AS May draws to a close, and the summer months approach us, the rain is here!

It's typical of the good old fashioned British summer. It's been a frustrating time for the team as rain has affected our last few games. Ironically when we needed it to rain last week in Swansea to save the game it didn't!

In our game against Derby we lost 160 overs in total to the weather. We dominated the game from the start and having not lost those vital overs would have won the game comfortably.

The game ended in a draw and I feel it slightly upset our rhythm. We have had some great results in the championship and a win here would have put us top of the table. As it turned out we then lost our next at Swansea which I feel may have been a hangover from the Derby game.

Swansea in the past has been a good ground for us with a good record of winning games. Not last week! It is not a favourite ground of mine for a few reasons.

The main one being the distance from my front door to Swansea! We start warm ups in the morning at around 9.30am. This means I needed to leave my house at 7.30am to avoid the heavy traffic. I'm not making excuses but it is not ideal preparation for a day of bowling. As a result I decided to stay up one night with Jason Gillespie and went out for dinner with Northants coach David Capel. With Jason having played 80 tests for Australia and David having played for England it was great to pick their brains and learn more about the game. Not enough of this is done now with many players going straight back to the hotels and locking themselves in their rooms. Matthew Maynard always says to me that he learned so much from speaking to opposition players when he was younger.

The facilities are not too clever either as our overseas star Jason had to change rather close to the toilets! As a bowler I like to get to the ground early and organise myself. Have breakfast and physio to prepare for the day ahead. We are spoiled with the Swalec Stadium in Cardiff as the facilities are first class. We are also spoiled by our chef Clare who serves me and Jason poached egg on toast every morning before the rest of the lads come in!

Although saying that we did find a little café in Swansea where our normal egg on toast was replaced by bacon and sausage sandwiches! These were obviously kept under the radar from our conditioning coach Rob!

Day one at Swansea was probably our most disappointing day of the season. With David Hemp losing another toss we were bowling on what looked like a dodgy wicket but 524 runs later the wicket didn't look so bad! We didn't bowl well as a unit and I was guilty of bowling too many bad balls which were duly punished by the Northants batsmen.

Normally if one of your bowlers has a bad day the other few can take over and bowl your overs. Problem was all of us had a bad day at the same time! To get bowled out twice in under two days was desperately disappointing.

It was made worse when I got struck on the jaw by the ball when batting. An attempted hook shot which missed my bat and also my helmet hit me flush on the jaw sending me to a heap on the ground.

Obviously I got straight back up being a tough Pontypool boy! It takes a while for the pain to start as your adrenaline is pumping, but after a few hours the stiffness sets in and it felt like I was wearing a neck brace. The bowler then proceeded for the next 10 minutes to try and hit me again!

Where has the old bowlers union gone, where bowlers pitch the ball up to each other?

Problem was the majority of the bowlers were South African. Out of the 20 wickets which fell 17 of them were taken by South Africans.

You probably know my views on this but it surely can't be good for English cricket.

The ground at Swansea is right next to the beach. It was Jason's first trip and he must have thought that the water was warm and swimmable! Obviously the boys encouraged him to have a swim and even handed him a pair of goggles! He wandered down to the beach with a towel over his shoulder like he was going to Bondi beach in Australia. I think he was going to retrieve some of the balls that were hit there when we bowled the previous day!

It was the return of Simon Jones to Wales last Sunday. He had a nice welcome from the players and crowd. He looked fit and well and bowled nicely with good pace. It would be great to see him back in England colours again as he has had a torrid time with injury.

It's more noticeable these days that a lot of teams are travelling by coach to games. Worcestershire had a huge Double Decker luxury coach. They have plasma screens; Sky TV and a kitchen on theirs! I feel it's the best way but it can be expensive to hire for a season. Some share theirs with football teams with Essex sharing with Colchester Utd.

As Worcestershire were boarding their coach I had the unenviable task of packing the kit van. Loading up our transit van with the boys' kit ready for our four hour journey to Southampton! I have been driving the kit van the length and breadth of the country for the past three weeks and it's finally time to hand it over to someone else this week.

Can you imagine Ryan Giggs loading up the Man Utd kit van after a Premier League game and then driving home!?