Well, the bit about England having to start well obviously struck a chord, although not with the people it was supposed to! It's going to be an uphill battle now.

On an entirely separate note, those who know me will be well aware I don't watch much in the way of TV but I've finally found a show I really like. 'Lead Balloon', starring Jack Dee on BBC2 is outstanding - extremely funny in a slightly depressing way - the main character is a comedian, disillusioned with the way his work is turning out, with an agent wife, stroppy daughter and downright rude home help. He's a total neurotic, who can't bear the thought that people might think he's fat, gay, or simply not very funny. And there but for the grace of God goes nearly every 30- or 40-something bloke I know, especially me!

I understand that it owes a lot to the US show 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'. But as I've never seen that, I can't recommend it and must content myself with thoroughly endorsing 'Lead Balloon', Thursday nights on BBC2.

It all begins tonight. It's 124 years since a full-strength England first lost to Australia on home soil, whereupon the body of English cricket was cremated and the Ashes taken to Australia.

Battle will be rejoined at 11pm in the UK and I simply cannot wait. Australia are unbeaten in nearly 20 years at the Gabba ground in Brisbane, the traditional venue for the opening Test of an Ashes series. If England are to maintain their fragile hold on the urn, a good start at the fortress of Australian cricket is essential.

Australia will start as favourites and justifiably so after England's winning team of last year has been decimated by injury and illness. Can the replacements - the likes of Alistair Cook, Sajid Mahmood and James Anderson - repeat those heroics?

For what it's worth, I think Australia will fulfil their burning desire to right last year's wrongs and prevail by a victory margin of 3-1. Good luck to both sides and let the games begin!

A footnote to the last entry. The Australian cricket team has a victory song - 'Under The Southern Cross' - which is sung by the entire team after a Test match win. One member of the team has the honour of leading the team in the song, and this honour is passed down reverently as time passes, players retire and a younger team member, now established in the side, takes the baton. It's not a difficult hymn.....

Under the southern cross I stand
A twig of wattle in my hand
A native of my native land
Australia, you bloody beauty

I only mention it because, on my trip to Australia in 2002, I took a yacht trip out in the Whitsunday Islands, off Queensland. Moored up in a bay on a warm clear night with the heavens resembling a glittering sheet of silver, I asked the skipper to show me the Southern Cross, the constellation that appears on the flags of Australia and New Zealand. Lying on deck gazing at it, surrounded by unimaginable silence and beauty, even this Pom found himself muttering the verse and uttering the immortal words 'Australia, you bloody beauty'....

Last song on the iPod: Sarah McLachlan - I Love You

The contest for the Ashes begins in just over a week. Cricket's oldest rivals will go head-to-head in a series that means more to both teams than for many years. England, finally the holders once again, must prove they are worthy and ready to step up to challenge the Aussies for the title of 'best team in the world'. Australia, wounded by their first defeat since 1986/87, will be burning to show their sport-mad countrymen that last year was just a blip. Looking forward to it, as I do every series.

What is it about Australia that makes their sportsmen and women so competitive? Is it that they are a relatively young country and are therefore desperate to be noticed on the world stage? Is it the concept of 'mateship' that's drummed into them from an early age and team sports are a natural progression from that, underpinned by the ideal that you never ever let your mates down? Or is it the climate, which encourages young people especially to spend a large amount of time outside?

It's probably a mixture of all three and more but there's no doubt that a nation of only 20m punches well above its weight on the sporting front. Sir Don Bradman, Dawn Fraser, Cathy Freeman, Kieron Perkins, Ian Thorpe, David Campese, Mal Meninga, Shane Warne and many more - these are some of the great names of sport. The Aussies are our rivals but in most cases, rather than hating them, I reckon we see them as our slightly irritating but essentially good-natured cousins - the ones we're secretly jealous of cos they're younger and fitter than us!

A rather bizarre question struck me today as I sat in traffic on my way to Bristol. Which town appears the most in songs? It only occurred to me today as I had my Beatles' compilation CD going in the car and listened to 'Get Back', which mentions Tucson, Arizona in the first verse. The same town appears in Paul Simon's 'Under African Skies' from the album 'Graceland', which incidentally might just be my favourite album.

What is it about Tucson that means it appears in two wholly different songs nearly twenty years apart? What's in Tucson that makes it popular? Does the town appear in any other tracks? I know the likes of New York, Chicago and San Francisco are so famous that they have their own tracks recorded in tribute but what about the smaller towns? I once went to Chicago with work and the hotel I stayed at made all employees wear badges carrying their name and home town. My contact came from Saginaw, Michigan - which appears in another track by Simon, this time 'America'.

