During lockdown, I picked up some strange rituals. From pouring beer into matching glasses to collecting vintage beer mats, it’s become obvious that strange faux-pub routines are now my new normal.

But this is the oddest: every day after I had put my kids to bed I’d take a walk from where I live in Brockley, south-east London, to a house I used to call my home, linger for a few seconds and then head to my then local. Still closed at the time, I’d peer in through the pub’s darkened windows and see the ghosts of the past: the laughter, the stories, the unchecked fun.

There’s a lot of romance to be felt when you look back to happier days, but these memories keep me calm when I have fleeting pangs of loneliness and loss. The most tranquil recollection I now cherish is from when I was first a journalist some 20 years ago, working as a local reporter in a small town in Kent, where I played an odd beer garden game called bat and trap.

It’s played mostly in the county and in East Sussex (although there are regional variations, such as Rat in the Hole in Lincolnshire, and Knurr and Spell in North Yorkshire) and requires the player to hit a ball fired from the trap, or mechanical device, between two posts where fielders are stationed. This particular memory is a love letter to a pastime that gave me a moment of confidence I sorely needed to conquer a white area as a young British Asian man.

In my early days as a junior reporter, the pub was king. We met contacts over a pint, pestered landlords for gossip, and held editorial meetings in the Anchor: a boozer run by the legendary Barry, who provided an invaluable community service, including driving his punters home on Christmas.

But the nostalgia of days spent in country pubs hides an inconvenient truth. I only felt connected to the area when at work. Being the only non-white face in a small pub often led to comments, stares and sometimes outright hostility, especially if I didn’t mention I was a local reporter. I guessed they had irrational fears that immigration would come in waves and change their way of life.

““My approach was to remain positive and try to integrate as much as possible, this meant I had to constantly find the energy needed to be the only non-white person in the room.””

Being defined by both your race and your job in your leisure time is exhausting, and I was tempted to move back to London, even though my wages would never stretch to allow commuting. Although I loved my job, I felt trapped.

Being the only person of colour to work as a reporter for the Sevenoaks Chronicle meant very little then. Race wasn’t an issue. Quite literally. There were never any stories about people of colour unless they involved food, like an Indian restaurant opening. Despite writing for a living, which I’m still really lucky to do, it meant stifling my voice and background.

My approach was to remain positive and try to integrate as much as possible, this meant I had to constantly find the energy needed to be the only non-white person in the room.

I tried signing up to a cricket team a colleague played for, based in Underriver, a small village three miles from Sevenoaks. This was a huge leap for me, as I grew up in Bedfordshire, where cricket was segregated and I played for one of the many all-Asian teams. It was segregated further into religious groups and, despite being an atheist, I played for an Asian-Christian team, mainly because of my surname’s Methodist links.

The Underriver team were a ragtag bunch of young and old but all were keen boozers. We shared a love of cricket and at the time the sport nationally was incredibly popular, as England were playing in the iconic 2005 Ashes series, which would eventually lead to that Trafalgar Square bus parade.

But as much as I love the sport it often doesn’t love me back, and I never performed well enough to earn any respect for my athletic prowess. In fact, I once suffered the ignominy of being a wicketkeeper so short of form that the Underriver captain picked me to come in to bat at 11, meaning even the bowlers would bat before me.

Consequently, going to the White Rock for pints afterwards was never the highlight of the weekend that I thought it would be, as the younger lads ended up teasing me a bit too much about how bad I was, making me feel inferior to them. I was close to giving up with cricket, Kent and my job. The voice inside me said I wasn’t good enough to succeed. Once again, I felt like I should pack it all in and move back to London.

The White Rock, though, is a beautiful country pub that had a cosy wood-beamed lounge and a huge beer garden. I say beer garden, it’s more of a playing field. And in this huge green expanse (Kent’s real nickname should be the “beer garden of England”) I saw two poles and a strange wooden box.

I discovered that the box was the ‘trap’ and I demanded to see the ‘bat’, which looked like an antique table tennis paddle. Just looking at it caused the pub regulars to stare, and the sudden urge to impress them overwhelmed me. It was time to pick the wooden bat up to which my teammates agreed and, of course, we decided to play for beers.

Batting was far less complex than cricket, (which can never truly be mastered even if you’re at the highest level, as it requires fast footwork as well as exceptional hand-eye coordination.) Holding the bat was easy enough and firing the ball in the air from the trap seemed like a simple movement. Time and time again I would connect and the sense of middling it was just as satisfying as in cricket. Perhaps even more so, as the bat was so old it made a hollow noise each time I connected with the ball.

The game itself was much more sedate than cricket too and the fielders didn’t really interfere with play—they don’t pounce on the ball as soon as it leaves the bat. This makes the experience more meditative and unlike any other sport, I’ve played, as you don’t feel under pressure at any time.

I then fielded behind the posts, looking into a setting sun as the garden became filled with a warm light. At that moment the anxiety of not fitting in drained away and I felt a one-ness with my teammates. That day I bonded with them and, as well as bat and trap, we went on to play all sorts of sports socially over the years from snooker, squash to football.

But it will be bat and trap and that evening in the beer garden that I will always remember because when I think of that time in Kent I don’t see the whiteness of my friends, but the golden hue of the White Rock beer garden.

At his request, half of Theo’s fee for his wonderful illustrations was donated to a charity of the authors choosing. David chose Stop Hate UK, whom we are proud to support.