Pardon?

"You're just jealous."
"Of what, the Welsh Assembly?"
"No."
"Oh."

So, turns out that starting a new blog dealy was probably a waste of time, eh? I've not done a great job of updating this thing and, to be honest, it took reading that a roided-up ex-bouncer named for a medieval defensive earthwork found the time in the middle of a gun rampage to sit down and knock out forty pages to make me think that, really, I could probably find five minutes between getting a haircut and having another butter pie to put together a few meandering paragraphs. So, here they are.

On the not-very-interesting subject of Mr.Moat, by the way, I predict that this will all come to a head when he tries to shoot another copper but succumbs to writer's cramp and drops his gun.

Meanwhile, in far more important news, Murali's retiring from proper cricket. Can't blame him since he's 38 and playing for five days straight against the best players in the world probably isn't terribly easy, but world sport is just about to get that much less interesting, and I hadn't much enthusiasm for it to begin with. I've not much more to say about it other than that I wouldn't mind going to Galle later this month to watch his last game. Anybody fancy giving me a lift to Sri Lanka? I expect he'll finish just shy of 800 test wickets (in twelve fewer matches than it took Warne to get, what, 708 or so at the expense of two or three more runs a piece?) unless he really rips into the Indians.

Ah well, even without him, and Sanath, and Sachoo, and the lamentable impact of the (increasingly) limited overs formats, cricket will still be more worthwhile than the footy, I should think.

Recently I had one of those thrilling conversations with an ill-informed and strangely irate nationalist deals involving an American chap who was getting into 'soccer' for the first time thanks to the world cup. He was completely carried away by his team's extremely lucky draw with a god-awful England (which, by the by, didn't bother me... I was rather hoping that Slovenia might go through) and, for whatever reason, taking the opportunity to defend America's role in the world. "I dont think we owe the world a damn thing!" he asserted, for reasons best known to himself, "You owe like fourteen trillion dollars, dude." I observed, but naturally he was able to offer a relevant counter, pointing out that, after all, "Without us the world would be speaking German and Japanese.", and though I wouldn't mind being able to speak two foreign languages that would never have had any direct relevance in my home country (since Operation Sealion was abandoned before America even entered the war), I couldn't help noting that, "Without France, Spain, and the Netherlands you'd be spelling color with a u." and then he threw his shoe in a bush and that was that, because well, what else can you say?

Now, if this had been the cricket world cup, I'd not have had to endure that, and nor would you. And that's why it's a better game. And the world cup doesn't even happen in the best cricket format.

Well, that was all pretty dull, hey? There hasn't been much else to tell. I was hit in the face outside that damnable club by random can't-handle-her-drink girl and still have bruises on my arms from being grabbed by her and/or one of her mates, but really this is just another chapter in the debacle-ridden chronicles of nights-out-with-the-Doktorb that we needn't examine in much more detail and are perhaps best to just laugh-off with an, "Oh, Preston..." and the observation that, after all, those 3am chips were pretty good. Oh, and this morning I nearly choked to death over breakfast, and I think mango juice started leaking from my eye. Maybe the Ferret this weekend for't Empire State and a limited number of pints, though last time I was in there I was accused of being a scouser, so we'll just see...

I appear to be listening to Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages, so it's clearly time to get out of here.