Parky: My Autobiography Read Online Free PDF

coast – Cleethorpes, Bridlington, Filey and particularly Scarborough. We were east-coast people because my father only went to seaside resorts where the sands were suitable for beach cricket. Like some inspector of wickets he had, during his time, closely examined the west-coast beaches and found them unfit for play. The east coast, notably Scarborough, Bridlington and Filey, were declared first class.
    Thus it was that during my youth, whenever we went on holiday, we resembled some MCC party heading for a three-month tour of the West Indies. We were easily discernible from the rest of the mob at the railway station, being the only family with a full set of stumps strapped to our suitcase. Mother’s carrier bag was full of balls and both Father and I carried cricket bats. Indeed, a photograph of the time, taken at Bridlington shortly after our arrival, shows father and son strolling down the promenade, one carrying a Frank Sugg and the other a Gunn and Moore, looking for all the world like Sutcliffe and Holmes walking out to open for Yorkshire at Park Avenue, Bradford.
    One of the outstanding features of our holidays was that play started as soon as we stepped off the train and continued through every daylight hour until it was time to go home again. My childhood memories of those days are of burning beaches and large men trying to bowl me out. Misery was rain and shelter in the amusement arcade and the smell of cheap raincoats and human damp. The success of the holiday depended entirely on how much cricket we could get in and, even more important, how many games we won. Here it should be explained to occasional participants of bat and ball on the sands that our version of beach cricket was the equivalent of a five-day Test match between England and Australia, or at least as important as the War of the Roses.
    My old man took his cricket very seriously, as befitted a Yorkshire man, team captain and tour organiser. His first job after arrival was to make an immediate recce of the beach to lay claim to the best batting strip. Then he would mark out the wicket and, with my mother acting as wicket keeper, using her coat to stop the ball, he would bowl a few overs at me. This activity invariably attracted onlookers who would be invited to play by my old man in order that he might make a shrewd assessment of their worth. Outstanding talents would be immediately signed on for the coming week, but only if their antecedents matched their ability. Simply stated, he would have anyone playing in his team provided they didn’t come from Lancashire. This chauvinism was deliberately designed to stir up tribal warfare and always ended in the highlight of our week, a challenge from a team of Lancastrians who were bitter and disgruntled about being turned down because of an accident of birth.
    They never won. The fact was that my father was a magnificent beach cricketer with a profound knowledge of the tactics needed to achieve success in this kind of game. For instance, he won many a game by his keen study of the east-coast tides. The importance of this can be gauged from the fact that in our kind of beach cricket the edge of the sea was always a boundary.
    Thus, on a morning with the tide receding, if the old man won the toss, he would put the other side in. By the time they had exhausted themselves trying to hit a six into the fast disappearing sea, the tide would change, and we would have the comparatively easy task of lobbing boundaries into the oggin while their fielders were distracted by the fear of being cut off by the onrushing waves. My dad never lost a game of beach cricket and when the time came to retire from the pit, he devoted his life to coaching his grandchildren in the mysteries of the greatest game. He had spectacular success.
    Much later, when I was off working abroad with television, my parents would stay at our house to help Mary with the kids. This was my father’s idea of paradise. After one trip he could hardly