Broadsides

Much as I love to see Mitchell "Guy's my middle name" Johnson get going with the bat, here we are again. Again with the B-team trying to salvage something from the A-team's wreck. Again with an innings where a stoic middle-orderer (how often is it Haddin?) partners plucky Tail-enders. They really are fun to watch when they make something of it, but it's not the way it's supposed to work. There was an audience comment pasted on the ESPN ball-by-ball commentary "England need not be complacent with their current position. These lower order partnerships are always a characteristic of the Ozs for the last few seasons". Yes, yes they are. Is it an official strategy? Why not straight out reverse the batting order? Is the problem with the upper order that they think they're batsmen?

Tremlett provoked much comment, mainly to the effect of whether he was actually flesh and blood. The word from the loungeroom was that he was Frankenstein, and in the same spirit James Brayshaw described him (his word was actually "that") as "an incredible physical arrangement". The word "unit" came up a lot. But he didn't fool Warnie, who spotted the human vanity in his figure-hugging body shirt. The England shirts show a fair bit of cunning tailoring. Darts the likes of which are normally only found on blouses. I'm guessing there's some very advanced sports science behind them, and then at the end of the presentation Q says, "they'll also look really hot".

We were going to listen to some Grandstand commentary and then found they weren't streaming online. Now here's the thing. My boyfriend is what's called a "hi-fi dag". In our lounge room there is... One set of speakers on either side of the television, another free-standing set around the sound system. Two large flat boxes, one black with with two big knobs next to the television and a silver one with the sound system with one big knob, and I know they are amplifiers. A turntable. A smaller silver flat box next to the silver amplifier that I'm pretty sure is a CD player. On top of that a smaller black flat box that according to the writing is a "pre-amplifier". Next to that an even smaller silver box that's a "DAC". And on top of that, my favourite, a small plain black box with nothing on it except a small button in the middle with the word "POWER" above. I suspect this is a flight recording unit so that other hi-fi dags can work out what cabling mistake my boyfriend made if we go down in a flaming conflagration.*

Now, is there a radio to be found in this array? There is not. It looks like we could be plugging in the digital clock radio from the bedroom (if I can find somewhere to plug it in), or even - god forbid - digging out my crappy all-in-one CD-cassette-radio from its box of shame in the spare room. Just like olde times!

Come on Grace, sit down by the wireless and I'll make us a cup of tea.

* Update: this is apparently a "buffer", whose purpose is "to make Jim Maxwell sound more chesty and less nasal".