Scarlett O'Hara tries to watch Origin, Ashes, fails

ACF streaming froze on this, mesmerised.

I’d like to thank the Australian cricket team for getting their first wicket before the start of Origin III and the next two in the half time break. And I’d like to thank Queensland for making Origin III so comprehensively one sided they all but eliminated the conflict of interest by the beginning of the second half. Every time I checked back on the game between overs, ‘just in case’, it was to see Jonathan Thurston converting another try.

The Welsh threw in the twist of a weather delay, and I’ve no idea if that helped or hindered. The start of the viewing evening was a confusion of wrangling technology and deciding whose pre-game faff was more dispensable. Origin played it straight: dressing rooms, edifying tale of the making of Jonathon Thurston, In His Own Words. Cardiff pulled out an unholy hybrid of a male choir and a barbershop quartet that did Great Southern Land and Down Under and that sounds so much more interesting than it was. Davey Warner smirked from the dressing room and Steven Smith wasn’t even looking and that was about right. Perhaps it was the all-embracing atmosphere of ‘damp’, but I’m just not sure Cardiff knows how to put on a show.

I can’t say the decision to stream the Ashes through the ACF site on the laptop while Origin played on the big screen really worked. The ‘stream’ was more like pouring chunks of curdled milk and I couldn’t concentrate on or enjoy anything, though the ‘not enjoying’ part of Origin probably had other causes. Once Origin was over (or ‘over’) I still found the cricket hard to get into, partly because of Joe Root making a spectacle of himself and partly because those NAB business loan ads are sapping my will to live. It’s a cliff top restaurant on the Amalfi coast, or so we are led to assume. There is nothing ‘secret’ about its success. It’s a tourist magnet, it can serve and charge anything it wants and it’s not leaving that damn harbour. The coy power couple, the smirking waitress, I hate it all, what’s to like. Long story short: it was a fretful, sulky evening, it was all about me, I put myself to bed at midnight with vague ideas of getting up again for the last half hour or so but knew I wouldn’t. Tomorrow’s another day.