Sleep the clock around

Listening to The Duckworth Lewis method - The Duckworth Lewis Method


Dialect phrase of the day: Face like a skelped arse - ruddy or rosy cheeks


Two consecutive days off! What a marvel! I have just spent about 15 hours asleep and I'm busily checking myself for evidence of bedsores. How do I feel after this epic bout of deep dreamless sleep? Curiously, absolutely bloody awful. Today I've gone into the National Library of Scotland to try and find some solace amongst the books.

There's not even a Test Match to listen to, nothing can put me into an almost comatose state of absolute bliss like a day spent listening to Test Match Special, it's like aural heroin. The mellifluous tones of TMS and cricket in general are inextricably linked to my childhood and my late Grandfather. It was with my Grandfather that I played my first games of cricket and who drilled me in the art of batting. Although a very lovely man and a wonderful Grandfather, he was extremely competitive when it came to cricket, having played the game to a high level in his 20s . He had been a wicket keeper and and remained pretty nimble behind the stumps well into old age. Aged eight I would stand to face tame underarm deliveries from whichever indulgent relative had agreed to play along, with my granddad taking the whole affair very seriously, crouched behind the stumps in our back garden he would ooh, ahh and tut at any delivery that was roughly on a line and a length. He was also not averse to whipping the bails off with a triumphant owazt if he deemed I had stepped too far out of the imaginary crease. There can be very few people who can claim to have been sledged by their own grandfather, especially when they were still a small boy, but then there can be very few people who have been drop kicked by their own grandmother (that however is a story for another day)

For the uninitiated sledging is the art of breaking a batsman's concentration by intimidating them verbally, in effect talking them out. Here is an excellent example by Sri Lankan wicket keeper Kumar Sangkkara.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlFF98dM8sA

I have now ceased my employment with the street punks. I found myself curiously emotional as I said my final farewells and it feels rather strange to think I won't be going back on Monday. A side effect of this is that I'll be getting rid of the Eliminator. That's my car rather than a nickname for any appendage. I thought I'd better clarify that as I once caused a former work colleague considerable disgust and alarm by failing to make this clear. This is probably a good thing, Edinburgh is eminently walkable, I have my bike and the bus service is much better than most British cities. Then of course there's the Tram system, something which most Edinburghers have militant views. Contrary sod that I am, I couldn't give a fig either way, although I am curious why the tram will run from Leith to the airport; none of us in Leith can afford a holiday.

There also appears to be a seemingly limitless supply of Taxis buzzing around the city, driven by the most erudite taxi drivers you could ever hope to meet. This a pleasing contrast to their London counterparts, who by and large, are ranting Essex Freemasons. Taxis have always held a particular fascination to me. When I was kid I saw travelling in a taxi as an unimaginable luxury and decadence and I used to imagine the joy of travelling in such a conveyance. Where I lived, the only time you ever saw anyone get out of one was when a woman come back from having a Hysterectomy. Imagine my disappointment when I first stepped into one as an adult, rather than looking like the interior of a better class of gentleman's club, it was Spartan, draughty and smelt of sick poorly masked by magic tree air freshener.

I began using taxis in Leeds, principally because using the the number 4 or 16 bus late at night without a stab vest could be classified as an extreme sport. These two buses ran between two of the roughest council estates in the city and were heavily patronised by drunks, heroin users, nutcases and some of the most foul mouthed pensioners one could ever meet, even in daylight hours it could be a bowel loosening experience.

One Saturday afternoon I met an acquittance who had travelled out of the city centre on a slightly earlier bus. What had occurred was surprising even for the number 4. Two drunks had got into an argument over the ownership of some booze and one had knocked the other one out. This in itself was not an unusual event, however the victorious drunk made the foolhardy error of yelling to the packed bus "now who else wants some?" Unfortunately for him the answer was, "nearly every single passenger on the bus." Within seconds, the whole bus had erupted into an orgy of indiscriminate violence, with women in their late 50s wading in. The driver, seeing the blood and snot flying, leapt from the bus locked the doors and let the waring parties get on with it. From the outside it must have looked like something out of a wild west saloon.