What about towns in the UK? Again, the likes of London are mentioned in hundreds of songs - but are there any that mention the likes of Clitheroe, Dewsbury, Evesham and Stirling? Answers on the proverbial (and metaphorical) postcard...

This is the time of year when we offer our tributes to those who have sacrificed their lives for their country in the great conflicts of the twentieth century.

Having grown up in Rugby, Warwickshire, I make no apologies for selecting Rupert Brooke's poem 'The Soldier' as one that has particular poignance for those who love their country (and it is possible to love it without resorting to jingoism, xenophobia or nationalistic fervour, I promise....) Brooke was born in Rugby and attended Rugby School and his statue adorns the town centre. I reckon that millions of schoolchildren must have grown up quoting the first few lines of The Soldier and it probably still brings a tear to their eye.

If I should die, think only this of me
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be,
In that rich earth, a richer dust concealed
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware
Gave once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam
A body of England's, breathing English air
Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home

So Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death. The latest chapter in a pretty sorry chain of events which the UK helped to bring about. It won't bring about an end to the violence that we see on a daily basis.

Nobody would deny that Saddam Hussein is a vile human being. He deserves no compassion or sympathy. But surely a life sentence would have been the best way to make him pay for his crimes, left to rot, forgotten. This way, quite apart from the fact that the UK does not support the death penalty, (although we can hardly trumpet the 'fledgling Iraqi democracy' we claim to have created and then condemn its findings), it surely just allows him one more moment in the spotlight and risks making him a martyr?

What also appears to have gone unnoticed by those who have hailed yesterday as a 'good day for Iraq' was that Saddam will go to the gallows as a result of a massacre in the village of Dujail in 1982. That was in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war when Saddam was backed wholeheartedly by both the US and the UK. Our favourite Middle Eastern son, battling against the evil Islamic clerics in Tehran. Oh, the bitter bitter irony.......

A fun weekend to lift a little of last week's gloom. Friday saw a visit to a bonfire party in the Wiltshire village of Broughton Gifford with my colleague and good friend Max. Saturday and Sunday saw a rugby fest with the highlight a trip to Twickenham to watch England take on the might of the All Blacks. I'm pretty neutral when it comes to international sport, far less tribal and partisan than club rugby or football, so was happy to sit back and enjoy the All Blacks sweep to a deserved victory.

The US mid-term elections take place on 7th November. With the President's Iraq woes growing by the day, surely the Democrats should be looking forward to a good night?

Well, indeed they might, but if this article by the author and journalsit Sharon Smith is anything to go by, http://www.counterpunch.org/sharon10312006.html, we'll be waiting a long time for a reversal of the intolerant, illiberal policies that have been a feature of the last few years, not just in the US but the UK as well.

How utterly depressing....

Last song on the iPod: Pet Shop Boys - So Hard

Been away for ages. Way too long. Lots of stuff been happening, not all of it good.

The world has just kept on turning in my absence though - and look where we are. The Stern report is released and finally confirms what we all knew - that global warming, if left unchecked, will be utterly catastrophic and 'business' will not escape. So what happens? Mr Blair pops up and says 'why, this is terrible - something must be done!' And yet just last week, I could have sworn he said that setting targets for cutting carbon emissions was unhelpful becasue the targets could never be met - and that any agreement on cutting emissions must be 'good for business'. Suddenly, when it's his beloved 'business' that's staring down the barrel, he's all over the television.

Of course, I'm not really complaining that he's suddenly developed such a passion for all things green. But this relentless drive for 'growth' - across all peoples, companies and governments worldwide - is so pernicious. Is it really so awful that some folk should be happy with their lot? Obviously there are great many nations worldwide who suffer from abject poverty and drought, I'm not talking about them - but the UK is better off than most.

Would it really be so terrible if UK PLC stood still for a couple of years and simply redistributed its not inconsiderable wealth to aid its relatively few poverty-stricken citizens?

I'm speaking from a personal viewpoint here as well as from a global economic one. My beloved employers will make a profit of something in the region of £12m - £15m this year. That's not too shabby, you might say - and you'd be right. But it's not enough for them - and they have made the requisite 'restructure' to their business....with the result that a small number of people whom I care about deeply have lost their jobs.

All this applies to individuals too and I cannot help but think that this relentless desire for 'more, more, more' makes fools of us all. I still have a job, which pays the mortgage on the property I will one day own. I'm married, I own a car and in short, though by no means wealthy, I am comfortable. So why the hell am I so bloody disillusioned........

The cricket season is over - going out with a whimper rather than a bang.

