Cricket, sir, cricket!

 

Yesterday I went with Rachael’s parents and brother-in-law James to see a cricket match between Australia and Sri Lanka, which James and Rachael’s sister Jenny had arranged as a Christmas present for us. (Jasper, Rachael and her sister Jenny had their own outing for tea while we saw the cricket.) Before taking off, I dressed in green and yellow (the Australian team’s colours) and got a tattoo to make my loyalties clear:

The cricket match was great fun, in lots of surprising ways. Lots of people were wearing funny costumes and dancing and waving Australian and Sri Lankan flags, and all during the match cameramen were filming interesting people in the stadium and televising them on a big screen for everybody to see. Also, just before the cricket match began a few members of the audience were brought out into the stadium for a staring contest, which is evidently traditional.

Then the cricket got started. James explained the basic rules to me, and I think that I finally understand the game, which has a distant resemblance to baseball (“we used to call it rounders,” as they say in The Lady Vanishes), but with lots of important differences. Australia was batting first and scored about 220 runs in the first inning (!). Here’s a photo of some cricket action, followed by a photo of one of the two official drink breaks that the athletes took.

At one point I had a meat pie, which occupies about the same niche in the Australian diet as hot dogs in America. (There were also hot dogs at the cricket match, and I had one of those too, but the pie was better.)

 

After half time, the Sri Lankans started batting, but they only scored a few runs when it started to rain (really it was just a little mist), so the umpires suspended play and the groundskeepers pulled a big tarp over the central part of the field. Everyone in the Sydney Cricket Ground sat around in the rain for an hour or so waiting for it to stop, which sounds like it would be quite tedious, but in fact it was very sweet and jolly. People were bouncing beach balls back and forth (in spite of stern warnings on the big screen that the rules strictly forbade throwing things in the stadium). Rachael’s dad said that sort of disregard for the rules comes from Australia’s convict background.

 

Also, while everyone was waiting for play to resume, a bunch of spectators started putting together the plastic cups that they’d drunk beer from, making a big long plastic snake cup. You can see a little piece of it here:

 

The cup snake got longer and longer and ultimately stretched across about a third of the stadium. Everyone was very excited and cheered when the last two long segments of the cup snake were connected. The security people had to bend the rules to allow one of the two segments across to meet the other one. Their final conjunction was captured on camera and replayed on the big screen in slow motion. Then a message came up that said we had just broken the world record for the longest cup snake ever made, and the speakers started to play the Queen song “We Are the Champions.” Everyone was pleased and delighted, and sang along. It was very sweet and jolly.

 

Finally, after hours of waiting, the umpires decided that it was hopeless, and that it was not going to be possible to continue the cricket game, and that it had to be “abandoned!” Which was a bit disappointing, of course, but I didn’t mind because it had been such a fun event, really kind of a giant party with thousands of Australians and Sri Lankans being friendly and a little silly together. And, of course, it brought to mind the sad story of Charters and Caldicott in The Lady Vanishes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al60grtUgHE

So that was my cricket adventure here in Australia. I hope that America’s preparations for the Super Bowl are going well.

-Throckmorton.

Adventures in Rome and Florence!

Hi everybody,

In a couple of hours I’ll be flying back to Sydney, so I thought I’d put in another blog update about my adventures in Italy.  The first few nights I was in Rome, I stayed in the lovely Trastavere neighborhood, which has the oldest church in the world dedicated to Mary.

Here is a picture of my first meal in Italy, which was at a nice little restaurant nearby:

My first day in Italy I didn’t have much energy to do more than explore Trastavere a bit and then go to sleep.  But the next day early in the morning I went on an epic trip to the Vatican City.  On my way, I was delighted to see a store selling the latest in ecclesiastical fashions:

Here's St. Peter's Square:

The first thing I checked out in the Vatican was St. Peter’s Basilica.  It is very difficult for a photograph to convey how amazing and beautiful it is.  I tried, but all the photos I took with that intention came out looking lame.  So instead, here is a picture of me with some of the Basilica in the background.  (Note the halo.)

The next thing on the itinerary was the Vatican Museum, which is HUGE, and has the Sistine Chapel inside it.  But we weren’t allowed to take pictures there.  Nevertheless, I did get a few pictures of some lesser but still amazing masterpieces.  I took the liberty, for example, of inserting myself into the School of Athens:

and posing in front of the Laocoön:

At one point I glanced out a window from the Vatican Museum and was charmed to see a tennis court and a little playground for children in the Vatican’s grounds.  I didn’t know the Pope went in for tennis:

And speaking of the Pope, attached to the Vatican Museum there was a little-known exhibit of Popemobiles through the ages.  I took a picture of one of the swankier old Popemobiles:

A few more things I saw in the Vatican before I left were this charming picture of the previous Pope holding a Koala, and a painting of the Magi coming to visit Jesus, which I photographed because Jasper’s name derives from Gaspar, the name (according to tradition) of the Magus who brought Jesus frankincense.

