Saturday 7th March 2009
THESE FIRETRUCKING WEST Indies will be the death of me yet. After having played at least well enough for three out of four Tests (or four out of five, if you count Fidel’s determined attempts to run up at the abandoned second Test at the Sir Viv Beach/Stadium/Goat Pasture), they’ve approached this final Test as though a draw would be the equivalent of a win, the way it was in Antigua.
And to think I moved heaven and earth (or at least the ladder) to have an external antenna installed to watch this. If England hadn’t accelerated after lunch today, this could have been the New Zealand Test team of the early Seventies playing the New Zealand Test team of the mid-Seventies. Dead ball. Poked with dead bat. Dead ball. Poked with dead bat. Continue for five days.
But we, the West Indies, have decided we’ll play for the draw. England are now 509 for five and will shortly declare and send us in; and we’ll have the question answered as to whether you can field as though you don’t give a firetruck about the game but bat as though you want to win. 
Addendum at stumps: Well, it seems you can. Gayle is one away from his 50, only Devon Smith giving his wicket away, England used up both referrals already and the wicket looking okay. Mikey Holding now saying the batters doing the opposite of what the bowlers did - and dissing the bowling approach in spades.

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THE ATTACK ON the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan could actually been worse: it could have been the Indian cricket team. Then we could have had a nuclear retaliation. Don’t laugh. When it comes to religious folk, nothing is impossible because nothing is wrong. They have God on their side, you see. You'll know what I mean if you’ve received the extremely distressing email containing pictures allegedly depicting the Sharia penalty for theft being carried out on an eight-year-old boy – though in the modernized, perhaps dramatized version in the email, his hand is not cut off but

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I CAME TO the exciting Fox series, 24, late – only last year, in fact, despite the urgings of my pardners Jonathan (quite in Florida) and Maxie (not quite in government yet), who have never recommended me a dud flick yet. The week after my wife’s birthday (last September 21), I began watching season one on DVD – and finished the whole thing before October began, watching all six discs in consecutive nights, four episodes at a shot.
I took possession of seasons two to six on the strength of season one, and got through season two before the current season, seven, began this year. If only I’d waited a bit longer, as so many women have said early Saturday morning after the Friday night before.
Season seven couldn’t help but be disappointing – no one can sustain such pace and standard forever. But did it have to get this bad? Monday before last, the first long steups was induced by Jack Bauer cutting open someone to get a storage device – the same trick he relied upon in season two!
But last Monday topped (or bottomed) that: in locking the fictional American president in a safe room, 24 borrowed from an earlier episode of this same firetrucking season, when the African guy and his wife were similarly locked up! It won’t be long before they start borrowing from the scene before the commercial break.
Really, despite stroking my own enthusiasm (as I often have on a Friday night), it’s getting difficult to keep it up for 24. If there should be a season eight, I want to suggest it be renamed, “12”.

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TODAY IS THE third day of the third month of the year nine, producing what some Maths lover decided should be called, “Square Root Day”: today is 3.3.09 and 3 x 3 = 9. Hip-hip-hoo-firetrucking-ray. I’m surprised Hallmark haven’t devised a line of greeting cards to celebrate it.
There’s a tough job for you in an economic meltdown: making or selling any cards other than the type you can play poker with. People just aren’t going to be rushing out to buy cards nowadays; though I suppose a card is cheaper than a present and there will always be that market.
I could have done with a get well card myself yesterday, doing battle with my ass bug as I was. I’m glad to say the news is good from the behind-front this morning. And from the mid-section. Had a couple of butter-less, greaseless, unseasoned scrambled eggs on dry whole wheat bread this morning and, like the three spoonfuls of brown rice last evening, they have stayed down. Anything can taste good when you’ve had nothing to eat all day; don’t mean to wax philosophical or mathematical either on Square Root Day but I think I just might be getting my shit together.

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IT MUST BE out of some misplaced decorum that they call them “stomach bugs” because they really manifest elsewhere; and I know whereof I speak. But I suppose you can’t go around telling small children they have to wash their hands in case they get an ass bug.
The one that’s afflicted me today, though, could defend the name, since it also precipitates regular bouts of copious projectile vomiting. I’ve had stag parties that featured more polite up-chucking. Also, I regret to say, raw oats may be healthy for you going one way but they’re a nightmare to send back the way they came.
On the upside, the complete taking away of the choice of whether or not to go to the cricket turned out to be in my favour. It would have been very bad to have missed the first West Indian victory at Kensington in years but it would have been even worse to have tried to find a clean toilet there; or to have to vomit into a portable one. Hmmm. Just thinking about that, I almost feel better already.

