4 - Southsea Common

Emma: Right, so, we're on a vast expanse of common at the moment. And you can hear the wind. The wind is battering us, and I expect this wind was high more days than it wasn't. So the ladies Mile, where is that then? We're looking over now to the east, aren’t we? 

Phil: It's further up that way, isn't it?  

Anne: Yes. 

Phil: The other side of the D Day Museum, it’s up there in front of the Doris Ella pub.  

Anne: Near the skate park. 

Phil: That’s right.  

Emma: Right. So I wonder then if Doyle would walk out with his ladies folk, so his sister, Connie. I wonder if he would walk out with her along the Ladies Mile, and that would be his ticket, wouldn't it, to being able to be there? 

Anne: That would be more likely, yes, 

Emma: Yes, yes. 

Anne: But if you can just imagine, you can imagine people playing... kids or adults playing balls, hotel staff, perhaps, because it wouldn't have been football as we know it now, but it would have been their own versions, and different things. Maybe there was bowling, maybe that... well, we know there was cricket. 

Emma: Yes, yes.  

Anne: Some form of tennis, more likely to be just hitting things with a bat, but who knows. I mean, I think shuttlecock was around in those days, but I'm not 100% sure about that.  

Emma: Yes, so he would have come down here, probably with the gents... 

Phil: Yeah and played bowls and tennis. 

Emma: Yes, yes.  

Phil: He's also, you know, into his cricket, played lots of cricket through his school days and onwards. In fact, he mentions this in one of his letters to his mother. “You must not set your heart too much on our coming this year, darling, if an unexpected stroke of luck came, such as this successful book, I might run up. But otherwise, you see, sorry, you see dear , I play cricket at least once a week, which, in the course of the summer gives me three weeks, three weeks of holidays. So I get my vacation without losing a patient or costing a pound, and I enjoy it thoroughly”. And he also talks about being as brown as a berry because he's outside so much, so Cricket was obviously very important to him. [Fades out].