Category: Comedy

Stokes, Woakes and Foakes could all be playing in the second test

In January 2019, I noted that an England cricket team took to the field which included all three of Stokes, Woakes and Foakes. But that was a mere warm-up game, against something called the West Indies President’s XI, so it hardly counted. However, on Saturday first thing in the morning our time, the second test of the four India v England tests looks like it might feature this same England trio. Wicket keeper Buttler and veteran quick bowler Anderson, both having played so very well in the first test, have both been dropped, as in “rotated”. Foakes is in for Buttler. And instead of Anderson and Broad both playing, Broad is in, plus one other specialist quick. This would have been Archer, but Archer is damaged. So, also included in the England twelve, one or other of them to replace Archer, are quick bowlers Olly Stone and … Woakes.

England’s batting is a worry, despite all the talk about how they scored ten out of ten in the first game. Its greatest current strength, Root, is also its greatest current weakness. What if Root fails to make about two hundred, as has been his habit in the last few games, and instead gets out in the England first innings for a small score, like under fifty? That could cost England the match. So, England will want to give the rest of their batting as much chance as they can to do well. Woakes is a much better batter than Stone. Stone, meanwhile, is a bit of an unknown quantity as a bowler. Woakes is not as quick as Archer, or Stone, but he is a good bowler, and I think he will play. Which means that the Stokes, Woakes, Foakes combination, this time in a real cricket match, is a real possibility.

If so, this will be one of cricket’s better recent joakes.

LATER: Not to be. Stone plays, rather than Woakes. And we’ll soon see if that works, because India have won the toss and, of course, will bat first.

Stone gets Shubman Gill for a duck, with his third ball! India 0-1.

What do I know?

Unrealistic vampires

Like Frank J. Fleming, whom I follow on Twitter, I did like this, from Nicholas Kaufmann:

My apologies to the Goodreads reviewer who found my novel about vampires on a submarine “unrealistic.”

Yes. When writing about vampires, it’s important to write realistically. Most of us have not encountered any vampires in the course of our lives, and we might get the wrong idea about them.

It should go without saying but I will say it anyway. Any comments from commenters who have had direct experience of vampires would be particularly welcome.

The Frisby dog in 2014 and the Frisby dog now

In February 2014 Dominic Frisby performed with his usual brilliance at my Last Friday of the Month meeting. He attracted a good crowd, and also brought his dog with him. Here’s a photo I took of the crowd, and the dog:

I still remember with pleasure how impeccably the dog behaved. Not a sound.

And here, unless I am very much mistaken, is the exact same dog, a little older, as featured at the top of a recent Daily Telegraph piece about Frisby:

For those who, like me, do not care to pay their way past pay walls, here is the entire piece.

Oval memories

My life and the world are both a bit of a mess at the moment. I’ll spare you the details of the former, by just saying that these details are indeed messy without in any way being life-threatening. The mess the world is in you know all about, even as you and I may well quarrel about who’s fault it is and what needs doing about it. Just so you know, I’m right about that and if you disagree you’re wrong, but I see no need and now feel no desire to elaborate on that basic truth.

So, escape, in the form of yet more happy memories from The Time Before All This:

This was a game of cricket at the Oval, a walk across the River from me, in July 2016. I was originally only going to post the one with the silly hat and the artistic one, with the shadows, photos 8 and 7. But then I thought, have a good old wallow. Thank you again Darren. Darren being my friend Darren, the Surrey Member, who gets me in with him as a guest.

Photo 1 is the first ball of the match, between Surrey and Gloucester, hit by Jason Roy, pictured there, to the boundary. Photo 9 is the end of the match, with Surrey having won at a canter. All the others are the sort of photos of sporting events that Real Sporting Photographers ignore, but which I really enjoy. All the incidental stuff. The signs and commemorations. The groundstaff and their equipment. The crowd and their various habits and antics, fuelled by drink.

I can wait to go to the Oval again, to see another game. But only because I will have to. Can’t come too soon.

Quotulatiousness quotes Dorothy Sayers quotation criticising quotation

Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night, 1935:

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

Quotulated.

I think there is a distinction to be made here between noticing a striking thing that some other person has written and then copying and pasting it into your own website, and on the other hand memorising something that another person is often frequently quoted by others as having said and declaiming that quotation in conversation, because you can think of nothing else pertinent to say. It sounds to me like Sayers was thinking of the latter. If so, I think she had a point. But only a point, because the trick often fails to work and merely irritates, especially if the same quotations are recycled again and again.

WW1 ends and immediately the birds start shouting at each other again

Here.

I’m afraid this posting says it all for me, about birds and their incessant “singing”.

LATER: Plus, these owls don’t think they’re being cute at all.

Sparklingly witty BMNB QotD: On when clever banter can be called “repartee”

Yes, a champagne Twitter moment from Dan Hannan:

Clever banter can only be called “repartee” if it’s from the Repartée region of France. Otherwise it’s just sparkling wit.

We can all drink to that.

Camouflage

“Ha!” says Peter Caddick-Adams:

This is a WW2 version of the Stealth Bomber joke that the Americans played on the USSR so brilliantly during the closing stages of the Cold War.

USSR: Stealth bombers? Pah! We see no stealth bombers!

USA: Well, quite.

Why I now focus on American politics rather that British politics

If, when I choose to bang on about politics here, I further choose to bang on about the USA’s presidential election now, rather than about British political matters now, well, that’s because there’s so much more at stake over there just now. Here in Britain, our Corbyn moment came, and went. Corbyn threatened to turn us into Venezuela, but then we voters sent him packing. Would a Starmerian Labour British government be that much more of a disaster than how the Boris Johnson regime is turning out? Hardly. So here, we’re now back to a world where they’re all as bad as each other, approximately speaking. I would still prefer Labour to lose every forthcoming election ever, but Labour in their current state, winning? I could live with that, as could many others of my inclination.

But in the USA everything is still to play for, for as long as the Democrats remain in thrall to their lunatic fringe of Woke-fascist wreckers of everything civilised. I have long hoped, and am actually now starting very tentatively to even think, that Kamala/Biden will get such a thrashing in the election now under way that the Democrats may then decide to mend their ways, much as Starmer is now mending the ways of Labour. But it has to be a thrashing. A modified dead heat like last time won’t suffice. A lot of normals must change their minds in a way that the Democrats won’t be able to ignore. That happened in the recent election in Britain, and it changed everything.

The above paragraphs began life as the intro to something more specific about the US elections, but that didn’t work out. Also, I am off to the laundrette. More later, I hope.

Meanwhile, I did enjoy this.

Is this duck the same weight as Amey Coney Barrett?

This duck has been in the news recently:

The Babylon Bee did a piece just over a week ago about how Senator Hirono, also to be seen in the fake-photo above, brought a duck with her to the Congressional Hearing concerning whether Amey Coney Barrett should be allowed to become a Supreme Court judge. If the duck weighs the same as ACB, then she’s a witch!

Facebook disapproved of this mockery of their preferred political team, saying it incited violence, taking it down and taking various economic measures against the Bee, while telling the Bee to say nothing about having been thus admonished. But the Bee’s Seth Dillon took public exception. Twitter also got in on this attempted censorship.

The Babylon Bee is wise not to base its business model on never publicly disagreeing with Facebook and Twitter and the rest of the Woke Social Media Platforms. By not depending on them and by never begging them for permission to do its business, but rather by mocking these social media all they like whenever these platforms try to screw with them, the Babylon Bee has turned the wokist workforce of these social media entities into a Streisand effect salesforce for the Bee and its various jokes and fancies.

Quack.