In future I shall stick to my trusty bicycle, although I imagine such occurrences on the number 5 bus to Stockbridge are unheard of. That way on they're probably knocking the shit out of each other over ownership of some sunblush tomatoes and organic humus.

Raining in my heart

Listening to: Booker t and the MGs - Melting Pot

Dialect world of the day: Chib noun: a knife verb: to stab

What has happened to the wildlife of Edinburgh and East Lothian? Have they taken collective leave of their senses and decided to throw themselves en masse under the wheels of passing cars? Every day there seems to be more and more roadkill and my drive to work seems to resemble a half an hour tour of an ever more grizzly animal mausoleum. Mind you it's been a cracking year for Swifts (I can never tell the difference) and watching them fly in and out of the swift hole on the building, opposite my office window which is a rare treat.

I have been enjoying the Ashes tremendously and tend to spend most of my working day listening to Test match special, scheduling appointments around meal breaks I find 20Twenty and One day cricket a bit naff, but I really relish the ebbs, flows and the ongoing narrative of the five day game. I am largely ambivalently about Scottish politics, Scottish independence and the SNP. However Sandra White annoyed me with her ignorance, carping on about 'Saturation' coverage of the Ashes in the broadcast media, which is remarkably petty and small minded given that the only way to follow the cricket without a Sky subscription (and I for one refuse to line Rupert Murdoch's pockets, unless it is to buy one of his quality news papers such as the Sun or the Daily Star) is via, radio 4 long wave or an obscure digital radio channel, hardly constitutes saturation coverage. Admittedly there is an hour long highlights show on channel 5, depriving Scots of the chance to watch the documentaries on the Nazis, 50 stone teenagers or the Conspiracy theories about the death of Princess Diana, that usually constitute Channel 5's evening schedule. She also went on to compare the "over the top" Cricket coverage to the lack of coverage of the Curling World Championship , Curling!!!! For chrissakes! , a combination of overgrown marbles and housework, played by three people in the Highlands. I was surprised how popular Cricket was when I moved up here, there's numerous flourishing leagues and Cricket constitutes an important part of the culture of many Scots of Asian heritage, something Ms White overlooks when she tries to cast it as a piece of English cultural imperialism forced on an unwilling Scottish public.

Jolly glad to see normal service has been resumed on the weather front, I certainly did NOT move to Scotland for weeks of unbroken sunshine., my cadaverously wan complexion won't stand for it. I take the Victorian view that tanned skin is the surefire sign of a working class oik forced to labour in the out of doors, this view is at least partially attributable to the fact that I blister and turn lobster red at the merest hint of the sun. Today I luxuriated in the thin drizzle of the morning and rejoiced in the afternoon downpour. Somehow Edinburgh didn't look right in the sunshine, its' natural state is one of overcast, grey and foreboding. A sunny Edinburgh reminds me of PE teachers on parents' evenings when they are forced to put a suit on, it looks plain wrong. Having said that there have been no unsubstantiated yet, persistent rumours about the City of Edinburgh interfering with kids in the showers after cross-country, so my simile probably isn't that apt.

More and more pieces of Scottish slang and dialect words are creeping subconsciously into my speech, I think i went too far when I caught myself using the word heid (that's head sasanachs) at work the other day. It must have sounded absurd to Scottish ears. There's a woman at work who sits at the opposite desk to me who seems to take this to Nth degree. Thankfully she's not in the same team as me, but she is very posh and very English , yet whilst talking to clients and their parents peppers her conversation with Scottish vernacular, yet delivers in flutey BBC English. On one hand I find it hilarious yet on the other desperately patronising as she doesn't do it with colleagues or other professionals, which speaks volumes about what she thinks of the people we work with. I am waiting for the day when she says something along the lines of "Square go, then, ya crappin doss basturd" in her cut glass nasal RP tones.

Anyway, that's all, I shall crawl back to bed for another few hours of sleep. Good night all.