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Saturday 28h February 2009
LAST DAY OF the month, last session of play in the third/fourth Digicel Test v England as I write, sorry, blog and all over Barbados there is a weeping and a wailing and a gnashing of teeth over a dreadful decision to give Brendan Nash out lbw when he was doing the best batting of his short Test career.
Poor Nash must have heard about Dwayne Bravo’s first game back after months away from cricket due to injury. Bravo made 121 for Queen’s Park Cricket Club in a Twenty/20 match! One hundred and firetrucking twenty-one! There’re only 120 balls in the entire innings!
So now Nash may be out of the team for the next Test – in Trinidad, Bravo’s home ground, the ideal location for Bravo to regain his deserved place. If West Indies fail to avoid the follow-on (even if England should choose not to enforce it), the winds of change will pick up pace. Nash may be in jeopardy.
And who should be at the wicket with Ronnie Sarwan now? Dinesh “Shot-A-Ball” Ramdin.
Don’t pack your suitcase for Port of Spain too early, Brendan.

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THE MAN WITH the jack-hammer ripping up the neighbour’s driveway obliterated all work but his this morning. I had to resort to my World Cup earplugs, given to me by my pardner Gregors’ sister, which allowed me to sleep in our World Cup camper van with the infamous Butters snoring like the Concorde landing on galvanize a metre away. Had they come to mind earlier, I might have blogged earlier, and been in a better mood than the one I’ve been put in by the third English declaration in a row – at 606 for 6, at the Kensington Oval in Barbados, aka England’s overseas Test match ground. Even if my naturally cheery disposition (don’t snicker) could have withstood the declaration, Chris Gayle was thief out and whatever promise the day still held promptly ran out.
On the upside, though, the jack-hammering has stopped, which promptly leads over the hill to the downside of having the peace and quiet to contemplate the difference in approach of England and West Indies to this Test series. Three declarations in a row, a thousand-plus runs in the last game – you can bet England will enforce the follow-on this time ‘round. They learn from experience – or at least avoid the shame of making the same mistake at the very next opportunity. Thankfully for me, England won the toss yesterday; if I had to include, in my speculations, Chris Gayle winning his third toss in a row (counting the aborted second Test at the Viv Richards Beach) and choosing to bowl first on a batting strip, I might have put my head under the jack-hammer before tea.

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COULDN’T BLOG YESTERDAY because my wife has hit on as foolproof a plan for extending her holiday as I did for not picking up the cockroach in the bathroom while she was away. (See, I Killa Those Cock-a-roaches, if you give a firetruck.)
She has avoided dropping children to school by pretending to have the flu. She has even somehow managed to fake roasting fever, cold sweats and body-racking coughs. Malingerer. At least she managed to bake a spectacular chicken though. Baked chicken: God’s second strongest argument, after rib-eye, against vegetarianism.
Still, exaggerated or not, it means less desk time for me. On top of her traffic-avoidance skullduggery, the driveway next door – right next to my little office – is being very noisily jack-hammered to be tiled. Which means the little time I have left for blogging after I’ve caught up with Inspector Morse and those internet lesbians, I can’t hardly blog at all; particularly typing with one hand.

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EVEN THOUGH IT’S shit and all, God, how I miss being in Trinidad for Carnival Tuesday. Missing Jouvert was bad enough – it only really struck me when I woke up yesterday morning at 7am and realised I’d normally be thinking of leaving the band around that time. Mind you, I wasn’t stale drunk, no part of my body was hurting more than usual, I had no cause to reflect on exactly what I got up to in the four or five preceding hours, about ten minutes of which was all I could recall.
And I didn’t have to spend half an exhausted hour trying to scrub oil, grease, mud, body paint and a couple of skettels off of me before falling into bed; mind you, if I had the skettels, I wouldn’t be going to sleep.
But Carnival Tuesday is different. I don’t miss the noise and the emptiness of it (compared to the rich, full, rewarding experience I know it could be and the sweet music I recall) – but, sitting in a quiet corner of quiet Christ Church in quiet Barbados – man, how I miss the sheer firetrucking excitement of Port of Spain on Carnival Tuesday. Yes, I’d have earplugs in, just to avoid damage to my hearing, and yes, at the end of the day I would be on balance far more annoyed than pleased, and not rejuvenated at all – but, tell the truth: there really is nothing like it; even in its modern, diluted, throwaway, made-in-China form. Hmmm. I wonder if I could get on a flight before lunch?

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IF YOU DIDN’T know I was at home alone for the last few days, wife and kids gone until Monday morning, you’d know it by going into the bathroom. The dead cockroach on the floor has been lying there since Thursday. But I’m not planning to pick it up before they get back, just as I’m not going to wipe down the kitchen counter. First, the spilled coffee stains and bran crumbs are almost artistic after four days of application – and they certainly look better than the Formica. Second, I’ve thought of a watertight excuse. When my wife says, “Didn’t you vacuum this morning? Couldn’t you at least pass a wet rag along the kitchen counter?” I’m going to say, “Hey, aren’t you glad I’ve proved we don’t have ants?”
Good, huh? Somehow, though, I think it will backfire. In these domestic wars, I’m always the walking wounded; of course, I wouldn’t be if I made any effort at all. But you know what it’s like: your wife and children are away is your chance to behave like a child yourself. Cheetos for breakfast, Chinese food and chocolate ice cream for every other meal. I suppose I will have to clean up but there’s always the greatest labour-saving device of today: firetrucking tomorrow.

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