Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Test Match footnote

The whimsical parson in me felt compelled to write in the service register, next to the record of the day's Eucharist, that the first ever Ashes Test Cricket match to be held in Wales began this day in the Parish.

For no reason that I can understand a photocopy of the present Parish boundaries lies at the moment un-filed like litter on the sacristy table. Truth to tell, nobody knows what to do with it because, like other posher versions of this map in existence, it is incorrect in the matter of the boundary on the East side of the new Parish, which is meant to follow the line of the Bro Taf railway out of Queen Street Station up as far as the road bridge just below Maindy swimming pool. Church bureaucrats are not always as attentive to detail as we'd like them to be. My representations to get the error corrected have so far been ignored.

However, on the West side of the map, the defining boundary is what it's meant to be, encompassing Sophia Gardens, the Glamorgan County Cricket ground, and a diagonal section of Llandaff fields (so called) across to the Blackweir Bridge over the Taff. This means the first Test Match in Wales is being held in the City Parish of St John the Baptist Cardiff. It's not news, and will do nothing to change the world, but maybe in 200 years time, if the church registers survive, some church scholar will ponder the meaning of my marginal scribble, and set out on a trail to discover facts well known to worshippers and historians of the god cricket.

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