After a slightly bewildering run of 4 straight wins, we had a shot at promotion in the last game on Saturday, had we managed to win and other results gone our way. Sadly, Mother Nature decided that it wasn't to be - a downpour throughout Friday night and most of Saturday morning rendered the pitch unplayable and forced an abandonment - to the benefit of our opponents, Combe Down CC, for whom the resulting two points clinched the second promotion spot from Division 2 of the North Somerset Cricket League. Many congratulations to them and good luck in the top division next year.

I think we can be proud of our efforts this season. After the horrendous nature of last season, when we did not win between early May and the end of the season in September, the club was on its knees in terms of performance, if not personnel. Three straight defeats at the start of this year darkened the picture even more and the previously unthinkable prospect of successive relegations loomed large.

Since then however, the mood has lifted considerably as a couple of victories at the start of June, combined with the return of previously unavailable players, gave the whole club an unmistakeable boost. Since those opening three defeats, we have completed 12 games. Of those, we have won nine and lost only three, enough to finish a highly creditable fifth.

It's my honest belief that, when we have been able to field a full-strength team, we have been the best side in this division. Next season, with a bit of luck and a few less injuries, will bear that out and I may be proved hopelessly wrong but for now, there's a bit more spring in the step of Harptree Villages CC. Roll on May 2007....

What seemed like a serious but by no means life-threatening incident at The Oval last weekend has now escalated into a full-on catastrophe for international cricket.

The revelation that Darrell Hair offered to resign his position as an ICC umpire in return for a one-off payment of half a million dollars is just staggering. I'm not entirely sure what the ICC's reasoning was for making the e-mail public as they must have known what would happen.

Last week, Darrell Hair was damaged by the allegation that his actions were unwise, although not against the rules, when he changed the ball without speaking to Pakistan skipper Inzamam-ul-Haq and, to be blunt, a little bit childish when he refused to come back out on to the field of play following Pakistan's protest. But there's a world of difference between being damaged, and possibly not being picked for matches that involve teams from the subcontinent, and the situation we now find ourselves in whereby he surely cannot continue as a professional Test umpire under any circumstances.

Not to put too fine a point on it, he has lost his moral authority and that is the cornerstone of an umpire's position. Every player now knows that Hair has a price. We're used to allegations involving players - anything from match-fixing to providing information about the pitch to bookmakers has been thrown in the past. But umpires must be seen as incorruptible. I can see it now - if he were ever to stand as an umpire again, the first time he turns down an appeal for lbw, he will get the question from the fielding side 'well, how much do you want to give it out?'

That situation is intolerable and Hair's position is now untenable. His offer to step down will surely now be granted - but he won't walk off into the sunset with half a million dollars, just the last tattered remnants of what used to be his reputation.

Last song on the iPod: The Divine Comedy - A Lady Of A Certain Age

Found a list of 'top 10 books on the darker side of adolescence' in the Guardian archives the other day. Unsurprisingly, Golding's 'Lord of the Flies' sits proudly at number 1 but I was pleasantly taken aback to see DBC Pierre's 'Vernon God Little' make the top 10.

It's one of the best new novels I've read in the last few years and I'd recommend it to anyone. A deserving winner of the Booker Prize in 2003 - check it out!

Following last week's alleged foiling of a 'terror plot' (is no modern news story complete without the 'T' word?), it's difficult to escape the feeling that the general public is simply very very sceptical about this kind of story in the light of the public relations disasters that have been the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and Forest Gate.

Scotland Yard and the Government need to be as transparent as possible about how this situation came about, without compromising the security services. People have been misled, ignored and simply lied to for so long that their first thought when a story like this breaks is no longer 'how terrible, we are prepared to put up with any inconvenience to protect our safety and support the police' but 'what are they trying to achieve by staging this?' Is it to convince us of the need for ID cards or other security measures that compromise our hard-fought liberties, or to try to shore up support for their wars in the Middle East by insisting that there are hundreds of cells full of Western-hating Islamists ready to unleash their fury on us?

And that's a dangerous game. Scotland Yard may find that, by crying wolf once too often, they're not taken seriously if and when the apocalypse really does arrive.....

Tonight is the first opportunity to see the Perseid meteor shower in the eastern sky. The best nights are rumoured to be tomorrow and Saturday for a look at one of the most dependable meteor showers of the year.

Check them out from around 10pm onwards each night until around 15th August - it's usually well worth it.

Last song on the iPod: Beastie Boys - No Sleep Till Brooklyn

An emotional farewell to my good friend and colleague Mr Todd tomorrow as he leaves the office to go back to college and study art and design.

