England completed their comprehensive win over the West Indies at Headingley dismissing the tourists for 141 in their second innings after being forced to follow on. Dwayne Bravo was the only West Indies player to put up any resistance knocking up 52 runs before being caught by Liam Plunkett off Monty Panesar’s bowling. England won the game by an innings and 283 runs. The West Indies aren’t the best Windies teams we’ve seen, but England made them look like amateurs in a rain interrupted test. Let’s see if England can repeat this feat in the next match at Old Trafford in Manchester starting a week Thursday. Michael Vaughan answered his critics including me after his poor world cup and Ashes series over the winter, Kevin Pietersen impressed again with a superb double century, and new wicket keeper Matthew Prior impressed again with the gloves and the bat. But you still have to question the quality of the team, could they repeat this sort of result against Australia or South Africa? I would have to say no, the gulf between Australia/South Africa and the rest of the world is huge at the moment. But this win will do wonders for confidence in the England camp, let’s hope this is a new start for English cricket after Duncan Fletcher’s departure.
Something that I have been hearing all day is about drink driving for under 25s and some of the people interviewed total astonished me. Saying things like “I know it’s illegal, but I can have 3 or 4 pints and still know what I am doing” – Are people getting less intelligent or what? I have been guilty of reckless driving, but I never touched a drop or alcohol when driving. I know that if I drink at work, my reactions to changes in sound or feedback isn’t so quick, I can’t identify problems as quickly, so imagine that when a child runs out in front of you while driving and you don’t react quick enough, or a car brakes suddenly in front of you on a motorway; need I say more? The law also needs to change, it needs to be a zero tolerance policy on all drink drivers, if you drink, then no driving, if you’re caught driving with more than a trace of alcohol in your system, it should mean an instant lifetime ban. In some cases drink drivers get away with only 3 months ban and a fine, that’s no deterrent!
In my own life, nothing much of interest has happened recently, been drinking more than I should, been keeping busy with work so I don’t have too much time to dwell on recent events. I’ve worked Saturday, Sunday & Monday and working through to Friday at least, not sure what’s happening on Saturday, there seems to be nothing at all on Saturday night according to the listings which seems odd to say the least! I’d rather keep busy and the money is very handy, although I am keeping an eye out for a day job just in case the bottom falls out of live music at The Voodoo Lounge. The owners fail to understand the dynamics of live music, it’s very much hit or miss most of the time, it’s impossible to predict what is going to happen on any given night. But the owner is a businessman, not a promoter or even someone that cares about live music, as long as the money is rolling in he is happy, when it’s not going so well, myself and Phil could find ourselves out of the job very quickly. Also today I have been counting up all my loose change, 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 pence pieces and I have a grand total of just over 22 pounds and all of that has been collected since moving into this house just under two months ago. I never do anything with it, I just collect it until I move home and leave it behind when I move, but this time I am going to get some money bags the next time I go into the bank and put it all into my account. I must have wasted thousands of pounds over the years not banking my loose change, every little counts!