HuddWeb - a personal statement

Portal News

Regular readers of the HuddWeb blog will have noticed (and hopefully missed) the three-times-a-day updates on all local bowling news. There have been no postings since last Thursday for a good reason. I don't usually post personal information on the website but feel an explanation, excluding all the details, is appropriate.

The reason for the lack of recent postings is that my wife, Mary, suffered a stroke last week and remains in Calderdale Hospital at present. We know that when she eventually comes home that the impact on both our lives will be life-changing for us. We need to prepare for that now and start to make arrangements to cope with those changes.

With HuddWeb being a one-man effort it means that anything happening to affect my time immediately impacts on the time available to add content to the HuddWeb site. That has hit home already as I spend most of my waking hours at the hospital at present, no time for bowling talk. Mary and I have both been very fortunate in enjoying good health all our lives so this is all new to us and we are learning what changes it will bring to our future. One of the changes I know that I need to make is to free up all my time to support Mary and that means I have to stop bowling altogether for the foreseeable future. Another is the time that I devote to writing this blog will be eaten into and I am not sure that I will have the appetite or stamina as a 75-year-old to maintain the level of postings anyhow under these new circumstances. However, I would really like to see the blog continue in some form. HuddWeb first saw life in November 2020 and has grown as the successor to the Huddersfield Veterans League website which I started in 2013 and ran for 7 years before moving over to HuddWeb when the Winter League started. I have always enjoyed writing generally and have had two books published so to be able to combine my interest in writing along with writing about and playing a game I have grown to love has given me enormous satisfaction over the last 10 years. I am grateful for that and the new friends I have made entirely through playing the game. I intend keeping HuddWeb live for the immediate future although postings will be a bit hit-and-miss I am afraid until we get into some sort of routine and maybe that routine will see the demise of the website but I am hopeful that won't be the case although change is inevitable.

I primarily want to keep it as an ongoing means of supporting the promotion of the Winter League. I hope to retain my role of Secretary of the Winter League and continue to contribute to the success of the League for some while yet. I feel that this role can mainly be done from home at times to fit in with my other new responsibilities so it is manageable and realistic to still be involved. The six host clubs are key to the running of the League, not the administrators.

The content of the HuddWeb blog will undoubtedly reduce and change I am afraid and I suspect that Yorkshire CCGBA and the Veterans League will be grateful for that respite. The website averages over 300 visitors a day, over 500 a day if I am one of my crusades against what I see as moves and decisions of self-interest rather than for the good of the game. I can't promise I will stop those campaigns but they will be dropping down my list of priorities. Sorry but I am starting to ramble so you may care to stop reading now but I will continue as it is probably therapeutic for me at this difficult time even if no one is reading it. I have stopped bowling for the foreseeable future which is a huge blow to me but my new role in supporting Mary has to take priority and no compromise is possible at this time. Maybe when Mary gets a little better she will be glad to see the back of me and will banish me from the house and I may be able to return to the sport I have enjoyed so much for so many different reasons.

I have always taken immense pleasure from the sport, no more than the last four years when I have been captain of the Kirkheaton Cons A team in the Veterans League. The team has enjoyed unprecedented success winning the Division 2 title by 27 points and following that up with a second-place finish in our first season in Division 1. But the team spirit we have been able to generate has been a major factor to that success and all the team members have contributed to that making the captain's job so easy and a real pleasure to be part of. Unfortunately, the timing of my withdrawal has coincided with two other members of the successful team also standing down both on health grounds so that will make things particularly difficult for the future. But whilst the nuances of the postage stamp green at Kirkheaton Cons remains a mystery to most visiting teams, I hope that will provide a base for collecting sufficient points to safeguard their place in the top division.

More personal rambling I am afraid, sorry, but one other casualty of the changes I need to make is the time that I spend giving talks to groups and clubs across Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Lancashire. For the last eight years I have raised money for the Kirkwood Hospice by being paid to give talks on different subjects that I have some experience of. I have done about 80 talks each year over that period except for the Covid years of course and this has given me enormous satisfaction and kept my mind sharp and alert (well I think it has). All that has to stop and the 25 bookings scheduled for the next 4 months will have to be cancelled initially and maybe even more after that.

However we await to see what impact my wife's illness has on our life together and we will meet the challenges together and HuddWeb will come a poor second to that work. But I do hope that time will allow me to continue adding content to the website so please bear with me whilst we come to terms with our new life and apologies that some of the things you are used to seeing may no longer be appearing on the site but I hope you understand that my priorities are now very different. Even I am getting bored with what I am writing now so it is probably time to stop. Thank you for reaching this far. If you noted above that I have had two books published and wanted more information then here are the details, both are available for downloading from Amazon in Kindle format or in paperback. The proceeds from the second book all go to the Kirkwood Hospice. 'Bastard in Black' Tales of a Huddersfield parks football referee

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