Posted by We write:
After several days of maft, day three of the second Test between England and Bangladesh began with wet sunlight. It dried up mid-morning and upon arriving at Old Trafford just after 1pm, we were delighted to see that there was a Wainwright Cask Ale Tent. We paid it a visit.
After settling into our seat, we were presented with an even finer sight: a fat Dan. Is there anything more heart-warming than a stranger who’s a fat version of one of your friends? We took a photo of Fat Dan and then sent a text message informing Dan that we had done so.
“Excellent!” replied Dan. “That’s something I need to see.”
Note the use of the word ‘need’. We have done a friend a great service and he will be forever grateful.
The entertainment didn’t stop there though. Next we saw a woman struggling to carry four pints of beer in a crappy base. All four beers were leaning at a dangerous angle and weren’t being properly gripped by their cardboard holster. Impressively, each of the beers was leaning at a different angle. Everyone in Stand B noticed this impending catastrophe and got hugely excited. Unfortunately, after a moment, a man stepped up to reposition the beers, thus saving them. He was loudly booed for upwards of three minutes.
He didn’t get the biggest boo, however. Loud cheering greeted every successive pat of a beach ball which meandered its way up and down the stand for a few minutes. When someone inadvertently punted it over the back of the stand, that was met with a really emotional boo from a large number of people. We would have felt for the victim but for the fact that they had punted the beach ball over the back of the stand and therefore deserved it.
A guy dressed as a chicken was popular for a short period, but then did something that meant he had to be ejected from the ground. The stewards were booed.
A moment later, a man who wasn’t dressed as a chicken reprised the chicken’s chicken dancing. He was booed. He was a second-rate chicken and the crowd had high standards when it came to rhythmic poultry.
Send your match reports to king@kingcricket.co.uk and on no account mention the cricket itself.
I witnessed some unseemly chicken behaviuour on my last visit to Old Trafford (2007 Test match Day 2).
What is it with Lancastrians and chickens?
Rhythmic chicken? You could only possibly mean the sweet album Chicken Rhythms by Moston’s finest Northside. Northside – the band the Stone Roses could have been if Ian Brown couldn’t sing. Erm hang on…the band the Stone Roses could have been if they had a really average rhythm section.
The word ‘rhythm’ is in this post a lot and I don’t think I can even spell it.
We once went to see Northside in York. Before the gig, lead singer ‘Dermo’ appeared from the gents when our mate was on the way in and uttered the immortal line:
“You’re not going for a shit, are you? Only I’ve pissed all over the seat.”