Owzat!

Tuesday 27th December 2016

Indecision was rife this morning.  The weather forecast has been for clouds and showers.  We had wanted to see some of the cricket test match between Australia and Pakistan at the MCG.  However, due to the weather we decided to go to St Kilda Beach for a walk along the coast.....then.......I changed my mind and bought tickets for the cricket online at 9.30am.  By 10.30am we were at the ground!  Is that indecisiveness an example of good spontaneity or is it poor procrastination?  I can't make my mind up!

The statue is of Shane Warne.

The ground capacity is 100,000 so there was plenty of space.  The atmosphere was good though.  Pakistan were batting and Azhar Ali reached his century and he was sportingly applauded by everyone.  There some fans in fancy dress playing Christmas carols on trumpets.  Sadly, the rain was fairly persistent and we only saw about fifty runs and no wickets.  It's a good job that I'm not a serious cricket fan....I would be upset if I went to an international rugby game and only saw twenty minutes of play and no scores!  But we were glad that we had been.  I was persuaded to have a traditional meat pie at the match.  I was also persuaded to have a jammie doughnut and a slice of millionaire shortbread!  Not a healthy day.

We came away around 3pm because we were going out to some friends of Marg's for a barbie.

We got an early evening taxi to the Box Hill area of Melbourne, to Grant and Sue's lovely house.  We met Sue's sister and brother in law, Liz and Nigel, Marg's brother Paul and wife Kathy were in attendance and there was another friend called Carol.  We had a lovely evening of food, drinks and good banter.  Conversational topics were wide and varied but included all sports, (I gave Burnley a plug, trying to recruit Aussie supporters), Brexit, Political Correctness and wines of the world.

The food and hospitality was amazing.  Everyone had contributed a salad of some sort.  That dessert was superb.  My best description is..a chocolate covered panettone filled with orange, ice cream and flavoured with Cointreau.....mmmm!  We were a bit squiffy on our journey back to Marg's house.

Here is a picture of Janice and Marg, for no other reason than it is a good photo of them.