Michael Simkins is an actor and writer and has more imaginary friends than you can shake a stick at. Or wave a bat at anyway.
 Michael Simkins |
When I was a kid growing up in Brighton in the mid sixties, there were only really two things I was interested in - eating sweets and playing cricket.
My enthusiasm for sweets was catered for by the fact that my parents had bought a confectioners' shop and were so busy running it that they never seemed to notice when I helped myself.
My interest in cricket stemmed from what I now suspect was an attempt to keep up with my two elder brothers, who not only played the game but also watched it at the county ground in nearby Hove. Although I was too young to join them, I persuaded my dad to play a form of the game with me in the shop. Most evenings, in between serving customers, he spent the final hour bowling a rubber ball from one end of the shop, just by the display stand for ladies stockings, to where I stood crouched with a tiny bat over by the Greetings cards carousel.
Local rules abounded. A gentle tap back to him was worth a single, a clean hit against the side of the ice cream fridge counted as a four, but any shot landing in the chemists sundries cabinet was automatically out, as was an injudicious swipe into the cigarette shelves.
I see now that most of these regulations were attempts by him to dissuade me from systematically destroying the stock, though I fear it was a forlorn hope. Nonetheless our game prospered until one evening in late April when I had a greater than usual rush of blood and smote a mighty six back past his outstretched hand and into the Easter window display. The match was abandoned.
Which was a pity, because by now I'd formed my ad hoc cricket games into a league, with four teams, bonus points, home and away fixtures. I'd also invented imaginary players with which to swell their ranks.
After the destruction of the Easter display, Dad rarely seemed to have the time to play again - I think he was worried it was bankrupting the business - and eventually my fantasy players had to pack their bags and move into a new dimension.
Fortunately by now I'd come across a game which most boys of my generation will remember - Owzthat, a sort of upmarket dice game consisting of two tiny rollers which came in a metal tin, and specially created for boys with imaginary cricket matches and nowhere to play them. I spent the next few years sitting at the parlour table pushing the rollers up and down and correlating the runs and wickets in exercise books. Four teams grew to ten, then to sixteen, until I had an entire county championship.
I kept the league going well into my twenties, often turning to it in times of anxiety or stress: an unsuccessful job interview or dumping by a girlfriend. It's many years now since I've looked at it, but the players are all up there in the attic, sealed in imaginary aspic within the tiny blue tin and countless exercise books; three hundred-odd individuals patiently waiting for me to open the lid and release their powers once more - demon bowler Anthony Hoathly, gritty opening batsman John Hindfield, Freddy Briggs, Wally Sanderson, Ted Brall - the exotically named Abdul Casinji of Glamorgan; and of course my personal hero - Black Magic.
In real terms he must be about seventy now, but suspended in the cocoon of my memory, he will still be thirty, still be batting, and still be acknowledging the applause from his loyal supporters sitting watching from the boundary - somewhere between ladies hairnets and the tub of Jamesons Raspberry Ruffles.
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