The kookaburra bird has appeared on the sister blog of French and Aussie Cricket with no spaces. I'll work it out one day. Have a look at it and it will somehow remind you of Billy Bawden, the umpire. On that first day at Brisbane Gilo bowled and he raised his crooked finger. I jumped up in the air and waved my England flag. Would you believe it he only raised it to scratch his bloody nose. I only raised my flag three times that day and they got 340! The only bowler they feared was Freddie. If Panesar had been playing there would have been two! They should have feared Harmison but they couldn't reach him. They reckon that Lara is uncomfortable with Flintoff. I doubt if many of the world’s top batsmen will feel that they are in a comfort zone when they are facing Freddie. An English name that has offered no comfort to class batsmen in years gone by. They are wondering whether it was a plan or whether Lara just happened to be next in while Flintoff was bowling. Whatever! More importantly I would suggest that the policy continues where our best bowler gets nicknamed Freddie. WG can be adopted by one of the top order, so that he will have the presence to stay at the crease even when he is out. If things get too friendly out in the middle, putting Jardine in as a middle name for the captain will take things to the extremes. That’s the theory anyway.
The Barmy Army were selling Douglas Jardine T-Shirts but I didn't have the front to buy one. Besides I didn't want the Gabba Enteritis Authorities to separate me from my mates. By day 3 I can see the Aussie team's sledging coaches putting them through their paces. At one stage we were 549 runs behind. Don't worry about the detail, you will know all the stats by now and the rest is history. What you might not know is that when we were leaving to get on our bus, I saw one of those orange minibuses with a driver shouting at somebody inside 'If you don't like it you can bloody well get out.' What do you reckon? Stuck up Poms thinking themselves to be more important than they really are?
Well as we were travelling in the bus we overtook an orange minibus. Was it the same aforementioned one? we ask. One of the guys pointed at it and said 'There's CMJ' I sstrained to see if the minibus had a TMS sticker on it. I'm not saying it was you who got the tonguing or is it tongueing from the driver CMJ, but please tell us which Pom was whingeing or is it Whinging? I could set up a Channel 4 type Phone in competition to make myself a fortune, as weall know it must have been Bearders!
Billy finally got his just deserts for scratching his nose and giving Pieterson out. Bell pulled one round and hit him. It should have been a four without Billy's intervention. The boy reckoned he could have got out of the way. The Aussies are all sympathetic. We are not. They had some 'Jeux sans Frontieres' type games for the teatime entertainment. It's got to be a lot better than the musical twats who gave us cricketing songs on the first two days. The lyrics were so bad I could have written them. It was sort of 'I gave the ball a thump and I hit the fucking ump' to the tune of 'I am the music man; I come from down your way and I can play..' Give the Brits their due as this was the only time Aussies were booed and jeered during the first two test matches. I think the assholes were trying to outdo the Barmy Army and quieten them down in support of the Gobby Ground Authorities. Mind you England had managed to do that.
The bloke next but one got it right. He said it would be 157 all out. Hayden and Langer belt off. Harmison and Hoggard set up one stump to bowl at. They didn't hit it. If I was an Aussie I'd write that for Harmie he could have had twelve stumps and still wouln't have hit. They led by 626 in the end. I thought I might write 'Dunkirk' on my flag to see if that would help.
I only just got my camera in . I had to show that the lens cap was not a baton to the Gynaecologist on the front gate. I think he was looking for some more Dell Boy type blow up dolls that the Aussie fans were passing up and down the tiers to make a change from Beach Balls. The Gits kept going in and burst them when they got hold of them. There was no need for that and certainly no need to have used their armpits as stirrups as they rode them off into the Gaping depths to which the Ground Authorities had sunk. The answer to the first 'Trivia' question was 'Syphilis' which about set the standard for the day. For my writing if nothing else.
They as the Aussies say are 1-183. I've been searching for Zoe and Dave who are on Honeymoon. I don't know them but I know their flag. They have put it up in adifferent place each day. I hope they are still together and have not been split up by the Garrison in the Ground Authorities. Look out for a picture somewhere in the ether. I took a photo of the school next door to the GABBA. My missus teaches in a school next to our Bat and Ball Cricket Ground. They use it for cricket and other sports. I wonder if the GABBA allows the school to have their Sports Day on the ground. I'll try to find out. I'd guess not. In fact if one of the pupils turns up with a large packed lunch box the Gastronomic Ground Authorities would probably let the police know so that the kid would get sent home. At least they only do that in our country if the kid was found to have a packet of crisps in the lunch box.
There's a rumour going round that it was only because of the Gastronomic Ground Authorities that Pontin didn't declare until they were 202-1, a lead of 647. All this talk of food has made me hungry. The lovely missus will have something on the boil. She always comes up saves my bacon even when it was Dutch rather than Danish.
