, which turned out to be a graveyard.
I regularly found that parks in London don’t bother to make it clear which bits are park versus graveyard. I’m fine with that. I find it restful.
Path through St. John’s Wood 
Back of Media Centre 
Lord’s Map
Once I found an entrance to Lord’s Cricket Grounds (truth be told after walking around three of the four sides of it), I opted to take the tour because it was imminent. I hadn’t known there was a tour, nor when it was, but it was starting in 20 minutes. Like they knew I was coming.
I very much recommend the tour, though you’ll have to read my book for more specifics on why Douglas Adams Fans would be at all interested in the historical home of cricket, not Krikkit.
Personally, I like old buildings. And I like to dress-up. It was exciting to walk through the preserved and renovated Lord’s Pavilion (normally inaccessible to anyone not a member of the Cricket Clubs), a place that begs for the nine button waistcoats and lobster bustles of Victorian time travel. With minor exceptions. Okay, okay, a looming spaceship is not so minor.
Long Room at Lord’s 
Long Room to Media Centre
The other tourists spent a lot of time chattering excitedly over the furnishings. They were touching things their favorite players had touched, reminiscing about the score-boards and famous matches, and absorbing what I call “imagicnation”–the particular sensation of wonder fans feel when occupying a physical space their heroes have occupied.
The tour took us around the grounds and for a visit to the press box, which looks like a giant Krikkit Spaceship looming over the cricket grounds. The insides are painted sky blue and look like the interior of a submarine: all the doors have rounded corners, porthole windows, and everything is curved.
My cover story of “curious American” had quickly been blown when I didn’t have a favorite team or player. Inwardly I cringed, anticipating the worst.
It felt terrifying, admitting to the hardcore cricket-lovers and the tour guide that I had never seen the game played and had no idea what I was getting into when I’d spontaneously joined this tour of their hallowed grounds. But the East Indian couple were quite nice about it, if perplexed. Once I’d fessed up as to why I was there, we all had a good laugh together. The couple from India, visiting family, even admitted to reading Hitchhiker’s in the long-ago past, but not remembering the cricket connection.
“It’s not until the third book,” I told them.
My fear of being outed, derided for being an SF fan (which happened a lot when I was a kid), never materialized. Instead, there was a distinct measure of respect for what we had in common: Geekery.
Watch the video that I made to hear more about geeks geeking out together – even when their interests are extremely far apart and appear to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with each other.
After the tour, I hit the pub. Having peeked my head in and been attracted to the sight of giant glassware jars that displayed green, yellow, orange, and various brown colors of nuts or crisps or even more exotic snack foods, I realized a moment’s peace to recover from my own anxiety and food were what I needed.
Bar Snacks Extraordinaire 
Lord’s The Tavern Sign
Whether the pub I found was named Lord’s, The Tavern, Lord’s Tavern, or possibly The Tavern at Lords, it had supremely attractive bar snacks. They were arrayed by color in oversized specimen jars originally designed to hold something larger than a human brain, but smaller than a pampered housecat.
As with all pubs, it had a sign. Presumably Mr. Lord, definitely a man in whites, on the cricket ground.
A warming chicken curry was soon inside me and I headed back out into the chilly March afternoon to catch a train for Cambridge.
What do you think?