I did a bit more walking around Rome that day, including a visit to the ancient temple of Ariadne, which I expected to have that library-esque vibe that more or less like every other Very Old Thing has, but which instead seemed to have a panel discussion going on inside, with lots of Italian politicians and the media and enthusiastically clapping constituents.

Before I left Rome I also checked out the Colosseum, which was astounding, and the Palatine, which is the (now uninhabited) neighborhood nearby where all the old Roman aristocrats used to live:

Then a few days of philosophical conferring, and on to Florence!  Which I have to say I liked much better than Rome.  My first meal in Florence was a German sausage and some German beer, which was being served out in front of the Cathedral of Santa Croce because of some German market/street fair.

Florence is a very beautiful city.  The skyline is dominated by the Duomo, the central cathedral, which is humungous. 

Florence also boasts the Ponte Vecchio, which is a famous bridge that connects the two parts of the city.  Mostly it has lots of jewelry shops on it.  You can see it in the distance here.

And that’s about all, folks!  I saw a lot more in Florence (e.g. Michelangelo’s David, Boticelli’s Birth of Venus, etc.) but photos were forbidden, so I don’t have as much from Florence to post.

So that’s the report on my trip to Italy.  I’ll be getting home late Thursday night, and am soooooo much looking forward to being with Rachael and Jasper again.

Lots of love from the Eternal City,

Throckmorton.

Dubai

Hi everybody,

Well, I'm in Rome now, but first I had a 19 hour layover in Dubai, where I stayed at the amazingly opulent and beautiful Arabian Courtyard Hotel & Spa.  Here is a picture of my room and the view from the window of the Dubai Museum and one of the Grand Mosques of the city:

I also had a walk around the old part of the city (Bastarakiah), where I had lunch:

And then a walk around the textile market (called a "souk"), which was a bit intimidating, somewhat like the tourist retail area in the Turkish city Rachael and I went to once, only this time all the pushy salesmen were trying to sell textiles.

The textile souk was close to the little creek that the city of Dubai is built up around, so I took a picture of that too.

On the way back to the airport I caught a glimpse of the world's tallest building (the one that looks like a needle, second from the left), but it was too far away to look very impressive in a photograph.

That's all for now.  I'll have a post about Rome in a day or two.  All the best from the Eternal City,

Throckmorton.

Hi everyone!  It's been a while since Throckmorton, boy reporter, last brought you up to date on his adventures, and there have been several.  Firstly, a few weeks back, I went out to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to take in an exhibition of works by Picasso that were visiting Australia for a Limited Time Only!

I didn't actually photograph any of the Picasso pieces because I wasn't sure that I was allowed, but on the way to and from the Art Gallery I took a few pictures of points of interest in the city of Sydney.  Here is a view from Hyde Park of the grand Catholic cathedral in downtown Sydney:

To get to the Art Gallery I walked along Art Gallery Road, which was quite beautiful:

And then on the way home I crossed the bridge over Darling Harbour and took a few pictures of the boats:

But wait, there's more!  My old friend Ben is visiting Australia for a few weeks, and last weekend he and I went on a road trip from Sydney to Melbourne.  Here he is enjoying an Australian coffee, which is the best in the world:

Before we went to Melbourne, we took a trip out to a local zoo and hung out with some Ozzie wildlife:

The drive from Sydney to Melbourne is very very long, so to break it up a bit we stopped from time to time in little towns in the middle of nowhere, including Holbrook, a town hundreds of kilometers from the coast that randomly acquired a submarine decades ago to attract tourists.  Ben took my picture on it.

And finally to Melbourne, where I had some terrific Eggs Benedict on DeGraves Street:

Melbourne has a lot of inviting little alleys with shops and cafes:

Because Ben has developed a severe allergy to gluten, we hopped on a tram to a place that serves gluten-free fish and chips:

At dusk we drove out to the Phillip Island nature park where every night at dusk the local penguin population can be seen parading home from the ocean to their burrows.  They were very very cute, but it was kind of hard to see them properly because the nature park was so crowded with people staring at the penguins.  Also, we weren't allowed to take pictures of the penguins because it can blind them if you use a flash, so instead of the penguin parade I took a few pictures of the people parade from the parking lot to the penguin habitat:

Ben flew from Melbourne to Cairns and will come back to Sydney in a little while after exploring there and in Brisbane.

But that didn't keep old Throckmorton and Rachael from having yet another adventure this weekend!  Variety's 1955 prediction that rock and roll would be gone by June is still false, thanks in part to Rachael's rock star brother Jonathon, who had a gig in the town of Katoomba up in the Blue Mountains on Friday that Rachael and I drove out to see.  Here's the website of Jon's band, which you can check out at your leisure:

http://thisismusic.com.au/about.php

I also took a video of their performance that should give you an idea of how great they are:

Jon is the one singing on the left, Kis (pronounced "Keesh") is the guitarist on the right, and behind them both is Pete on the drums (he's a bit harder to see).

Last but certainly not least, the next day on our way home from the mountains, Rachael and I stopped at a stunningly beautiful botanic gardens for tea and botany:

All the best,
Throckmorton.