Seems like a long weekend...
Aug. 11th, 2003 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaHaving spent my Saturday doing rash things like tidying up, shopping, and doing washing, the evening was much more exciting...
Mo, being a wonderfully unconventional sort of chap, decided he'd like his friends to be at his stag night, not just the male variants. Since the best man is a girl, this is probably just as well :)
So, we got all togged up, and headed down to Baby on Cowley Rd, where a room was booked. A room with air-conditioning. This alone was enough to ensure success.
Jez, Frances and I turned up to put decorations up, and discovered the curse of the self-immolating balloons. You blow one up. You knot it. You put it down. Ten minute later it looks slightly shifty, then bursts. This was a bit of a theme (except for the one which exploded in my face during inflation. Ouch). However, we got them under control eventually, and duly decorated the place.
Then we sat down with drinks, and watched people arrive (they mostly came through the door gasping "AIRCON!"). Baby is a cocktail bar, so Pintwatch eyed the selection of bottles of Becks, Bud, Betcetera and bowed to the inevitable. Cocktails it was.
And a very pleasant evening ensued - Baby provided a fine buffet, and the room slowly filled up with people. Many of them were people I hadn't seen in ages, so I quite happily milled around chatting until they threw us out at closing time.
Good food, good company, and nobody had to get nailed to anything :)
So, yesterday it was the hottest day of the year, apparently. So, what did I do ? I went and stood in the middle of a field, with no shade, in the blazing sunshine.
Somewhere, in the dim and distant past when we still had things like rain, someone decided that it'd be nice to rake all Mo's friends together for a post-party cricket match. Despite the excessive clemency, a reasonable number turned out. By the time us stragglers had, er, straggled out the pub, things were well under way.
I'm not sure if this is a standard set of rules for a knockabout cricket match. But it seemed to work quite well, so if you're interested:
There is no concept of teams. Everyone not batting/bowling is by default fielding. Batting proceeds in alphabetical order of surname, bowling proceeds in reverse order.
Each bowler bowls one over - ie 6 legal balls. Our playing can be summed up in a remark made about Graham "An over ? Over ? In six balls ?"
Each batmsan faces two overs, regardless of how many times they get out. Each run gains you 1 point, getting out loses you 5. Negative scores are possible :)
And it all went swimmingly, until there was a collision between the batting order (having gone forward to T) and the bowling order (having wrapped round and got to T) and Jez was required to bowl to himself.
It neatly rained during the tea break - proper cricket tea with buns and everything - and stopped when we clocked back on. And my side of the field had a cracking view of forked lightning for quite a few overs - for a while even the temperature and pressure dropped, and the day became quite pleasasnt, weatherwise.
Once the cricket had wound up, it was off to London (but very slowly because the trains were playing silly buggers). Some months ago two of my friends challenged each other to learn in one case the banjo, and in the other the guitar. The plan was to meet up on Sunday for a banjo duel... possibly to the death. Unfortunately, one of them seems to have been working 24/7 recently (the other merely 23/7), and so wasn't really prepared. So instead we ate salmon and pasta bake, which was nearly the same thing.
It seems like we haven't had a Designated Hero of the Week in a while. Mostly because we haven't. I've been a bit lazy, you (yes, you) have been displaying a shocking lack of reportable heroism. So, this week's DHW is actually a shop...
It's been there for ages, just being quietly great. And now seems to have had a refit, so I think it must be doing well: Fasta Pasta, the Italian deli in the covered market in Oxford. They do fresh pasta, all the things-in-oil you would want (mostly), and other goodies. And nice sarnies - half a ciabatta stuffed with mozarella and marinated aubergine: £2. Splendid :)
Mo, being a wonderfully unconventional sort of chap, decided he'd like his friends to be at his stag night, not just the male variants. Since the best man is a girl, this is probably just as well :)
So, we got all togged up, and headed down to Baby on Cowley Rd, where a room was booked. A room with air-conditioning. This alone was enough to ensure success.
Jez, Frances and I turned up to put decorations up, and discovered the curse of the self-immolating balloons. You blow one up. You knot it. You put it down. Ten minute later it looks slightly shifty, then bursts. This was a bit of a theme (except for the one which exploded in my face during inflation. Ouch). However, we got them under control eventually, and duly decorated the place.
Then we sat down with drinks, and watched people arrive (they mostly came through the door gasping "AIRCON!"). Baby is a cocktail bar, so Pintwatch eyed the selection of bottles of Becks, Bud, Betcetera and bowed to the inevitable. Cocktails it was.
And a very pleasant evening ensued - Baby provided a fine buffet, and the room slowly filled up with people. Many of them were people I hadn't seen in ages, so I quite happily milled around chatting until they threw us out at closing time.
Good food, good company, and nobody had to get nailed to anything :)
So, yesterday it was the hottest day of the year, apparently. So, what did I do ? I went and stood in the middle of a field, with no shade, in the blazing sunshine.
Somewhere, in the dim and distant past when we still had things like rain, someone decided that it'd be nice to rake all Mo's friends together for a post-party cricket match. Despite the excessive clemency, a reasonable number turned out. By the time us stragglers had, er, straggled out the pub, things were well under way.
I'm not sure if this is a standard set of rules for a knockabout cricket match. But it seemed to work quite well, so if you're interested:
There is no concept of teams. Everyone not batting/bowling is by default fielding. Batting proceeds in alphabetical order of surname, bowling proceeds in reverse order.
Each bowler bowls one over - ie 6 legal balls. Our playing can be summed up in a remark made about Graham "An over ? Over ? In six balls ?"
Each batmsan faces two overs, regardless of how many times they get out. Each run gains you 1 point, getting out loses you 5. Negative scores are possible :)
And it all went swimmingly, until there was a collision between the batting order (having gone forward to T) and the bowling order (having wrapped round and got to T) and Jez was required to bowl to himself.
It neatly rained during the tea break - proper cricket tea with buns and everything - and stopped when we clocked back on. And my side of the field had a cracking view of forked lightning for quite a few overs - for a while even the temperature and pressure dropped, and the day became quite pleasasnt, weatherwise.
Once the cricket had wound up, it was off to London (but very slowly because the trains were playing silly buggers). Some months ago two of my friends challenged each other to learn in one case the banjo, and in the other the guitar. The plan was to meet up on Sunday for a banjo duel... possibly to the death. Unfortunately, one of them seems to have been working 24/7 recently (the other merely 23/7), and so wasn't really prepared. So instead we ate salmon and pasta bake, which was nearly the same thing.
It seems like we haven't had a Designated Hero of the Week in a while. Mostly because we haven't. I've been a bit lazy, you (yes, you) have been displaying a shocking lack of reportable heroism. So, this week's DHW is actually a shop...
It's been there for ages, just being quietly great. And now seems to have had a refit, so I think it must be doing well: Fasta Pasta, the Italian deli in the covered market in Oxford. They do fresh pasta, all the things-in-oil you would want (mostly), and other goodies. And nice sarnies - half a ciabatta stuffed with mozarella and marinated aubergine: £2. Splendid :)
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-11 12:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-11 05:38 pm (UTC)Actually, we'd already hit that point, somewhere in the mid H's. There were somany of them I lost track of exactly which was which, but I think it was Mr. Gibbon.
I'll let you know if and when