Will England Win Tonight?
Let’s hope so!
It would certainly silence the groans I can hear coming out of Kangaroo Valley.
I’ve just had this view from an Aussie by e-mail.
We have not had a Team in Oz like these Brits . . .
Great Batting . . . Great Bowling . . . Great Fielding . . . Great Wicket Keeping
Look at the Bowlers working the Ball . . . I have never seen such work . . . New Ball one side and rough the other . . .
Ponting’s gone for twenty . . .
Congratulations the Ashes are Yours . . .
This is just the Brits need . . . now the run up to the Olympic Games . . .
Now the Brits will start to rebuild,
Great Team, Great Win . . . Cricket as we Love it . . .
I don’t get this bit about us needing to rebuild. It just strikes me that we call up a new player and they just fit.
A British team getting things right for once. But only like the cyclists, rowers and the boxers, with the gymnasts following close behind. The English football team should take note. Especially, as I have a feeling that either the 2018 or 2022 World Cups will have to be moved to somewhere friendlier.
Things I Have Never Done
Everybody has lists like these, which often include such things as making love in a hammock or aeroplane, which for most people are very unlikely. I won’t comment about the two I mention here, except to say that I did have my own plane for many years. But it didn’t feature a hammock!
Two things on my real list are learning to swim and having someone deliver a takeaway meal, which I then pay for at the door. As to the latter, I’ve never even had one delivered by the vendor. The learning to swim will stay forever, but as I have a branch of the Bombay Bicycle Club just round the corner, a takeaway will probably be delivered at some point in the near future.
Unusual things I have done include.
- Gone to Royal Ascot with someone else impersonating someone who had died many years before. The gateman said she looked well. She still did, when I saw her a couple of weeks ago.
- Crashed an aircraft and walked away from it. As did all my passengers! The plane was a right-off!
- Hunted three types of hare hounds; harriers, bassets and beagles in one day.
- Been extremely drunk on a Mersey Ferry.
- Seen the Beatles perform live.
- Piloted a light-aircraft all round Australia and even on to the Great Barrier Reef.
- Been present at the birth of all my three sons. For the first, my wife was three weeks late and she fooled the Middlesex Hospital into believing she was in labour. More…
- Won a National Championship at real tennis.
- Seen a Transit of Venus.
- Had dinner in Rick Stein’s restaurant with two widowed daughters of an heriditary peer. More…
- Came off best after a mugging in Naples. More…
- Hitched a Lift in the cab of a High Speed Train from Edinburgh to Inverness. More…
My late wife always said she married me because she knew life wouldn’t be boring. I intend to keep proving she was right. I must not let her down!
Solving the Problem of Watching Sky or ITV Pictures and Getting Radio 5 Sound
As you may know from this blog, I’m allergic to two things; gluten and adverts. I don’t like having to continually switch whilst watching sport on Sky or ITV to BBC Radio 5, to avoid the annoying adverts and get a continuous commentary. In many cases too, the ITV coverage is not up to scratch and vital parts like goals are missed. To be fair to Sky, there’s nothing wrong with their coverage in general, it’s just the adverts, often for products that contain gluten. So they are a double irritant.
Virgin cable gets around this problem in some ways, because it has a Back button, so you can constantly use it to flip between, your preferred video and audio channels.
For Christmas I was given a pair of wireless headphones by Sennheiser, that plug into the headphone socket of a television or radio and give a good sound quality within range.
So I have plugged them into my Roberts DAB radio for good Radio 5 sound and just put the television on the corresponding video channel.
There are some other advantages.
- I can get good commentary all over my house and even in the road outside.
- The range also solves the tea and toilet break problems, as never do I have to miss any of the action. This works well with sport, but you’d probably need to pause the television for a break, whilst watching a serious drama.
- I’d also be interested to know to, how serious music lovers would find the quality of the sound through the headphones.
- I now adjust the volume on the headphones, so that if say I was watching something very loud, then I’m the only one gets the loud noise.
- Obviously, if you are watching with someone else, you just unplug the headphones and watch normally.
It strikes me that various families would find different ways to use one or more of these devices to avoid problems amongst themselves or with the neighbours.
To be fair, I know that the headphones are a good deal cheaper, than the cost of using a solicitor to fight an ASBO caused by a loud television. And not everybody likes Abba!
But whatever, they made a very good Christmas present for me!
Geoffrey Boycott is Distraught
Poor Geoffrey Boycott is distraught for Australia, after the first day in Melbourne. He has just said that it couldn’t have happened to nicer people.
The English Bowling Wasn’t That Good!
