Oh you lucky people

Once we got the tickets for the Brisbane Test Match, I had to find a safe place to stash them. As the England team found out at the end of the tour Hotels are not the safest of places.I decided to put them inside your book Ritchie. 'My Spin on Cricket'. No it wasn't because Burglars wouldn't be interested in reading it. Perish the thought. According to Ian Healy in the 'Courier Mail' which I bought the day before, Richie is still the skipper, so I reasoned that any Pom caught in possession of the book would be held in high respect and left alone. As the boy and I were walking through Brisbane we happened upon Westlife in concert in the street. Hopefully I've managed to upload a photo to show you. They were over to do an Ashes event. Nothing against the guys, but one of our party came across Richie himself while they were on their walk and I would have swapped photos with him any day.
We actually appeared in the local paper. Not the Courier but the 'Gold Coast Bulletin'under the headline 'Pompardment Starts'. Our group's average age must have been at least sixty, but we were the nearest they were going to get to the Barmy Army in the Brisbane Hinterland. The reporters were waiting for us in a pub in Canungra. We had just been Kaola Bear spotting, Carlton Light drinking,Wallaby and Kangaroo differentiating and Kookaburra listening in Tamborine Mountain. Like with scores and wickets the Aussies reverse things and the signs pointed to Mountain Tamborine.
Again I'm hoping that there will be a picture confirming the spotting of the kookaburra. If you enjoy listening to kookaburras rather than spotting them, but you prefer staying in the city rather than in the Canungras of Australia, just keep crossing the roads as their pelican crossings mimic the kookaburra birdsong. Another reverse, as our birds mimic the pelican crossing. I found that out to my cost when I set off across the road thinking it was the green man when it was just some pesky starling in a nearby tree. Birds have always featured in my tours. In France en route to Spain it was sparrows, magpies and swallows that got a mention rather than kookaburras. We were just settling down in one of those Aires to have a picnic. Here is what I wrote about them at the time.
There are loads of tiny sparrows over here, all enjoying little dust baths. I thought that they shot them or pickled them in France. They are getting scarce at home, and we don’t even eat them. What does that tell us? Check the labels on your jars of pickle if nothing else. The Jim Roquefort cheese is nice, but as the cheddar has survived in the warm box, I’m sticking to that in my baguette sandwiches. There’s quite a crackling sound started up. Either the crickets are complaining about the smell of the smoked salmon, or one of their pylons has come down and the wires are arcing. Warm or not the cold box is a handy pillow as the spot we found may be shady, but it’s hardly comfortable. I begin to doze but I get caught in the bag’s zip, and I’m sticking to that Jim Roquefort cheese and sand which is all over my hair.
There seems to be a number of magpies in the trees. ‘Attention mes petits sparrows!’ They could have been a factor in the demise of our cock sparrows, more than likely in revenge for one of their ancestors doing cock robin, according to the legend. I’d heard they were miffed about it. I don’t know whether it was true or not, it may have been a load of cock. The missus says I’m being harsh on the magpies. She reckons that the sparrows in our towns are in a pickle because of pollution. She explains that if the poison chemicals that we pump out don’t get the sparrows themselves, they kill off the food the sparrows eat, like bugs and caterpillars and so the sparrows cop it. It’s a bit of a Hobson’s. If there’s no food, they don’t eat and they die. If they eat the poisoned insects they’re dead meat. They haven’t adapted like our town foxes who take away the dead meat from the rubbish we put out. (No obvious comments please, leave that to me).
No wonder the French don’t want our sparrows. For a start there aren’t enough to spare, but if they are stuffed full of Sandy Toxic residues the French bird eaters themselves could be at risk. I’m not convinced. We live in an older house and we have always had sparrows nesting in our eaves throughout the day. I’ve both heard them there and seen their droppings. Only this year a few of them were chirping away in a bush in our front garden when out of the sky dived a hawk. It ripped its way right into the bush and flew off with one of the unfortunate sparrows in its talons. All this within a couple of seconds. If that isn’t fast food I don’t know what is. Seeing is believing and I’m a great believer in believing the evidence of your own eyes, even through bifocals.
It’s not just the magpies that are being noisy. There’s far more people around now all tucking in to their packed medium sized dejeuners and yakking away as if there is no tomorrow. The good thing is that just like the magpies you don’t have to listen to the crap they are talking because they are all chattering in languages that I cannot understand. What pleasure! The missus disagrees of course. MI6, or is it the Deuxieme Service over here, would love to know about her direction finding listening beacon decoders. Languages don’t seem to matter to her when it comes to ear wigging. I’m sure she could even tell us what the magpies are on about.
