So: you arrange your entire summer holid- er, work trip so that you're be back on Tuesday afternoon in time for the Remnants game. And then, upon checking your e-mail before heading off to the airport on match day, you find an ominous message from Sally asking if you could maybe arrange for, oh, I don't know, maybe six extra players to help the opposition make an eleven. You can't (and almost certainly couldn't even if you were back in Cambridge, and probably still couldn't even if you were god), so you send of a shrug of an e-mail and hope a miracle will organise itself while you're buying GBP 1.60 cups of tea from the easyJet cabin crew. Upon landing, and with some trepidation, you turn on your mobile to see if there any nice ``missed you lots'' or ``hope you're having a nice time'' texts. There aren't. You also check your voice-mail hoping that you won't hear Geoff sombrely informing you that tonight's game is off as the opposition were unable to make up a team. You do.
Even more annoyingly, today we were up against The Computer Lab -- having already inflicted two defeats on us this year (more than they manage in most decades), we needed to salvage some pride. And, out-numbering them eleven to five as seemed likely, we must have been a pretty good chance to win -- surely even Remnants 2006 couldn't fail to chase 120-odd with such an empty outfield . . .