It's been a thoroughly enjoyable 20 months working together - conversation topics have ranged from the drift towards the centre in British politics and corresponding lack of ideology to whether a Jaffa Cake, despite its name, is really more of a biscuit than a cake.

It'll certainly be quieter and less fun in the office now - although it may be more productive - and I really wish him every success in his new career.

Good luck for the future Toddy, and don't you dare be a stranger.

Last song on the iPod: The Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want

A successful sporting weekend indeed. Yesterday, HVCC completed a routine win over rock-bottom Bristol 3rd XI. Most of the Bristol lads were 16 or under and our biggest opponent was complacency. There appeared to be plenty of that as we allowed them to race to 50-1 in a flat, subdued atmosphere but we managed to pull it round and dismiss them for 121 before racing to the target in under 20 overs.

I felt sorry for them, having to trek out to an away game knowing they would most likely be on the receiving end of a hammering. We did plenty of it last year and it's not a nice feeling. With luck, they'll be better off next year - in a lower division and they'll all be a year bigger, quicker and stronger. Good luck, lads.

More good sporting news today as CCFC launched their season with a victory over Sunderland, coming from behind to win 2-1. The Championship is really strong this year so to start with a win over a team that were in the Premiership last year, albeit hopelessly outclassed, is encouraging.

My ego demands that I commit the story of the shot of my career to paper - or at least a PC. Picture yesterday's scene - a drizzly afternoon at Lansdown, on the northern slopes of Bath, where the sun never shines. The 39th over of a 40-over innings is about to commence so quick runs are a necessity.

Yours truly has been at the crease for a while but the bowling has been tight and not much has come off the middle of the bat but I hung around while others have departed to ensure that the team receive their full complement of overs. Move the guard from middle stump to middle and leg to give oneself a bit more room.

Up comes the bowler, it's his last over, he knows he needs to keep it tight for just six more balls and his job is done. The very first ball, as luck would have it, is right on middle and leg where I'm standing. To be honest, there was little that was technical about it. I simply moved towards the ball and swung the bat straight through its line of trajectory. It felt good straightaway because, ironically, I didn't feel a thing. Those shots that require a lot of effort are invariably the ones that have not been timed properly.

So I watched the ball soar upwards and cursed as I saw a fielder moving backwards. And then I realised that he was going to have retreat quite a bit further as it flew over his head, over the boundary and eventually clattered into the small shed by the scorebox where the home side's groundsman keeps his tools.

Cue momentary stunned silence from team-mates who have watched me bat for six years without ever suggesting that I had that in me, to be replaced by an outbreak of hollering and shouts of 'massive'! I was bubbling inside but was desperate not to show it - one has to appear cool, as though one does that all the time. So I simply stayed in my crease and tapped the pitch with barely a glimmer of emotion. It was only as the ball was retrieved and handed back to the bowler that the umpire caught my eye and winked at me and I could not stop the broadest smile from breaking out.....!

We're told that there is absolutely no difference of opinion amongst Cabinet members regarding Israel's attacks on Lebanon. This is clearly not the case since Jack Straw, whose Blackburn constituency has a high Muslim population, used the word of the moment 'disproportionate' over the weekend.

What puzzles me here is why we should expect anything other debate and disagreement. The idea that a number of people (the Cabinet currently numbers 23) should have the same opinion about everything, all of the time, is frankly ridiculous. It doesn't mean people can't get on, or put together a coherent policy, (although I admit these have been sadly lacking of late in some areas.) A number of my beloved colleagues in the office stand to the political right of Genghis Khan and Margaret Thatcher. But it doesn't stop me getting on with them. Admittedly, the standard of political reporting, where every event is couched in negative language, does not help. A disagreement is invariably a 'split', or even worse, a 'rift'.

Would it not be more sensible for the PM's office to say 'Tony thinks X, Jack thinks Y, and the matter has been discussed at length among the Cabinet and the majority view has prevailed'. It's called democracy, I think. You might remember it - I believe it used to be the system upon which the United Kingdom was governed......

Harptree Villages CC 169 all out
Exiles (Bath) CC 173-6
Exiles (Bath) won by 4 wickets

It's quarter past one in the morning and I'm still fretting about how we lost this one. We were simply a bowler or two short - due to a mixture of ailments, holidays and work commitments. From a personal point of view, it's probably my best game of the season - the second highest score of the innings, 29 not out, and 3-16 with the ball. But it doesn't mean much when you blow a chance to beat the league leaders on their own patch.

Last song on the iPod: Inspiral Carpets - Dragging Me Down