It is very pleasant under here, though I miss the windball from the kids landing on you every now and then. The magpies must have been sledging as they do their best with the fir cones but it’s not the same. The hot cold box is well comfortable now, as our kids would say. Something has moulded to the shape of my head. The missus says that it’s probably the smoked salmon as nothing else in there would be big enough to fillet. Funny arse! I just hope I don’t go down with salmonella. Enough of this fish mongering between me and the missus. It’s 2.30 pm French time; it must be bordering on lunch time at the cricket by now, if it is still going. I’m about to drop off again, but I have to check first where her handbag is. With all these magpies about you can’t be too careful. I know they get a bad press, those magpies, but I’ve seen them on the telly as well and they nicked everything in sight. We’d be lost if all our documents went with her handbag, especially with us about to enter another country. The ‘Which Reports’ on cars often say that it only takes thieves seconds to get into cars, so they’d be into her handbag in four to five minutes easily. ‘Under my head’, she says with a self satisfied smirk. If it wasn’t going to be as much my loss as hers I would have told her not to be so smug. Well which one would you go for if you were a magpie, or a burglar in a stripy top, a beret and a bag of oignons, sorry a bag with ‘swag’ on it? A cold bag stinking of fish and minging cheese or her handbag? Exactly. I’d better zip it up tighter to my hair. Night night!
I’ve just been bitten by a vicious ant. Where’s the spray? Fuck the sparrows! Sod the French bird eaters. I can live without pickle. The ants are doing for me. I ease my head out of the bag and it does hurt just like Gulliver said it did when he was on his travels. I pour myself a cup of tea from the flask but they are still at me. I don’t want to waste any of the elixir of life by pouring it over them to kill them off. There’s a jar of marmalade in there somewhere and I’m prepared to sacrifice it to some of these ants. I find the jar and open it. I taste a couple of finger licks first. Perfect! I let my marmalade covered fingers do the walking from where I reckon they are coming from to the handbag. ‘Peace at last, peace at last, Oh good! All my tea, peace at last’. The trouble is when you are a pig in shit you act like one. A ‘shit’ I mean not a ‘pig’. It’s the same at home. She’s sleeping contentedly in bed and I am propped up next to her drinking the tea that she has made, but unable to get to sleep. My mind turns inexorably to one thing – Cricket on the radio!
The missus nudged me to listen to an argument that was going on from over the hedge that she said was getting interesting. Although it had gone over my head as well as the hedge until then, it was in English. The missus said that it was in German as they were being abrupt. I had to explain to the missus that if it was in German I wouldn’t be listening to what they were saying; only hearing it. The missus wanders off so she can get better reception. I’ve given up on mine, as neither the car nor the portable are receiving, so I wander after her to an area where the trees are bigger. Don’t worry about the valuables as she’s got her handbag with her and I’ve got the portable. All is quiet as we see an enormous French dog do an enorme French merde on what would have been our cricket pitch. Nearby at square leg one French lady owner looks on. Always willing to be positive, the missus says ‘At least it’s not got diarrhoea and she’s kicked some dust on it’ ‘Yes and it’s not on a length’, I continued, along the same vein. I thought the woman was holding her nose, but the missus who knows about these things said that it was a mobile phone. ‘Do you think she’s describing it turd by turd?’ I ask myself. ‘Only if she’s having an affair and talking dirty’ I answer. I walk off to look for a boules court so I can have a pee, my momentary lapse into W G Graciousness now over.
Bloody hell! A Gendarmerie car with flashing lights has just come around the corner and has gone down the lane where I just had my pee. It frightened the life out of me. Luckily for the boule players, I did my number 2’s in the hotel or I would have crapped myself. It could have been the British domestic if you can have a domestic abroad, which they were called to. I said this Aire was like a camp site. Some of our countrymen don’t half let us down. More police arrive though they could be medics. I take it all back about this place. It’s getting ‘airey. We could be tarred and feathered with the same brush. They might look on us as illegal ignorants rather than the innocent holiday makers that we are. Another cop car! We’re off. Let’s get across the border quick; it’s got to be safer in Spain; I don’t think they’ve got an extradition agreement with us.
I break all records. I collect our bits, stuff them in the back of the car, get in and drive off in minutes ‘Shit! Where’s the missus?’ She’s having a dump behind that big tree. I’m surprised I couldn’t see her. I give her some encouragement by asking her to complete the affairs of her toilet and to place her slightly oversized and hopefully now clean posterior into the vehicle. She shouts across that she has lost one of the charms from her silver chain. I don’t understand how she has missed one as there are about 20 of them that make up the necklace. She must have been using them as an abacus to count her stools, and noticed that it had gone when she got to nineteen. We search for at least 20 minutes and find nothing except for piles of crap from a variety of animals. Whatever the pollution is over here they are thriving on it. In the end we give up and get back in the car. ‘Those fucking bastard magpies,’ says the missus. ‘I’d like to exterminate the fucking lot of them.’ seemingly more concerned with her silver chain than with the food chain she was on about earlier. ‘Don’t be so thuggish dear’ I said with sparrow free relish. ‘Piss off’, she said, losing her charm as well as having lost her charm.