Fried

Burnt to a feching crisp.

A close friend of mine - english, it happens - once tried to explain cricket to me: The point of cricket, he rather gravely intoned, is to sit in the sun with your pals and drink beer all afternoon. But, as every Fifer knows, the sun never shines in Cowdenbeath: he could Stuff his bloody cricket! Not that I ever lived in Cowdenbeath - but I lived close enough that our Town caught the edge of its gloom. Fifers also know that, just as the Innuit have fifty words for snow, so inhabitants of Cowdenbeath have fifty words for miserable.

But baseball ain't cricket; Los Angeles ain't West Fife; and Dodger Stadium of a Sunday afternoon is most definitely not Central Park (and Central Park ain't that Central Park neither, in case you are too lazy to follow the link).

What a glorious day: the start of the game, the Angels were all over the Dodgers, and it looked as though we'd be watching a massacre. Turned out we did, just not the one we expected. The Angels fell apart in the sixth and seventh - ably assisted by a relief pitcher who gave away a homer with his first throw. My first "Hit the Road, Jack", a reliever relieved.

And though the Dodgers have been on the bad-end of a thumping in all their recent games, today they gubbed the Angels 6 to 2.

That's cos we were there. Told you: I've never seen them lose. And surely, now, with those very words, I've jinxed them? But if it turns out I haven't - and we'll know June 4th - then they ought to be thinking of giving me a good-seat season ticket for free.

Took our daughter and her friend with us today. Discovered we were embarassing her by joining in the wave - that girl sooo has the wrong parents. It meant we sang "Take me oot" loudly and operatically. With gestures and gusto.

I did try to buy a jersey today. I waited twenty minutes in line at the concession stand only for some wide-mouthed fat-arse with a kid and a cell phone to waltz in front of me at the very last, start jabbertalking at the poor lassie behind the counter. I was about to give him a piece of my walking stick when two things prevented me: first, I noticed that the woman behind the counter, and all her colleagues, were completely ignoring him, and other customers, and were instead staring forward over our heads. The anthem was playing. Second, while fuming and building a head of outrage, I noticed a price sticker on the shirt I had my eye on: $175. One hundred and seventy-five dollars for a feching sports shirt? Well, Fatso, says I, you're welcome to it!, before hobbling off. Bastard. It was He ate all the pies.

OH: one last thing before I go. Stupid and senseless it may be, but somehow hopelessly funny too: Clicky.

If you've ever read Bravo Two Zero it may help crystallize for you, as it did for me, why Tom Clancey novels are so ridiculously pompous and unreadable? That link does so too: does nobody ever laugh in the US armed services?
[Hat tip: Sullivan and Norm]