Cricket services

Can't be bad, we have settled at the Gite in Brittany, with the news of Hayley's pregnancy confirming that we are able get radio 4, which means that I'll be able to listen to the one dayers or twenty 20's which ever it is on Tuesday, always Tuesday, on good old long wave.

How will digital balls up my future cricket listening? If a DAB clock radio gets recommended by 'Which' what sort of service will I get? Will I be able to listen to 'The Morning Service' if I stay in bed, and will I be able to pick up 'World Service' when I go to bed early on a Sunday night when there's only boring ranting mind numbing phone ins on 5 and educational bollocks on 4? How will the world receive World Service abroad when we go digital? Will we sell them short?

I can hear you now Aggers, even though I haven't got a radio on. Broadband, mobile phone, digital TV channels. Well at the moment Aggers, I am sitting in the Gite's back garden watching the twilight go down on me hoping that the missus would follow suit. Just like with the missus, two buttons and a twirl and I'm there on my Nancy Roberts radio. No seriously folks, no dial ups, log ins, passwords, memory cards, downloads or pod casts. Yes I know reception is everything, and I know you think that if I was not receiving due to poor signals I'd be fuming about the lack of the digitalis variety and admitting that what I said earlier when I was venting my spleen and stoking up trouble was just a smokescreen. I don't care if I am fueling the raging controversy as I've carefully thought out an analogurythmic answer that will clear the airways of dross and extend in true British Empirical fashion the shipping forecast to the rest of the world.

Like Labour became New Labour, Long Wave would become Longer wave, and the shipping forecast would reach further shores (or just off them). Thus weather reports would go to all 11 or is it 12 or 13 Oceans of the world. What a Service? In addition the rest of the world will benefit from the ruminations of Blowers and his birds, not to mention those of Eddie Grundy and his cows, and we all know that the world will be a better place for that. E-mailers who would tell me that Eddie doesn't own any cows should be reminded that the birds don't belong to Blowers either. We already extend the forecast to some extent as the informative brochures in the gite tell us that Finistere is a region of Brittany and I've heard that being mentioned in previous forecasts.


Up bright and early. English time at least. I see they haven't lost that hour yet. We have! We've overslept. It's 9.30 and the missus is on the itch to get to the market at Redon. I was on the itch to get on something else, but needs must. On y va and I'll look for mal y pense later on. People have said that Brittany is just like Cornwall. Sure enough as soon as we stepped out of the door it started to rain. Never mind le buzzcocks we are on our vacances. At least we wouldn't get soaked in the rain fiddling with the key unlike previous occupants who wrote in the comments book that 'la porte est juste une peu dure a ouvrir.' as I WD'd it.

According to all who have been here the gite has come out with flying colours. 'C'est un gite que nous recommendenons sans hesiter a notre famille et a nos amis.' Moi aussie mate , moi aussie. That's aussie as in 'also' not Aussie as in antipodean, Osborne or Clark come to that. We set off to Redon and I waved at the first French farmer we saw who stared back incredulously. Before I had a chance to pass comment to the missus we almost hit the second one head on. We had forgotten to sing' Always drive on the right side of the road' to the tune of 'Always look on the bright side of life.' Thankfully neither of us were driving fast. He waved in the same vein as I had to the first one. The missus said that I had poo pooed the idea of getting one of those things that plug into the cigarette lighter that tell you to drive on the right. It was almost her turn to pooh pooh herself this time, but luckily our guardian angels were about and we survived to tell the tale.

We do it every time we go to France. We like a traditional holiday. Hopefully this will be the last time though I don't mean that in a terminal sense. It's a shame you can't plug in your guardian angel into the cigarette lighter as maybe they would have coughed up the information a little earlier. We contacted 'Which' to see whether we could borrow a Sat Nav to test out in Europe, but they must have lent them all out already. If I do get one I'll look for a feature that gives out various warnings. You know like 'Remember your wellies, you are going to Brittany' and 'Have you got clean underwear on now?' The boys should have come. There are fishing places all around as per usual in France. They could have bivvied five minutes away and fished all night. A carte de peche for a 15 day period is €30 which isn't bad as a day's permit is €10.

We cycled up and down the Oust or Arz (Wasn't he a golfer?) looking for spots for me to fish, Blowers to bird and for the missus to yak, read her book, write the postcards and paint the scene for posterity. No good now as the rain doth fall, the ink and paint would run, the cricket would be off and it wouldn't be just the squid who would be damp. No King pairs, King Fishers, Fisher Kings, King prawns, King Kong (I'm reading a book too) or anything fucKing else!