Ian Bell's midsummer nightmare

Ian Bell woke up. Elegantly, gracefully, like a piece of ginger gossamer borne on a mistral of pleasant air that was neither too warm nor too chilly, he eased from the back-foot embrace of dream via the forward press of wakefulness to purr through the extra-cover region of daylight's delight.

He threw off the duvet cover, its Egyptian cotton cover encasing, although not too tightly, an official ECB high tog value quilt that had been specifically selected under the Marginal Gains (Bedding) Programme, which was just one of the fringe benefits of England cricket's association with Waitrose and sister store John Lewis to provide the exact blend of warmth, comfort and absorbency for the modern England middle-order batsman.

He put his slippers on, elegantly and with a flourish. He sipped from the glass of water by the side of the bed, classily. Classically, and with an artist's touch, he brushed his teeth in front of the mirror. No Monet nor Rubens was painted with such exquisite strokes as those Bell employed to clean, in turn, canines, incisors, bicuspids, tongue (perfectly pink). To watch him swill that Listerine was to watch a master at work as he voided cleansing, unnecessarily peppery mouthwash into the sewer system of the West Midlands.

"Well, obviously, I'll be looking to brush my teeth to the best of my ability and let the rest take care of itself," he said to the face in the mirror. He looked at the clock, perfectly timing the quarter turn of his head to meet the refracted light off the clockface, his eyeball dilating an exquisite amount as his optic nerve smoothly, effortlessly relayed the information to his brain that it was a quarter past eight. He had all the time in the world as he adjusted his body position to wash his hands in the sink, and in one uninterrupted movement gather the small hand towel off to the side at 45 degrees.

Crisply he dried his hands, as casually as a man drying his hands, as if time slowed to a crawl simply to let him dry his hands. He was the master of his bathroom, a poet, a seer whose mastery of time and space made him a very god.

A bee. Buzzing. It flew in. Bell became distracted. It buzzed on the window pane. It sounded like a drill, a jet engine, a huge wave crashing over him. He began to panic. He flicked a towel at the insect. The flicked towel, hasty, misjudged, knocked over a shelf of perfume bottles. Crash crash smash glass ouch...

He grabbed bug spray. In his confusion, he sprayed it in his hair. He threw mouthwash at the bee, missing, and then slipped in the puddle. As he fell, he pulled down a shelf. Pot after jar after ECB-branded cosmetic product fell on his head. Pain pain confusion and sorrow and and and eventually… black.

Ian Bell woke up. Elegantly, gracefully, like a piece of ginger gossamer borne on a mistral of pleasant air that was neither too warm nor too chilly, he eased from the back-foot embrace of dream via the forward press of wakefulness to purr through the extra cover region of daylight's delight.

And so it went on.