My tagline has had a typo for the last four years! Why didn't anyone say anything?
Spent th eafternoon reading “Men Who Stare At Goats“. Great read. More on that later.
Struggling with tan. The 30+ sun block I use is too strong and am still white as a ghost. So this afternoon while reading the goat book in my cabin I made sure that each part of my body saw some sun. Well it turns out that my favourite reading position is on my back because I have a pink rectangle on my chest!
Not much else to report.
Kenya were never really in the match and ended up losing by 148 runs.
Our free tickets from the team mean that we are now sitting with the wives and girlfriends of the Kiwi cricketers. This means that we have to be reasonably well behaved. This didn’t stop a couple of them doing funnels though ;)
Beige and I got up early to go diving. We missed the pick up by fifteen minutes. What ever happened to West Indian time??? We will try again another day.
Instead we took a look around the capital city of Castries. Mostly it’s pretty run down with a few overpriced shops for visiting cruise liners crammed with XXL coffin dodgers.
The internet at the local bar here is free if you buy a beer. A fair trade if ever there was one.
Our home for the next 6 weeks is called the Nathalie and is a beautiful 41 foot yacht. She is less than a year old and has everything you could wish for from a bbq to a fridge for the beers.
For entertainment today we took our dinghy out of the marina to the nearest white sandy beach. We had to do it in two shifts as it isn’t big enough to handle seven fully grown Kiwi boys without sinking. On the return journey to get the rest of the crew Runty was blown hopelessly off course and eventually had to be rescued by the local water taxi. That is after they watched him battle up the channel, stall, get blown back, frantically start the motor again and battle back to where he just was before stalling again several times. It’s easy to like the local sense of humour.
The other thing I am working on right now is my tan or lack of it. The other boys have all come from the New Zealand summer and are nice and brown already. I have my English winter tan on and am the whitest person in all of St Lucia. Even the English people here aren’t as white as me although that is because they are all bright pink. Sometimes I wonder if the English have any sun sense at all. The day after the match we saw one of their ex-players jogging in the midday sun. What was it Noel Coward said about mad dogs?
Some of the boys have remade old acquaintances with players on the New Zealand team and we are now sorted for free tickets for the rest of the tournament. Result.
Spent the day recovering.
Rumours have started to circulate about what the English cricket team got up to after the match. Apparently several players and members of the management team got on the lash until 4am when, Freddie Flintoff, their star player, bribed a security guard at their resort and took a pedalo for a ride and capsized it and eventually had to be rescued. Probably not the sort of behaviour that their fans expect after they have parted with several thousand pounds each to come over here to support them.
I bet the tabloids are having a field day.
We also heard that some of the Kiwi team were drinking all night as well. The main differences being:
In other games Ireland beat Pakistan which is the biggest cricket upset that any of us can remember. This is bad news for Pakistan who are now unable to finish first or second in their pool and will be going home soon. It’s great news for us though as they are our bogey team.
Made my flight withough losing my passport or anything else really stupid.
I finally got to the game and hooked up with the boys over half way through the first innings. My penalty for missing 35 overs was seven Denises. This might require some explaining.
Our boat has a crew of eight. Myself, Runty, Woza, Beige, Hummus, Toddie, Judge and Denise. All except one are hard drinking sport loving Kiwi boys. The final member of the crew is Denise a four foot long plastic tube with a large funnel attached to one end. This is the vessel from which all punishment drinks will be consumed on tour. And I can tell you that losing your passport and missing 35 overs is reason for plenty of punishment. All in all I think I got of pretty lightly with a meer seven funnels on arrival. One for every ten overs missed (there was talk of one for every five) and four for wickets and catches taken by Scotty Styrus. Each of us has a nominated player whose number is on the back of our shirts. When that player does something good like taking a catch or running someone out then you owe a funnel. When they do something bad like dropping a catch or getting out then you owe a funnel. As you can imagine it keeps the drinks ticking along nicely. I thought I had cosen well with Styrus as he has had a bad run of form lately. Buy not today. He took a number of catches and wickets and had a brilliant spell with the bat (more funnels) and was eventually made man of the match (another funnel). At least I got off more lightly that our skipper Woza who has the Kiwi Captain, Stephen Flemming won the toss (one funnel) and made several key decision as captain which eventually led to a convincing victory. Woza was overjoyed.
Walked home with a large number of very quiet English fans.
Later that night we went to a large street party and rolled in between 12 and 3.
My life in London has been punctuated by four major tours of different parts of the world.
So far my efforts have taken me to 67 different countries and today I am off again. This time I plan to notch up a few more sailing around the Caribbean following New Zealand’s fortunes at the Cricket World Cup.
Whenever possible I will try to put some photos on my http://www.flickr.com/ site.
Despite all my boasting about places I have been etc I made the worst possible mistake on the way to the airport. I lost my passport! An hour of frantic phone conversations with disinterested train pions later I had it tracked down to a police station in central London. About the same time I tracked it down the guy who found it texted me and told me where it was. Not only a good samaritan but also someone with the initiative to jump on Google and see if there was anything else he could do. Top Bloke!
To make a long story short I paid a taxi driver a small fortune to drive it to Gatwick in a record breaking two and a half hours. Record breaking because that might be the longest that journey has ever taken. British Airways were a lot more helpful and got me on the afternoon flight to Barbados (68) with a connection to St Lucia (69) the following day.
On the flight out had a few drinks to calm the nerves.
Spent the night near the airport so I would be ready to make the short hop to St Lucia tomorrow morning.
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