IPL Day 4

Isn't it ironic ...

"the weather was the most important factor" in the decision to move the IPL to South Africa instead of to England.

According to Vijay Mallya, the owner of the Royal Challengers team (and of Kingfisher Beer):

"I guess weather conditions clinched the issue for South Africa. In England, there were chances that matches would have been rained off. Both teams sharing the point affects the competitiveness of the event."

Today the game in Durban was rained off. In England it was bright and sunny all day.

Winning and Losing

Two bits of good news for many in my extended family yesterday.

1. A victory for sense and science and money over mindless tradition and superstition.

2. A victory for mindless tradition and superstition over sense and science and money.

Two bits of related news for many in my extended family yesterday.

1. It has started raining heavily in northern India, so the last game of the Kolkata Knight Riders was washed out

2. It has started raining heavily in northern India, so fears of drought recede and the temperatures are starting to cool down

Small losses, big victories - but it's hard to see that when your team gets knocked out after so much effort.

April Cool Joke

I was due to play football this morning. The summer season starts in April. But I get up this morning, and the back yard looks this.

Flight of the Phoenix

We watched a movie this weekend. To be more precise, one of the freeview TV channels finally showed the 2004 remake of the classic 1965 film. The plot is familiar, a group of survivors crash land in the desert and build a new plane out of the wreckage.

And while watching, I asked myself: could I do that?

Now I don't think that I would survive many days in searing heat and biting cold with minimal food or water. However, given time and tools and materials, I think I could build a working flying machine.

After all, it's not rocket science.

Mean Time

I left the last post saying it was ridiculous to give everyone stress and jetlag twice a year, but left it fairly equivocal on when we should we fix our zone - in October or in March.

However, generally lights are on for longer in the evening than the morning. On average we surely spend more waking hours before work than after work. It's the same for entertainment - the afternoon kickoffs today will all need expensive floodlights next week. So in terms of energy usage and carbon footprints and global warming and best aligning daylight with peaks in human activity, we should keep brighter evenings.

Some people in the highlands say it wouldn't get light until 9 am there in midwinter - well do they all really prefer it to get dark every day at 3 pm? Anyway, they can have their own time zone if they really want one, but whatever they choose is not going to increase their daylight. Obviously.

So finally, I have no great prejudice either way so long as it is fixed as soon as possible. But as a positive suggestion, the UK should stay on BST all year - call it British Standard Time and leave it there.

Saving Time

It's that time of the year, so (for once I hope) a very predictable post.

The "clocks" are going back this weekend. By the "clocks" I mean every single thing that reports time in your home, your car, your office, your train station, your airport, your radio and TV broadcasters. Today there may be clocks on your central heating system, your cooker, your fridge, your radio, your DVD player - you know the list, a few may reset automatically, but don't forget the spare watch in the bedroom drawer.

Only an idiot thinks we gain daylight by doing this. On top of the time wasted to change clocks, clearly whatever you save in the morning you lose exactly the same amount in the evening. Obviously. Everyone knows that. Except idiots.

The time taken to change clocks (and timetables) is a non-productive drain on society. Perhaps it was only a minor inconvenience when every home had just one clock in the hall that needed to be regularly synchronised with BBC chimes anyway. Today it is lunacy.

Changing time is a significant cost for every local business, and it is an enormous cost for every global business. Jet-lag is a real drain too. We force the whole country to endure an hour's jet-lag twice a year. Ridiculous.

Some people prefer brighter mornings. Some people prefer brighter afternoons. Don't try to justify clocking with bullshit about getting closer to nature. The cockerel doesn't suddenly decide to crow sixty minutes earlier. Cows don't realise when it's GMT and trudge down for milking accordingly. Crops ripen according to the sun, not the clock.

I would prefer to stay on BST. Others would prefer to stay on GMT. But, as often stated, this is a blog for common sense and not for personal preference. We can adjust to either time zone. Just leave the damn thing alone.

Oval balls

There is going to be a lot of focus on rugby over the next few weeks as patriots and xenophobes and decent English people revel in vicarious victory. So an alternative point here.

As mentioned earlier I went to a whole load of schools, but I recall only one of those where the winter sport was rugby. The cliché about games teachers being sadistic bastards has only a small amount of truth. It was only the cross country runs we hated - football was better but I genuinely enjoyed rugby too. Except for one thing...

As a kid I always played outside, and even now, unless injured, I choose to play football outdoors at least twice per week throughout the year regardless of wind, rain, or snow. But I wrap up. And thanks to the hated foreign invasion that has made the Premiership the "best league in the world", even professional footballers can now wear gloves or undershirts. Yet as a schoolkid playing rugby in midwinter, I just remember being cold.

I genuinely don't know the clothing guidelines for school games today. But I hope they have learned.

Real House

God has spoken to me. It was barely 48 hours ago that I wrote:

Typical scam, point to a loose tile on the roof or a damp patch on the wall, warn about tremendous potential damage unless hundreds of pounds of remedial work is performed as soon as possible.

Today, after literally years of exchanging nothing more than an occasional "hello", the guy from the house opposite us knocked on our door, showed me outside, and pointed to my roof. I was shocked. I took a picture...





A couple of rows of tiles had somehow worked loose, and were only being stopped from falling onto my car (or anyone close to the house) by a bit of guttering. If they dropped and shattered then next door's windows would be smashed too. It was very dangerous. I agreed.

So I spent an hour trying to phone every local roofer in the book. Bank holiday weekend, all either busy or absent. So I eventually plucked up the courage, found a very long ladder that seemed far too light for the task, and slowly went up to fix it myself. Well it's not completely "fixed", but I lifted the broken tiles out of their precarious position and brought them down safely. They aren't half heavy when carried in one hand when you're hanging onto a ladder twenty feet up with the other hand. But I did it. It's safe now. At least until it rains.

But back to the start, I'd just written about this very event. It is too much of a coincidence. It would only need one more condition to prove that everything happens for a reason, that there is someone watching over us, that there is a god, that there is a purpose in life ...

ODI

It's late, watched the sorry end of the cricket, now too tired to think of anything original. Played football too, but a few players are off on holiday or injured, so more running around than I really wanted.

At least it wasn't too hot. In fact it was cold, damp, windy, a typical autumn evening.

Hell. It's August.