Nico's Journal

For various reasons I don't want to talk about RL, so have some links snurched from various people.

Cricketing authors - how cool is that? To quote from the linked review:

Peter Pan’s First XI is a study of JM Barrie and the cricket team of dazzling literati (and not quite so dazzling sportsmen) that Barrie ran haphazardly for over 20 years.
[...]
PG Wodehouse was a useful batsman; Jerome K Jerome was rather better at idling; AA Milne liked to watch it even more than to play it; and Arthur Conan Doyle was prodigious: a superb all-rounder who played 10 games at first-class level for the MCC.
[...]
Telfer’s narrative of the team’s travails allows for pleasant asides about [...] the influence of the sport on the literature of its day. Hook, as in Captain, is obviously a cricketing term; Sherlock, as in Holmes, was a conflation of two popular 19th-century county players: Mordecai Sherwin and Frank Shacklock.

I finally saw the footage. That is incredibly unsporting. I'm so glad we won, and on the last ball too. Ha.

What's next, underarm bowling? OK, that's mean. It wasn't the bowler's fault, but the captain's.

We beat England by ten wickets, and missed doing it in half the number of overs by one ball! This more than makes up for our humiliation at their hands during the twenty-20s.

And now I should go and watch some TV. Lost and SGA I think.

I didn't do much that was exciting today, but Greg did. I bought him a three weeks early birthday present: an hour's flight over the three volcanoes (Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe, and Tongariro) at the other end of the lake. He took lots of crater and lahar pictures, plus a good one of The Village as he came back in to land.

We were visited by a cat this morning, a magnificent and very friendly Birman (think fluffy Siamese, blue eyes and all). I don't know if he belongs here or is a neighbour's cat looking for daytime company. Unexpected cats are the embodiment of serendipity. :-)

We also watched NZ beat Canada, who are another team with promise. I hope that teams like Ireland, Kenya, and Canada will get invitations to play the more well-known teams in future, but the big cricket news is the murder of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer, an appalling tragedy. News just in as I type: they seem to have arrested someone for it.
[Edit] No, it was a completely unfounded rumour from Delhi.

OK, that was quite a good day.

• I went to a pancake feast with some friends from work and ate four of them (pancakes, I mean) with lemon and cinnamon sugar. [hangs head]
  
  
• Then I went straight on to my Tai Chi class, and though I didn't think being full of pancakes and coffee was particularly conducive to good form, I was fine. It was too hot so we had the class outside on the grass which was really nice.
  
  
• And then I came home to watch us... beat Australia again! [jaw drops] That make three out of three games, and each one ending with a boundary (a four tonight). I am both stunned and delighted.

Once it stopped hailing and thundering this morning (13 degrees C!) we braved the cold winds and went to our local mall to have coffee and a [fruit] mince pie and to prove to ourselves that Stephen Fleming (captain of the NZ cricket team) actually existed off our TV screens. (I have pictorial proof of his independent existence--with me--under the cut.) There was carol-singing from a church group which was nice; so much better than the piped stuff that drives me to consider acts of violence. They had three guys in burgundy choir robes from the Catholic Cathedral yesterday singing a capella which was also lovely.

Anyway. We did very well for ourselves there so I'm feeling much more cheerful.

( Glitter, Stephen Fleming, and LOTR )