The old man at the tea kiosk says that when he came past at 9am on his customary morning run, Simon stopped to ask who had won the toss in the Ashes cricket test. Cricket test matches in England would never start before 10:30am, as the ground could still be way too dewy, and the toss is always half an hour before the start, so at 10am.
Dan Griffin says incorrectly there are no rain forests in the UK. Temperate Atlantic rain forests are found in the west from Scotland to Cornwall. What he meant was there are no tropical rain forests in the UK.