26. Gruesome Gesticulation, and crafty 24-yarders : George Jarrett remembers.... Norman Higgs and Vic Farmer

One of the great joys of looking back to cricket playing days is the warm recollection of the oddball characters who jock-strapped beside you often.
Two of these were Norman Higgs, who played for Oxted IIIs in the mid 1960’s when the team had great fixtures with Kent village sides, and Vic Farmer, who had played for Limpsfield seconds for some years before I joined in the early 70’s.
Norman was a teacher at Oxted, and a wonderfully affable Australian who loved the after-game drinks and chats in the bar seemingly more than being hit for a few fours, or knocking a few singles. He was a gesticulator supreme, often thumping his hand on the bar to emphasise something he held important to jovial life. His pupils must have seen the same, but safer gesticulations.
In every club bar and public house, we all watched and feared that he would smash his hand on a glass, but he always seemed to just miss them. And when we asked him to wave in windmills, and not smash his hand down on the bar, he laughed it off. But yes. It did happen.
Norman got carried away and flat handed a shorts glass with great force. It was an ugly and heart-breaking scene. We all felt it was our fault.
Vic Farmer resembled a St Trinian’s schoolmaster. He could poke fun with the best of them, but was at core the club’s Mr Serious. A lovely slow bowler to field to, he had a cunning plan. Once or twice in a spell he would bowl a delivery two steps early, hoping to catch the batsman by surprise.
If he ever got a wicket from this, it was because the wicketkeeper warned the batsman, who then tried to slog Vic over the legion, only to be caught or stumped.
Vic became a very good circuit umpire, but my abiding memory of him happened on one of the old schoolboy grounds, when he was parked dangerously at extra cover when a batsman was thrashing the ball to all parts of the ground.
On about 40 he smashed one that looked sure to be a flat six straight over Vic. But he snatched it, pocketed it, and turned as if to run to the boundary. The batsman may have been disbelieving when the umpire gave him the finger - we were chortling !
Vic's service to the Cricket Club continued as a long-serving club treasurer (until 1978) and he remained on the committee for many more years beyond that.