It Took Less Than A Month

... and already we're crap at cricket again. We had a bloody good stab at losing to Ireland in their first test match at Lord's and not content with that then proceeded to have a totally successful stab at losing to Australia ... from a seemingly impregnable position. Half way through day one at a predictably raucous Edgbaston, Australia were trying manfully to rescue themselves from the rubble of their first innings - they were 122 for 8. Read that again - 122 for 8. The Aussies were revived by the brilliance of Steve Smith and eventually they despatched England thanks to yet more Smith excellence (a century in each innings) and the staggering uselessness of England's second innings batting - on which score has an international sportsman ever behaved as unprofessionally as Jason Roy? Luckily the day which unquestionably belonged to England was day two and that was the day that your correspondent was sunning himself in the Hollies Stand, that repository of coarse wit and wisdom. Great fun.

Bradmanesque?

Steve Smith presents us with a problem of course. He is beyond question a great (as distinguished from merely very good) batsman - the statistical evidence is incontrovertible. He is also the man who was captain of his country when he assented to an egregious piece of cheating and then cried in front of the cameras when he got caught. The answer to the Smith problem is obvious however: one should both boo him as pantomime villain and stand to applaud his almost (almost I say, let's not get carried away) Bradmanesque accumulation of runs. Mind you, there has to be a suspicion that the booing merely serves to motivate this run machine, in which case we should perhaps adopt a steely silence or possibly that most English of weapons - a painfully polite and condescending ripple of applause.

So apart from a jolly good day at the cricket, what else has the Big Fat Pig been up to? Well, every morning he checks the interweb thing for news of what Trump has been up to. I find him eerily fascinating and still cannot quite believe that I live in a world that has allowed this to happen. Apart from that I have a tiresomely painful right knee which is so the doc tells me merely displaying wear and tear consequent upon overuse. Go not gentle into that dark night Pig. And we've got bloody gulls (flying rats) nesting on the roof of the country residence. They are of course protected so it will presumably cost an arm and a leg to safeguard our property.