Election ... and cricket season !

Well, big election day was last week and we still don't really know who will be running the country for the next few months.

Bit of an anti-climax but to be honest, heavily expected. It's been a bit of a turn off for me really, I can't see that much difference between the parties. They'll all pick and choose which policies they want to actually try to implement out of what they promised. The way I try and go is to attempt to ignore them as much as possible and get on with what I want to do. I'll try not to upset the lawmakers too much though as they then get in the way of having fun.

That's not why it's a turn off though, although a loss of faith in the whole political scene is a big contributor. No. It's the people.

It's been curious watching how various people have been behaving over the past week or so. Most people keep their politics to themselves. It's a personal decision and they leave it to the parties to convince others as to how they should vote. Not so with these people, they'll really go for the irrational bigot way of telling people they shouldn't vote for this person or that. It can get rather vicious as well.

That's so negative.

You can't have a sensible conversation with such people (like with Mac Evangelists !) because their preconceived ideas and ironclad prejudices get in the way of anything resembling sanity. They'll vote the way they always do, without questioning whether what they're voting for fits what they believe. And they'll also make up excuses as to why they shouldn't vote for the other guys. I know why I voted the way I did, it was based on the track records of how the various parties have misbehaved themselves. And the comment on Negativity probably gives away who I chose.

I guess I prefer election periods to be over and done with quickly so they're out of the way and we can manage our political bosses until the next period. We'll be lucky to get 6 months though before the next election and then the prejudices will come out again.

(CK, if you read the stuff above and thought I meant you with the stuff above, definitely not ! But there are one or two other people in the close friend group who do fit the politics bigot tag)

On to better things - summer is coming and that means CRICKET :-)

I enjoyed watching a very strong England side beat New Zealand earlier. It's weird to see an England side currently dominate the rest of the world in cricket. It doesn't happen often. We've got thumping batsmen, good fielding and smart bowling and we're currently leading the way.

It's good to see.

I'm back in cricket as well now, having given up on my shoulder recovering fully. It's about the same now as it was a couple of years ago. That is it's 95% capable but that 5% stops my bowling from being usable. There's a hitch in there that destroys my ability to control the length I bowl and when you mainly bowl inswingers, it means No Match Bowling. When it goes wrong, the ball goes flat at head height with the inswing making it follow a batsman who is attempting to duck out of the way.

That's insanely dangerous, even with helmets.

I think I prefer not bowling anyway. In my best days I was a genuine allrounder, able to open the batting and the bowling, I always enjoyed batting more. When batting, you can give an honest shrug when being gotten out by a good ball. With bowling, I felt the pressure much more as if it was up to me to make something happen to get the wicket. And at the same time, I'd need to concentrate on consistency to avoid mistakes. So, less pressure when batting as I could usually score at an acceptable rate.

So for tomorrow, I'll be attempting to impersonate a batsman and depending on who we have, I'll be keeping wicket or fielding. Should be fun, although I've had no practice for years. Hope the muscle memory remembers what to do. I'm in reasonable shape, albeit a stone or two overweight. I seem to have gotten lucky with a certain amount of natural fitness and an ability to recover quickly that makes cricket my ideal game. Most of my niggles are actually due to muscles not being used enough.

We'll see how it goes tomorrow, although the weather prediction says rain. Heh heh heh, it said rain today and we had bright sunshine all day.

Meanwhile, Evanescence is on iTunes and I have books to read and gear to pack :-) And relief that my cricket whites are still white.