Looking at the wreakage of the first Australian innings in Melbourne this morning, as a statistician it is strange that every wicket was caught and there were no lbws or bowled. So perhaps, England weren’t bowling that straight and the Aussies just gave catches away.
Was it just a ploy to give England a false sense of security?
Going Back to Bed as a Happy Bunny
It’s now approaching 4:30 and I’ve just watched an interesting ninety minutes of cricket as Australia decided to give England a lot of catching practice and became all out for just 98 runs.
So I’ve just made myself a LemSip and after I’ve drunk that and listened to the news, I’ll go back to bed and see if I can get back to sleep again. I suppose though I did get about six hours sleep overnight.
The LemSip is an odd flavour; Wild Berry and Hot Orange. If I need to buy some more, I’ll buy the traditional.
Hopefully, it will be alright when I get up in the morning, but England did look a bit collapsible in the last Test and I’ve got Ipswich today, tubes permitting. Town will have to try to play as well as they did in the snow eight days ago.
Do I Have a Claim under the Disability Rights Act?
Ipswich Town are playing at home on Boxing Day, but unfortunately there are no trains between London and Ipswich, so I will be unable to go.
If I could drive, it would not be a problem, but because of the stroke, I now no longer have a driving licence, or a car available for that matter. So am I being discrimanated against, especially as I’ve paid for the match with my season ticket?
I can’t even listen to the match on local radio, as I would have done in Suffolk!
I’ve also checked the Supporters Club web site and no-one runs a coach from London.
Another Game in the Snow
After yesterday’s entertaining but cold match at Ipswich yesterday, I’m reminded of another Ipswich game in the snow.
It was probably in about 1962 or so and I supported Spurs at the time, although my parents had a house in Felixstowe and the next door neighbour used to give me a lift to Portman Road.
White Hart Lane was covered in snow and it was snowing hard on possibly Boxing Day in 1962 and after a virtuoso display by Jimmy Greaves, Ipswich lost 5-0.
The referee was Denis Howell, who was a Labour MP and not liked by the crowd. We all thought that he got his just desserts, served very cold.
You don’t have to be mad to support Ipswich, but it helps!
On Friday, I bought my train ticket to go to see Ipswich play Leicester at Portman Road, so if I had decided not to go because of the weather it would have cost me £23.55. I could afford that and knew that as I walked along the Ball’s Pond Road to Dalston Kingsland station, the weather didn’t look at all promising.
- Snow in the Ball’s Pond Road
I did get as far as the cash-point on the corner, but immediately returned home and then went to a pub where I had some lunch and some cider.
At about two, I thought that I’d go as snow often makes for good entertainment. So I retraced my steps to the station, bought a paper and then found that the station was closed. So I had to taske the alternative route, via Dalston Junction, Whitechapel and Mile End, where I got the Central Line for Stratford, to get the fast train to Ipswich.
The Olympic stadium looked good in the snow.
- Olympic Stadium in the Snow
But at least the Olympics are in August not the winter!
I actually fell asleep on the train to Ipswich, but that had nothing to do with missing the first twelve minutes or so of the match. The move has been tiring and I just needed the sleep. I completely missed the first goal and only heard the roar of the crowd as the second went in.
I just managed to see the third through the snow, but as most of the action for that goal happened just in front of me.
The second half was much of the same, as 16,728 souls peered through the snow.
Football in the Snow
But all thanks go to the referee, who resisted all efforts by the Leicester players to abandon the match. And of course to the ground staff, who kept the game going.
I had a wait at the station for a train back to London, but when it arrived it was new, warm and comfortable and arrived at its destination without gaining any more delays. It was then a tube to Liverpool Street and a taxi from the station to home. The only bad information I received on the journey home was from the charming policewoman at Liverpool Street, who said that the taxis weren’t running. But they were.
Interestingly, her colleague was in a uniform which said Politie, so he could have been Dutch. Are we that short of police these days that we have to borrow them from other countries? I made a mistake in not taking a picture.
But I suppose, when Ipswich fans talk over a drink in a few years time, I will be able so say “I was there!”
Isn’t life wonderful.
Waking up to Good News
There’s nothing that a good Pom likes more than to wake up to the news that the Australian cricket team is in trouble.
I turned television on just in time, to see the fifth Australian wicket go down for just 69 runs.
In some ways it all seems rather surreal with a troop of English fast bowlers bearing down on the batsmen. Never in my lifetime have we had so many good ones. Why? In the past we might have had a pair like Fred Trueman and Brian Statham, but usually it was a good one like John Snow or Bob Willis working with whatever could be found in County Cricket.
Why have things changed so much?
Perhaps other sports and business should find out and follow a similar path.
The Anonymous Widower 