I believe the main event begins tomorrow. My annual last longer wager with fellow Witney (inc. Carterton) Mob members: Messrs young Paul and young Alan, once again sadly features none of us, so once again we will pick some one we feel will go deep.
My pick is Vanessa Rousso who is just some one who immediately springs to mind when I hear phrases like going deep. It's hot, I'm frustrated. She can play a bit too of course. Especially with my todg...no no calm down Rich. A cold bath I think.
Paul by contrast has chosen Dewey Tomko. I'll leave you all to draw your own conclusions about that one. Alan has chosen Jeff Lisandro.
Obviously it'll be won by someone we've never heard of and by the time they've played the final table out in November we won't care, but I fancy I've got this wager in the bag and will use the winnings to buy some German poetry to subdue my wicked urges.
He's officially a liar now. He was a liar before, but it's only been made official today. Despite his Orwellian economic double-speak he's invented where down is up and 0% is a rise, he's fooling no one anymore.
It's a shame his "0% rise" line from yesterday's PMQs came during a heat wave. Had it come at any other time far more people would have been bothered to sit up and wave their fists at the telly or email in.
Thanks to You Tube though it's preserved, electronically fossilised so generations to come will have an appreciation of what a contemptible c-word he his and I don't mean communist. I'm telling you there's only so much room on top of London Bridge for decapitated Scottish heads. We'll have to start using Tower Bridge too at this rate.
One has to almost admire the gall of the man to stand there live on TV and make an attempt at conning people into accepting "0% rise" as something other than an utterly contemptuous verbal two fingers to anyone who still lives in a world where 2+2=4.
This reminds me of the scene in 1984 where poor Winston has to count the light bulbs. It's one of my worst nightmares being imprisoned in a room with no windows with Gordon Brown holding up a chart of Government spending entitled "Brown's proposed cuts," all in red ink with clearly illustrated decreasing bars and being asked how much investment in public services will rise according to the chart. Oh the hell of it.
IT'S NOT RISING, IT'S FALLING DAMN YOUFALLING....YOU WON'T BREAK ME ARRGHHHHHHHHH
Gosh darn it Gordon you coffin chinned walking depression, our political heritage is the product of a thousand years of struggles and many amusing facial hair trends and although a significant percentage of it has been eroded away over the past ten years and we now live in a pointless egalitarian state where individual acheivement is a crime and crime and acheivement and it's become OK for women to drink out of pint glasses, I'm damned, DAMNED if the remaining crumbs of our democracy will be eaten up by your megalomanic crusade to turn us into a poor man's Russia. If this doesn't stop you'll be receiving a very stern email from me, I mean it. VERY stern - bold fonts, caps lock the works, so back off and rediscover your enthusiasm for elections.
Gargh, I have a hospital appointment in an hour. I haven't slept because of the heat, my eyes are milky and watery and my skin is just parched. It's so hard to find a good moisturiser these days don't you think? I don't look my best. Plus the heat has ruined my appetite and I'm now invisible from the side and my trousers keep falling down.
This reminds of a time when I was a nipper and my relationship with my Doctor's was far less concordant. I was scared of them to be fair. But with good reason. Mine had a beard, never a good sign in a Doctor. He had authority to insist on incredibly invasive treatments and I was far too timid and reticent and ignorant to argue with him.
I once resorted to hiding weights in my pockets to disguise the loss of weight and try and avert all talk of awful supplementary feeding; gastric nasal toobs, the dreaded peg and so on. What I didn't think to do was weigh myself before I went out, or look at myself in the mirror. I was fooling no one. I always had a muscular stomach because of all the coughing I've down, but when I lose weight I have a seven pack as you can see my pancreas.
Despite the iron weights I was wheezily lugging about I still came in under the required weight to postpone such discussions, I got away with promising to drink protein drinks and eat more cake though, phew close call. These days I'm not bothered, it makes no difference no mo'. I might go in a bikini today actually.
Andy Murray really is doing his level best to ruin my week. Oh how I hark back to bygone days when Jocks guilty of such treason as ruining an Englishman's Yankee bets were stripped naked, dragged through the streets of London by horses and then tied to a tree, eviscerated and their bowels set alight while the treacherous Gaelic swine was still alive. His head then placed on a spike on London Bridge.
Had Andy Murray done the decent thing and lost one of the first sets today (he was a break down in the second damn him) I'd have been £1,500 to the good. Look at this:
Roddick to win in five sets (had this in a single too), Haas to beat Djokovic, Federer to win in straight sets and Murray's game to be 1-1 after two sets. Not too much to ask surely? He denied me £2,000 on Monday by not winning 3-1. I'll be honest with you, I don't like him.
However, today has still been a very good day and if Lilistrom can see out the final twenty minutes of their match with Start Kristianstand, then we will finish the day somewhere in the region of £400 up. If Roger Federer would do the decent thing and win the whole tournament and Phil Taylor can focus enough to win that Vegas thing then we'll have had a four figure week and we can stop referring to ourselves in the third person.
For those of you who enjoy a good lay (fnarr fnarr yick yick) - Casey Stoner can now confidently be laid for the MotoGP title (currently 3/1) as there is something wrong with the fella. If my suspicions are correct, something is seriously wrong with him.
The last two races he has suffered exhaustion and stomach cramps - causing him to throw up in his helmet during the Catalunya race, ewwww, and this fatigue and illness and cramps are a "mystery," according to his medical people.
If you can't be arsed to wait until the end of the season, you can lay 3/1 for Stoner this weekend as he can't seriously be in with a chance given his physical condition. They've only had a day off since Assen, they've had to fly all the way to California and will be racing again on Sunday on a track that really isn't suited to MotoGP bikes and will therefore be even more demanding than the previous two races. It's too much to ask for some one who clearly isn't fit and might in my humble opinion have the "C" word.
That's a rather unpleasant way of ending a blog so let's hope I'm way off the mark and he returns to the peak of physical fitness soon. Just not this weekend if he doesn't mind.
Samuel Johnson once said, "It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm."
I've never been uncomfortable with silences and am therefore not practiced with small talk, I dislike it and the smallest of all small talk in particular; the weather.
It becomes especially tiny during heatwaves or when it rains for more than five days in a row. The smaller the talk, the more irritating however. Thank fuck Michael Jackson has died so people have something else to chat about in queues; "Ooooh in't it sad, Thriller were the first album I ever bought, shame he went and slept wi' kids though weren't it?"
It's currently 5:30am in Vegas and already hotter there than it is ever likely to get during the peak of this "heatwave" we're experiencing. And while I accept it's hot enough for forgotten woolly cardigan wearing pensioners to perish and rot while sat in their living rooms, it's really not that hot is it now?
Certainly not as hot as when I served with her Majesty's forces in Afghanistan in 1840 - that was a previous incarnation of course - and certainly not as hot as the summer of 1992 when the heat was so oppressive at night that I had to sleep in my kitchen as it was the only room with a tolerable temperature. I couldn't stand the heat so I got into the kitchen! That's how I remember it, but I may have just been pissed and fallen down while making a sandwich.
What I'm getting at here people is that,..no, my concentrations gone, I've forgotten what my point was, something about the Speaker of the House of Commons I think. I need to lie down. I'll be back later, talk amongst yourselves, just not about the weather.