Post-scripts to the aestas horribilis

A 3-week lie-down is probably about right after the aestas horribilis that was. But now there are a few relics from the summer that need themselves to be put to bed.

RIP No. 1: Warnie*

The television show, of course. The saddest thing about it’s last scheduled appearance was that all through the replacement programming (Two-and-a-Half Men repeats, don't ask me how I know), they kept the original Warnie-heavy advertising for hair replacement and fast food (I swear it was on in the next room and I overheard it, don't ask me how I know), and Warnie even had to pop up in an inserted segment to announce the winner of a competition attached to the show.

It was a show that was difficult to watch, like poor Warnie had become his own bunny frozen in the headlights. He is a great naif (my uncle compared him to Candide, which just shows you the sort of stock I am from), but I don't know that that's a great asset as an interviewer, unless you actually are a child, or actually Norman Gunston. The presence of Alicia Goring only showed up how much poise, smarts and naturalness was lacking everywhere else.

* I used to spell this "Warney", and one of the problems with that was that it could drift into adjectival territory – "I'm feeling a bit Warney" – and then you have Warne himself being Warney rather than being the model for other things being Warney, and hence a parody of himself, which... might not be so far from the truth sometimes.

RIP No. 2: Marcus North

Poor old Marcus North. In a summer when No. One. Could. Stop. Talking. about the decisions of the selectors and all possible permutations of the Australian team line-up, Marcus North was dropped and would appear to be still falling in a bottomless vacuum, such has been the absence of resonance, ripple or even screaming. The universe just reformed itself around the gap and put on a blank face. I never loved Marcus North but nevertheless, ouch.

RIP No. 3: The Series

It has taken me 20 years of using email to work out how to use message filters. Which means all my Australian Cricket Family newsletters now go into one folder where they can accumulate unopened all together rather than scattered unopened through my Inbox. This has made it possible to have a run-down of the summer through a clutch of newsletter headlines like The Complete Works of Shakespeare in One Hour.

Now, I have tried everything I can think of in terms of file formats and resolution to make this screen grab legible when pasted here. It’s not, but it should be when it’s clicked on so it opens in its own window.

So do that, and let that be the end of the matter.