Posted by The Ashes starts at midnight and Bert has a problem.
He’s got work, so can’t stay up and he dreads being confronted with an end of play scorecard in the morning.
He describes how you are introduced to disaster gradually while watching live.
“By the time 113 arrives, eight down, your confidence and joie de vivre has gone, but it has been removed slowly and gently over a couple of hours.
“It’s like having your kidney stolen by an illegal organ trading ring, but having it done by a skilled and dedicated surgeon while Susannah Hoffs out of the Bangles gently massages your forehead.
“Waking up to 113 for 8 is like having your kidney removed by Jimmy Nail with a spoon.”
He says you get ‘horrible insinuations of catastrophe’ from turning on the radio and catching the middle of something. He describes Cricinfo’s headline writers as ‘sadistic’.
How should Bert safely get the score in the morning?
Bert, and KC, I think I have the answer. Text message alert service. You can set yourself up to get text updates of the score at the end of each session. You only need to make sure you read them in chronological order, otherwise it’s spoon time with Nail.
While I wouldn’t suggest this is the perfect solution, it is perhaps the equivalent of having your kidney removed by the aforementioned skilled and dedicated surgeon only to wake up from the anaesthetic to find that he’s taken the wrong kidney.
I bring up Chrome and immediately cross my eyes, so as I can see where the links are but can’t read the writing. Then you carefully click on the commentary and read, letting the match fold out as it happened without you knowing where it’s going.
Bert, this is the Ashes. You simply have to follow the match properly.
Are you a man or a mouse? Or worse, something in-between.
http://v4admin.sportnetwork.net/upload/66/66_0_1290592592.jpg
Get a grip on yourself, Bert.
Wake up every morning convincing yourself that the game has been lost. Any score that reflects otherwise will be a pleasant surprise.
Don’t go to work….simples.
(Any decent employer will understand).
I will set my alarm so that I wake up on the hour every hour to check the score, it’s the only way!
I conceived our firstborn and persuaded Mrs. Smudge to delay the birth for a week to allow my paternity leave to overlap with the first test. This required a degree of advanced planning however. And I still wasn’t allowed to use “Hayhoe” as a middle name.
Good advice, people. And by “good” I mean “largely useless”.
String – Not bad, although I would have to space the reading of the texts by a couple of hours.
Howe_Zat – Better. I can see that working.
Ged – Accurate, but short on actual advice.
Golandaaz – That’s a given. The problem is that it doesn’t work. No matter how much you tell yourself that we are going to lose, and that anything better than 120 all out is a good effort, finding out that England were dismissed shortly before tea for 123 is still a cruching blow.
Eagleash – There are no decent employers, at least by that definition.
Bobby K – Terrible idea. All that does is keep you awake and worrying.
The Smudge – Finally, a sensible idea. I’ll talk to the missus tonight. By the way, if you mean this first test, that would imply that congratulations are in order. What have you got planned for the later tests – something similar?
Bert, thank you, congratulations gratefully accepted. You have spotted the flaw in my plan, or at least the limits to the scope of its success. Repeating for future tests would involve finding a species with a short gestation period which could produce viable human hybrid offspring. This would not only be improbable and distasteful, it would also be vetoed by the aforementioned Mrs. Smudge
Congratulations on the arrival of The Speck, The Smudge.
Thanks KC. Her limbs look a little short for a fast bowler, but mine are tolerably long and that never helped me much, so we have great hopes for her.
May I respectfully enquire as to what you and Mrs Smudge have settled upon by way of a name for The Speck? Mindful that your surname begins with an S, I am hopeful that she is either an Andrea Jane or a Grace Patricia. That would seem to be entirely appropriate.
And congrats!
What you’ve got planned for the later tests, Smudge, is being able to watch them live because you are awake half the night.
Sarah, thank you. The speck is Eleanor Constance . allusion free, I’m afraid, but we like it.
Bet I suspect you are right- but this does present another solution to your original problem- pretend you have a newborn stay up all night and turn up to work shattered.
It’s not allusion free if your real surname is Blashford.
Nice name.
Very pretty names, The Smudge. Classy.
So all I get at work all day is baby chat, and now I come ‘home’ and everyone’s talking about babies. Great.
Also, whilst I enjoy each and everyone of them, am I the only one who sees something resembling a hungover owl in Ged’s Venns?