Earlier this morning I exchanged a few comments with Horus in the Chat room and said that I would have something to share later. Well, it didn't quite work out as planned but here is my morning blog.
We have not been to an antiques fair for many years since we disposed of all our collectibles and de-junked. A new fair was to have its debut this morning at the St Lawrence County Cricket Ground and Mrs G decided she would like to go. The fair was small and mostly jewelery so nothing of interest to me there. What was more of interest was to tell you about an almost unique feature of the ground. Along with Pietermaritzburg in South Africa, they are the only two senior cricket grounds in the world to have a tree growing inside the playing area.
I first remember seeing the St Lawrence Lime in 1948 when as a boy of 14 I went with sandwiches and a bottle of lemonade to watch Kent play Australia. They were the days of Bradman and Lilley and they thrashed Kent by about 200 runs, if memory serves me. But there was the lime tree, about 6 feet inside the boundary where it had been since 1847 when the ground was first used.
It was well known in world cricket because if a ball hit any part of the tree before grounding it was a six and if it grounded before hitting the tree it was a four. Now I come to the bit that I had forgotten. In January 1999 the tree was smashed by high winds. (sorry, small file from the net)
Fortunately the club had predicted an early demise, because the tree had a fungus that could eventually kill it, and they had planted a new lime tree outside the boundary. In March of 1999, with the consent of the MCC, that tree was moved to where the previous tree had been to maintain the tradition of The St Lawrence Lime.
I should have remembered that the tree was no longer there because in 2006 a then young grandson played in a cricket tournament and in this picture the new tree is indicated by the arrows.
So there we are, went to an antiques fair and opened old memories of a quirk of international cricket.
I love reading quirky little snippets like this 
We had an obstruction inside the playing area, in anticipation, a new tree is planted OUTSIDE the playing area. Old tree succumbs leaving the opportunity for an unobstructed playing area but oh no; we are Brits and we moved the new tree from its unobtrusive position back onto the field of play.
