I thought that my three week silence would have provoked an avalanche of lamentations and pleading for more, but no! Instead you’ve all been as quiet as shy church mice. I guess I just have to come to terms with the fact that you’ve all found your replacement Daves and are getting on with your lives.
Casting all this psychobabble aside, let me tell you what I’ve been up to recently. These last few weeks have been like a black hole of time – insanely busy pockets of work interspersed with weekends of getting drunk and stoned. I’ve got newfound respect for all you 9-5’ers out there. I realise I’ve only got my training wheels on as far as a’normal’ working week is concerned, but I can’t imagine how you can do it for extended periods without becoming incredibly hardened or totally insane.
At the moment I’m keeping my head above water during the working week but occasionally find myself swamped by waves of depression. These are usually brought on by the sickly smell of stress that fills the subway on a busy morning. Work itself is incredibly busy. They gave me about two hours to settle in before ambushing me with a shit-rain of work This entails me taking new page designs from the graphic designers and doing a mock-up in HTML before using the Content Management System to change all the relevant pages, or add new ones. So far I’ve finished about four of these kind of projects with another two waiting to be done. It’s not the most interesting work but a job’s a job and at the moment I’m not very concerned about my future career path. I just want to make a bit of money and have a good summer.
Speaking of summer, have I got a link for these paragraphs or what? This weekend was the first warm one I’ve experienced in England. It felt like 30 degrees, but I’m sure it was just in the low 20’s. This summery weather happily coincided with my plan to take in some cricket this weekend. Imagine my stupendously, mind-boggingly huge excitement and joy when I figured out that Lords is only four tube stops from my house – a 15-minute trip! The home of cricket, the mecca for cricket fans around the world, is my local ground.
So it was with appropriate respect and reverence (and lots of beer), that I entered this hallowed arena, and had my first, and possibly last, religious experience. It was a perfect day for a game of cricket. The sun was shining, clouds drifted lazily across the sky, and I had my good rockin’ buddy Adam to drink beer with, and share the finer arts of the game of cricket (like explaining who Shane Warne was). That’s right my very good friends, Shane Warne was playing with one of the county sides starting with H, against Middlesex in a fiery one-dayer. The lineup was complete with Justin Langer being the captain of Middlesex this year, as a relaxed break from his No.3 position with the Australian test team.
With Adam and me settled in on the boundary, in the shade, behind the bowlers arm, with a refreshing breeze and beer aplenty, the visiting side proceeded to stage a collapse. They are English after all. The rest of the innings consisted of me politely cheering Robin Smith on, and getting drunk. The only real excitement came when Warnie came out to bat, prompting the majority Australian crowd to start chanting “W-A-R-N-E-E-E-E”, and sing’True Blue’ – a little bit louder in those parts that involve standing by your mate in a fight. All this was just an appetiser for when Warne came on to bowl later in the afternoon, with the patriotic Australian crowd driving themselves into a drunken frenzy of laconic chanting and shouts. “I love you, Shane”, from one devout young man, prepared to put his ass on the line, to “You are a true god, Shane”, to which he responded with a wave of the hand in thanks. There was even a bit of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie … OI, OI, OI”, which brought on a wave of homesickness and a tear to my eye.
I only emphasise these good Aussie lads as the match was fairly dull, with both sides only scoring 150. Middlesex won in the end, but not before Warnie almost snatched the game off them with three wickets. It was all those bloody English fielders who kept letting him down, as one Warne devotee noted when he shouted at the first slip fieldsman who had just dropped a catch off Warne: “Hang your head. Hang your head in shame. You’re going to have to do it yourself, Warnie.”
The biggest cheers of the day came not when the home team hit a four, but when Warne took one of their wickets. Warne’s like a walking home ground advantage in England because the Aussies are guaranteed to outnumber the locals at any sparsely filled cricket match.
With the cricket over for the day Adam and I did a passable impression of sober people, and headed for home. Unfortunately, Adam (I can only think disoriented by the exciting day) got us on the bus going in completely the wrong direction. Seeing he has lived in the area for four years, I figured he knew where we were going, but it wasn’t until we got to Oxford Circus in the city, that we both realised we weren’t at home. Putting it down as just an unfortunate accident, we headed back north, only to find that the Jubilee line train that we caught terminated one stop short of Kilburn. Not a problem, we thought. We just have to wait a couple of minutes for another train to come along – that is until we saw a team of men staring at the track and scratching their heads. In the end we had to phone Adam’s girlfriend for a lift home, which proved to be more exhilarating than the whole day at the cricket.
I hope you’re all well and enjoying the varying severity of an Australian winter. I think I could get used to going from summer to summer.
See you on the other side,
Dave.
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