Modern life is crap part 2

Eventually this morning I received the letter with 20 pages of forms to fill in just in order that 4 maybe 8 of us, all adults over the age of 30 can have a knock about in the nets at a school. There's so many reasons why this so wrong! 1. The school needless to say could use the revenue albeit not a great deal and 2. The Government etc bang on about people keeping fit and doing exercise. 3. This could be the incentive that some of the blokes involved need to get properly involved in cricket. The three that would be regulars - Badger, Simon and Alex have all played cricket for thier schools when they were kids and represented their schools at county level in Simon's case and they'd be ideal candidates to join Grays & Chadwell I reckon? So this form and it's stringent requirements for all sorts of stuff that seemingly relates to a proper club that might include minors just serves to stop us even dipping our toes in the water as such.

Apparently talking to people on forums on the internet this is a new thing that has started to creep in this year, but you can see where it's going can't you? There you are on a council playing field playing cricket, you hit the ball for a six and it takes someone out. Needless to say no-one these days turns round and says **** happens - it was just a flukey accident, so there's an inevitability that in days to come - maybe next year you'll be told you can't play cricket, football or whatever in an open public space unless of course you've got insurance!

So we're screwed, it looks like no nets for us and yet we're so up for it we're willing to pay anything up to about 12.50 each for a couple of hours in the nets. There may be some mileage in booking the same venue in a more ad hoc manner e.g. individual bookings - one at a time rather than block bookings on a regular basis. It seems that if you book it in a more informal manner the requirements that you need to meet are not so stringent, so I'll have to look at that as an option.

So in the meantime I'm now looking at booking council sports halls and went and had a look at two tonight. There's no nets and it's slightly more expensive, but more importantly it's not subject to having to sign 20 page contracts and what have you and commiting yourself to it long term and paying up front which is where the other option was going and it would have been me that stumped up the money with no guarantee of ever getting it back off the blokes simply because they might not have attended the sessions that had been booked in advance. This new option also means it's booked at the last minute and there's no upfront commitment and it can be cancelled at short notice with no comeback.

I do feel like giving up on it as it's too much aggro and it wasn't even my idea this time round! But I do need the batting practice!