The Lair

Never realized how popular the medium of ceefax (teletext?) was in the UK till I came here. It’s 33 years since the ceefax service launched and I use it for lots of things. In fact, I usually hit the ceefax page for most sports scores.

So about the Cricket World Cup.

The cricket ceefax pages have a number of entries on the world cup, including their seedings for the 16 teams participating and a set of pages which talk up a master blaster and bowling/all round ace for each team. The seedings first. Guess who’s top? Australia. Yeah. The allegedly very beatable team are still seeded Numero Uno and ceefax thinks they’ll get their third successive world cup victory this time around. In a move that dismays fans everywhere, the second seeded team is Sri Lanka. Yeah, there’s more but blah blah blah, whatever.

Two factors make me wonder if this is really justified. Then again, the ceefax pages haven’t been notorious for calling it correctly (unfair though, along with most of the planet – they didn’t call the England Ashes victory in 2005 nor the Aussie drubbing delivered in 2006). First, the SL team isn’t exactly a bunch of spring chickens and secondly, notorious slow starters or otherwise, they lost to NZ in the warm up match. SL’s Ceefax master blaster, Sanath J. was rested for the match and their spin ace Muralitharan got carted around the pitch for 60+ runs in his 10 overs. Hardly inspiring news for a team seeded to see Australia in the final, eh? Shades of ‘99, anybody? Just me then? All right.

Oh and the Six Nations stuff today is boring but tomorrow – England vs France. Woo. And Yaschvilli is probably playing.

Ever wondered how confusing names are? Take programmes on TV, for example. Yesterday, I was trying to explain to chickenbutt that I had an evening of glazing over in front of the idiot box ahead of me. With roasted, salted peanuts to munch on. Fine. Fair enough, I go through periods of TV hate where I don’t bother watching anything and I also go through periods of being glued in front of the TV. This is clearly one of the latter times.

So what was I watching? Dragons Den – nothing to do with dragons or mythology of any sort. Where every single one of the five “investors” are a Simon Cowell with a nipple tweaked (ok, that wasn’t a pleasant mental image for some of us. I’m sorry). The series is beginning to get a bit predictable too. Never come in and expect to give away a 5% stake of your whizz bang company, they’re going to turn around and ask for 50%. Oh, the dragons might occasionally be “generous” (with the reggae sauce guy a few weeks ago) and make it 40% because he needs to make a living.

Then there was the entertaining Party Animals – which really isn’t about much partying in the conventional sense. If I am to go all SepiaMutiny about the casting for the series, I’d note that there is a female Asian character, played by Shelley Conn. Still, it’s entertaining stuff.

And finally, there is the not so desperate and definitely not housewifey Desperate Housewives. Yes, I watch it. To quote someone else, don’t judge me. I’d maintain I watch it for the luscious Eva Longoria and that’s mostly true but recent photographs are making me rethink my position. Somewhat meh but still worth an ogle or four.

And for something completely different, the new Ach theme is somewhat whimsically called Metal Mickey. Inspired by the Suede song that I happened to be listening to fairly frequently and ultimately by the quirky BBC comedy Metal Mickey. Is there a connection? Well, I think the greys, blues and blacks look vaguely like Metal Mickey’s colours.

Boogie, boogie, boogie! Yeah. or summat like that.

or not.

It’s not often that people living in Yorkshire can gloat about good weather but today is one of those days. While the southern half of the country closes schools and advises people to stay indoors; York is enjoying a pleasantly balmy (ok, not really) -2c low. And no snow. Plenty of ice on the roads though, which sucks.

And I gave up watching last night shortly before Spain scored the only goal of the game against England. Yeah, injuries and missing players but whatever. And interestingly, MacLaren got booed by the crowd when the game finished. Again. How many matches has he been in charge now? 5? Not having much of a honeymoon period as a manager, is he?

And some compelling TV – a video doing the rounds recently – American A-10s versus UK Scimitars in a friendly fire incident. The subtitled text pretty much says it all. War is hell.