Sunday 24 November 2013

Messages From (Very) Far Away

Its the Ashes again, and Australia have spent the last four days dominating England in every cricketing department imaginable. 1-0 up. Fair play to them. Mitchell Johnson especially was world class. England? Abysmal.

Before this series, Australia hadn't won a test match in 9 attempts, (that's NINE!), losing 7 and drawing two, losing 3 of the last 4 Ashes series by convincing margins. That's a pretty dire record. But its all okay, because they've won a test match, and boy, don't they want us to know about it. Their local media refuse to mention Stuart Broad's name, choosing instead to ghost out his picture. After their (admittedly convincing) victory however, they have gotten incredibly smug about it all. Opening batsman David Warner has come out saying some of the English players are "weak". Captain Michael Clarke spent his entire press conference gloating. Even debutant George Bailey, with a whole 37 test match runs to his name, spent most of England's final innings chirping away whilst stood at short leg.

Welcome to the Australian logic. They cry when they don't get their own way, and then as soon as something good happens, they become unbearably and ridiculously egotistical about it. I have had my fair share of this on a personal level, as I am receiving a fair few messages from Australia myself, most of which are hideously abusive. So much so, that I look forward to receiving them. Each one merely confirms that my decision to come home was the right one. I even got a message saying, "We have some blokes from our club who might pop in and visit your club". Imagine that. Paying money to come and get money that they think they're owed, that you've already lost by getting over here in the first place? Haha. Logic. These guys have bundles of it.

Yes. That's British sarcasm.

In other news, I've overdone it on the Jack Daniels consumption. Not dangerously so, (I don't think), because I've managed to get home in one piece each time, but it is obvious to anyone with half an eye that I am drinking a lot of it. I document it on social media for one thing, as I tend to, but I can also feel it. Its taking longer for me to recover from nights out, (I'm typing this at 11.30pm - still recovering from last night), and I'm thinking I might give my liver a break for a week or two before the inevitable alcohol-consumption-to-the-max period of Christmas and New Year. Then again, come next Friday evening, I might disregard that. It usually happens. Waking up to go and play indoor cricket this morning then, in which we won to make it 3 wins in 4, was highly difficult. I was even tempted to stay in bed and "pie it" as the kids say, but I do have some sort of responsibility to not let my team mates down. I batted well aswell, hitting 30 odd, (the scorebook said 20 - but that had to be wrong as I hit two sixes!) in a reasonably comfortable chase. I'm enjoying indoor cricket. It's very, very hard work, with a lot of sprinting when batting, (especially when I've inevitably been out the night before!), but its good exercise and a good way of keeping the heart working, when the liver is feeling the pain! I'm pretty sure I'll reap the benefits when the proper season comes back round aswell, as I'd have been batting all winter.

Otherwise, its business as usual. Time is going very, very quickly, and soon we'll be knee deep in the tough times. I don't look forward to it, but at the same time, I'm enjoying the here and now. I think that's the best way of doing things.

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