Saturday, July 23, 2005

French Fries

Just a quick update on the dietary situation. Peggy and I have declared a self-imposed moratorium on chips (french fries for you Nor'Mericaners) for the remainder of the month. Shocking news, I know, but extreme measures had to be taken. Australians eat chips like Chinese eat rice. There's chips with meat pies, chicken burgers (there's this great brand down here called Oporto -- portugese style, of which I am addicted), fried fish, kangaroo burgers-- you name it, all come with heaps and heaps of chips. If I break our promise and have some, I'll let you know, but just don't tell Peggy.

The country has been brought to a virtual standstill by a cricket match currently underway in the UK called Ashes, which is held every four years and features Australia's and England's best national squads. Knowing absolutely nothing about cricket, we spent our first spell watching it chuckling and poking fun at the funny hats, comical applications of sunscreen and preppy-looking V-neck sweaters that these (ahem) athletes wear. Initially, it was easy to imagine a crowd of 20,000 elderly Brits all nodding off at this numbingly slow game.

Alas, that was until someone came up to us and asked 'Do you know who knocked the second wicket?', to which I jokingly replied, 'My good man, I do not know which cricket wicket they did sticketh'. After exchanging some high-fives from Peggy, we were introduced to a jolly chap from Birmingham, who was in town to watch the match and was delighted to find impressionable young minds in which he could attempt to share the virtues of cricket with and to his credit, did an excellent job.

The history behind Ashes came about in the year nineteen-ought-something-or-other when the first Australian cricket team set foot on British soil. The pulled the surprise of the century (the century apparently being only a few years old at the time) by beating their host nation at their own game, if you will. So incensed were the Brits, similar to when one is served a soggy crumpet, that they burned the wickets(those three posts with the horizontal bar on top) and kept them in a kitsch silver trophy (an urn, essentially). Just as we in the states have the Axe or the Stanley Cup, Aussies and Brits have the Ashes. Whichever nation holds possession of the trophy for four years gets the world's most fussed over ashtray.

Plenty of housing news to share, but it's worth a story in itself and I've
been told not to jinx it. Although, if you send french fries, I might be
'greased' into giving up a few details.

posted by ncawthon at 6:00 PM