You see, the missus remembers me having been only a whisker away from catastrophe with Dutch Bikers on a campsite in the Algarve three years ago’, taking up at least three of my nine lives. I pause for thought but no matter how much I try to anaesthetise it, again I don’t exactly emerge smelling of Roses, another part of Spain we are heading for. After just a couple of days on the site, true to form the missus had worked out that it was some Dutch kid’s birthday. He was in the next but ten caravans which is a near neighbour to the missus. While they were out, she put up some flags and bunting, which she always brings ‘Just in case’, around their plot. The family were overjoyed and the missus’ fame must have spread, as two lusciously leathered thirty something Marianne Faithful look-alikes from a Dutch biker group that had arrived the previous evening, asked if they could have some bunting as they were going to organise a birthday party for one of their party. In case there is any confusion, their bike transporters carried Harley-Davidson motor bikes not BMX Chopper bikes.
The missus handed the bunting over and under her watchful eye I follow their every movement as they slink off back towards their row of caravans to tart up their verandas. I came out of my trance before a pall of smoke arises from each bottom and to be as helpful as possible I wander after them with a pair of nail scissors to help them cut the bunting and to keep them in sight for a little longer. One of them pulled out a knife that was a lot longer and said ‘We are OK thank you’. I came to a dead stop and with the return speed of a bungee jump I retreated to the safety of the missus whose face was a picture of ‘Serves you right you tosser’. I know what she means. The Shrimpers cricket team I play for is not in a league as none of us enjoy league cricket. Even so, if we got promoted 10 seasons on the trot I still wouldn’t be in their league.
We were sharing this holiday with a few friends and as the missus and I were off cooking duty that night we were sampling starters and sinking aperitifs and chasers both before and after we should have done. Wines and beers went down as well as the food, and by the end of the meal that little bit of puppy dog aggression that I have to own up to, came over me again. ‘Typical you’ I accused the missus. ‘When it’s a bloody five year old middle class Dutchy, you are straight up there fuss-assing around with your lets share everything approach, and your bonhomie and your Europhantic bunting.’ By this time I was on a different planet. While everyone else stood there stupefied, I staggered in to the caravan, picked up a bottle of sparkling wine, gave it to the missus, grabbed her and my mate’s missus and took off toward the bikers’ encampment. There were about a dozen of them sat shoulder to shoulder outside one of their caravans around a couple of tables that they had put together and that would accommodate 20 normal sized people. The tables were covered in bottles and glasses. They looked up as I arrived, slightly ahead of the very apprehensive missuses. ‘Somebody’s birthday?’ I asked in the sort of accusing tone you would use if you were going to complain about the noise. ‘Mine’, said the biggest biker as he tucked his thumbs into his braces over his barrel chest. He didn’t say ‘So what!’ but the meaning was there. ‘Happy birthday’, I said taking the bottle of sparkling wine from a very non effervescent missus and putting it on the table.
I turned around, linked arms with the missuses, not just for effect but also for support. The boss man said ‘Come and join us’. One of the men got up and all three of us sat down where he had been. The expression on the missus’ mate’s face belied the fact that she hadn’t discovered that waterproof makeup yet. They put some fresh glasses in front of us, pushed the bottle of sparkling wine to the furthest part of the tables and poured out some Scotch whisky. I must have been in the same state as that Gerald Hoffnung in the Bricklayer’s Apprentice when he left go the barrel, it certainly wasn’t Dutch courage. Apparently, according to the missus who related the tale the following day, and according to the ditty that one of the other families inscribed in the book on Harley-Davidsons that they presented to me as a memento (another myth exploded), I stood up almost taking the table with me, saying something like ‘Scotch is for wussies’, and lurched off between the caravans, clattering and clanging jockey wheels and tow bars alike to disappear and arrive back clutching a bottle of Irish Whiskey. ‘This is the stuff for men’, I announced, throwing some down my throat straight from the bottle. I passed it round and swigged some more as it came back to me, grateful for all 12 taking a turn so my throat had time to recover.
As I expect you have realised by her navigating, if there is one thing that the missus is good at, it is reading the signs. She could see that my novelty value like the amount of whiskey in the bottle was diminishing. With a pincer movement that both Rommel and the American synchronised swimming team would have been proud of, her and her mate stood me up, twirled me around and with a ‘Enjoy the rest of your birthday, we’ll leave you to your celebrations’, they frog marched me off knowing that not only was I tanked up, I was pissed as a newt, and a tad likely to be pole axed after having crashed through their Harleys rather than having tiptoad through their tulips. The ditty says it better.
“Do you remember that warm sultry night?
You drank with the Dutch and gave them a fright.
‘Grouse is for wimps’ you loudly uttered.
And as you stirred you st..st..stuttered.
The table toppled, the bottles wobbled,
But amongst the kafuffle
A voice slightly muffled
Proclaimed….
‘I drank with the bikers from Mars’”
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