Cricket, Craig Charles, the expensive world of household appliances and yet another incident of kitchen-induced self-harm
One of the big pros about moving to Australia is the cricket coverage. All test matches are on free to air television, as are each of the men and women’s T20 leagues. You can get the Australian one day games and other international fixtures on subscription services and if you ask nicely they can put them on at a pub for you. The first time I came to Australia it was December and the height of the Big Bash — their T20 league. Much to the annoyance of everyone else in the house and despite T20 being a barstardised ruination of the game, I had a Big Bash game on every evening for 12 days straight (sometimes after spending the day watching England get pummelled in the Ashes).
Often the women’s game would be played before the men’s game at the same ground, so, in addition to its natural audience, it would also pick up those who wanted to make more of their day of the cricket or those who tuned in to the men’s game early. This year the powers that be have separated the two leagues, with the women’s game about to hit its final games and the men’s league not starting until mid-December. The women’s league has a much smaller audience, so I assume that this is an experiment to see whether it drives up numbers. I suspect, however, that without the allure of the men’s game and its sold out stadiums, the viewing figures (on TV and at the grounds) will be lower.
On Tuesday night I had an email advising me that there would be a double header at the Junction Oval in St Kilda on Wednesday and that it was free entry. There hadn’t been any games in Melbourne since we got here as the teams have been touring other Australian cities, so it seemed like a good idea for my afternoon. The Melbourne Renegades played the morning game and I showed up after running a few house errands for the afternoon game, Melbourne Stars vs Perth Scorchers. On the way in I passed a mass of schoolchildren waiting to board some coaches. Most of them were holding some sort of Renegades giveaway — flags, fairy wings and the 4/6 bits of card — covered in autographs. At a time when the English game is struggling to get more kids into the game, it was really heartening to see.
The ground itself was one of those classic Southern hemisphere grounds, with a couple of stands on one side, a gentle rolling grass hill on the other for people to bring their own chairs and picnic blankets on the other. As it was over 30 degrees, I plumped for the stand with the most shade. The games were on a Wednesday, from 10.00–16.45, which of course is when people are at work and kids are at school (unless they are local and their teachers decide to take them to the morning game). This meant that, despite the free entry, the ground was largely empty. Most people there seemed to be the youth squads of the Stars or Scorchers, retired, parents of the players or retired and parents of the players. I wondered whether the free entry devalued the women’s games, but given the already stark numbers it was probably necessary for games taking place at that time.
The game itself wasn’t a classic. The Stars opening partnership scored slowly, but once the first wicket fell toward the halfway point they lost wickets regularly. They managed to post 148, which wasn’t too bad given the way the innings had started. In response, the Scorchers chased the total down with ease, not losing a wicket until the game was almost over. The Stars’ mascots — Starman and Starwoman provided much amusement intermittently. At one point Starman bent over for a photo in front of me and I can confirm that their species have gills or sweatglands — the underlayer of his back was absolutely drenched from being in the suit in the heat. One has to wonder what they did wrong in a previous life to have to dance around in those suits in such intense heat.
As the entry to the game had been free, I treated myself to a few over-priced bottles of beer through the game. I have been keeping a log of every beer that I have tried here and Wednesday’s beer was by far the best (a solid four out of five). On purchasing my third, the barman remarked (context — there was only one bar staffed by the same guy in the ground, so he had sold me my previous two) ‘wow, you must really like those!’ Ignoring the implied accusation of being an alcoholic because I was having my third cold beer in two hours on an exceptionally hot day at a major sporting event where I was spending my leisure time, I responded: ‘Yes. It’s the best beer I’ve had since I got here.’ Without missing a beat, a colleague of the barman appeared from nowhere and remarked ‘Did you get here yesterday?’
On a completely unrelated matter, a few weeks before we left the UK I submitted a spinage a tois to the Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show on 6 Music. I’ve been a listener for years, but had never got around to doing one. You email in three tunes, then Craig rings you up and you talk about what they mean to you, then he plays them. On Saturday morning (Aus time) I had received an email from the show’s producer Ben asking if they could call me on Saturday evening (UK time). Sadly I had to decline and ask to defer for a few weeks, as it would be 4am our time that they wanted to call. My request to defer was ignored and instead Craig read out my email during the show. In only the way that he can, not only did he struggle to read it coherently but he also got the timeline slightly wrong, not taking into account that I was already in Australia (as the email had been written when I was about to move to Australia). Still, I got my three tunes played. You can listen here, about 40 minutes in: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000bf38
As I didn’t get to explain my tunes, I probably would have said something along the following lines:
Armed And Extremely Dangerous — First Choice— this was on the first soul compilation that I ever bought (Soul Motion) and the intro for this immediately caught my attention. It’s outrageous and is followed by an amazing tune. A definite gateway tune for my journey into buying random soul compilations searching for tunes that I would never have heard otherwise.
Beggin — Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons (Pilooski re-edit) — this is hands down the best version of an already amazing song. Without doing much to the original, it has been transformed into a dance monster that will set any dancefloor alight.
