Cricket Coma

I'm not sure we will ever be able to move back to the US. I fear we are too far gone now. Yesterday, Elliott had his first Cricket Match. We, of course, have followed a bit of cricket now and again - living in England for so long and now here - you can't really help it. But to actually attend! And to stay from start to finish!

The cricket match was held in some park about an hour's drive from our house. Brisbane is larger than it seems sometimes. I get in my little routine and drive around within a 10 mile radius of my house and I forget there is a whole nother world out there. Kids have to be there for 12 noon for 1:00 start. Thank goodness it has been rainy and overcast, otherwise we all would have had heat stroke.

By, 2:20 in the afternoon, I had drifted into a cricket induced coma. Brutal! Someone said something about it being like baseball on valium. Soooo slow! I'm sure some fast bowling watching Australia play could be exciting, but Boys Under-13s cricket....well, I'll let you imagine. We endured 4 hours of this torture before the game was finshed. Two glasses of wine were needed to recover after the game. However, I'm thinking if I had two before the game, it could be more beneficial.

Lastly, a brief note about an exciting cultural evening of sorts. Last week, both Tim and Elliott went off and left me on my own. Tim went to Adelaide and Elliott went to camp with school for a few days. I made arrangements to go out with a friend one night and she arranged tickets to see our favorite author Bill Bryson give a reading from his new book "The Thunderbolt Kid." I will give him a plug for "In a Sunburned Country" one more time if you want to hear of his travels to Australia. His new book is about growing up in Iowa and sounds nostalgic for days gone by. I have been concentrating on Australian books lately though, so won't put that one at the top of my list. One I would recommend is "A Town like Alice" by Nevil Shute which is about World War Two and development of the outback after the war. I read another "important" book called "Benang" by Kim Scott about the White Australia Policy and the breeding out of Aboriginal race. That was so dreadful and depressing and made all the worse since it was based on real events. Don't read that unless you have alot of mental fortitude.