Twenty-five Miles — Edwin Starr — this song took on a special meaning to me when I was walking on the Isle of Skye last year. It was a miserable day and covering about ten miles in the morning, I still had to cover another eight miles in about three hours to ensure that I caught the last bus of the day back to Portree. I was missing Dim, so when this song came on everything seemed to click into place and perk me up as my own situation was similar to the story of the song. I perked up so much that I got to the Dunvegan Hotel bus stop so early that I had time for a couple of swift pints and then received a rather indecent proposal — but that’s a story for another time.
Aside from being spoilt with cricket this week (in addition to the WBBL on Wednesday, both the England vs New Zealand and the Australia vs Pakistan test matches started yesterday), we have been focusing on getting ready for moving in to our new place at the weekend. One of my pub tasks a few weeks ago was to create a list of everything that we might need when we move in, so we had a list to go from. I had prioritised the list, with the only items earning the highest priority being a bed, bedding and a bottle opener. I later downgraded the bottle opener. Dim had a fairly good idea about what she wanted in a bed, but there was a risk in ordering it online as it may not be delivered by Monday (when our airbnb runs out) and we end up without a bed.
There’s a bed shop in Thornbury, but it’s only open until 16.30, so Dim wasn’t going to be able to go there to view what options they had (and more importantly sit on the mattresses). The exceptionally helpful man in the shop said that they would be able to deliver on Saturday, so therefore Dim — a real life human — trusted me to buy the bed. It was a lot of pressure, but having a budget was actually quite helpful in limiting the options. I went in again and discussed all of the options for mattress and frame with the chap, took a series of low quality photos and then went to the Croxton to use their wifi and relay the options and prices to Dim, who made our decision. I then went back and made the purchase. What a grown up! I was even able to haggle in a reduced linen mattress protector. What a grown up! I also ordered a He-Man: Master Of The Universe duvet and pillow set. What a grown up!
On Wednesday evening we did some research into fridge freezers (there are some utterly bizarre options on the market — who is buying a 2 litre fridge? edit: on re-reading this, it occurs to me that some medicines need to be stored in fridges, so that may explain that one) and Dim bought one to be delivered (for free) on Monday. I had been scouring ebay, gumtree and freecycle to scope the second-hand television market. I had found a good-looking 50-incher on gumtree, but didn’t act fast enough to bag it. After frustratingly few TVs in Melbourne were being listed and facing the prospect of being unemployed without a TV, I decided to take a gamble on an own-brand TV that’s brand new instead. It’s more expensive, but in the end I decided to spend more to get something that has a guarantee and will be with us from the start of the week.
We are trying to wait until the weekend to pick up most of the other bits and pieces that we need. Annoyingly a lot of our kitchenware is good stuff but is in the shipping box (soon to leave London I understand, but won’t be with us until January), so we are going to have to get some basics to tide us over. Fittingly there is a chain department store in Coburg called ‘Dimmeys’ that has just gone into administration and has started a closing down sale, so we’ll be hitting that up on Saturday. There are also a few big op shops (Aussie for charity shops) in Coburg, so we’re going to scout those for furniture. It’s very common place for people to leave old furniture on the street outside their house, so we may also do a fair bit of street-crawling seeing if there is anything worth pinching.
The weather got a bit extreme yesterday — the temperature was somewhere around 37 and there was a ferocious wind blowing all sorts of bits of shrapnel in Melbournian eyes. I found out that such a combination causes problems when there was a power cut yesterday afternoon, cancelling my plans to watch both games of cricket. After doing the washing I strolled over to the Croxton to see if I could watch there, but the entire highstreet had shut up shop due to the outage. When I got back home the power was back on, but the internet wasn’t working. We contacted the airbnb people, and despite them calling to go through everything with us, the internet is still down this morning. Dim left her phone for me to hotspot off of today, but listening to the England game drained her remaining data quickly. Thankfully it refreshes tomorrow, so I shouldn’t get in too much trouble.
I was also a complete dunce yesterday evening and burned my fingers badly. I was making a stir fry and roasting some leftover squash at the same time. I had the oven on max (260) so get the squash done quickly as I had forgotten it, and on getting it out with the single-handed oven glove, once I had the squash in the stir fry pan, passed the metal oven dish from my right to left (and non-gloved) hand and put it down on the side before realising a)what I had just done and b) that my fingers were in exceptional pain. As I ran them under the tap I remembered once reading that when the human body touches something hot, its instant reaction is to grab on to it, even if it is boiling hot, before realising that actually it hurts — not for the first time I proved this theory correct (see also: the Trangia incident — Glastonbury 2017, the vegan naan bread situation, London 2019).
I seemed to wear it on the pads of my little and third fingers with the others getting away with a minor searing. Luckily I had a bottle of water in the freezer so my fingers were on that and then a nice cold can of beer (as yet, still unopened!) all evening. Amazingly they aren’t in any pain this morning. I can tell that they are going to blister out over the next few days, which is great news for the hands-on process of moving stuff! Still, every artist must suffer for their craft, right?
