Knowing Me, Knowing Yule

Today is possibly the lowest I've ever felt to be a combination of Australian and a cricket fan. I could cope with losing to India in India. It's tough there. I could cope with Kevin Pietersen and his horrific skunk haircut parading the Ashes past my work in 2005, and I could even cope with Simon Jones taking 2 wickets in an over at Trent Bridge after I drunkenly announced to the crowd that we would set a first innings lead (we followed-on approx. 60 minutes later). I can cope with losing a meaningless one-day tournament to New Zealand.

But today I witnessed something that I would never ever wish on my worst enemy. I saw South Africans celebrate. Since post-isolation I've revelled in seeing the confused looks on their smug little faces after each heartbreaking loss, which only deepens the hurt that I'm feeling today. The worst part of it is, and it pains me to admit this, they are better than us. I feel so gross and awful. I think I might go mutilate myself.

On to brighter notes. We have now officially changed charities. In short, Sport Relief were causing Wes and Kirt 'ball-aches' (in their own words) and were proving impossible to deal with. Although they put up many small barriers for us to deal with, the most galling would have to be their refusal to allow us to donate a portion of the donations to The Himalayan Trust... who if we're honest is the charity we felt more affiliation with... but the final straw was their scandalous use of the gift aid - Kirt has now officially cut ties with them. The money already donated has been passed on to Sport Relief. This doesn't bother us as the actually distribution of the cash by Sport Relief is still an excellent operation. It was more the attitudes of the back office staff that so annoyed us.In their place steps up the enthusiastic Lords Taverners. Here is the summation from the official blog:

It is with a certain sense of pride that The Everest Test can announce The Lord’s Taverners as our new charity.The Taverners have a huge history and a great deal of pedigree in both the sporting and charity world. They have been led over the years by other members of the Royal Family, two Oscar winners (Sir John Mills and Sir Tim Rice), legends of comedy (including Eric Morecambe), former England cricket captains and even a former Australian Prime Minister (Sir Robert Menzies) as well as being supported by men such as Lord Coe, Sir Michael Parkinson and Sir Bobby Robson.
They formed in 1950, and in 1988 they created the Young Lord’s Taverners who have Alastair Cook as their current President, while past Presidents include Will Carling, Mark Ramprakash and Andrew Flintoff.
Their current Commercial Chairman, John Ayling has already sat in on one of our meetings and is giving us a 10 minute talk at our January get together. I would like to take this opportunity to thank John for all he has done for us so far and say how much we look forward to working with him and the Taverners during the coming months.We have parted company with Sport Relief on good terms and they take with them our best wishes along with around £4000 which we have managed to raise for them.

My new fundraising page can be found here: http://www.justgiving.com/nicktoovey - I'm just shy of 30% of my target so far. Think of your donation as a Christmas present to me.

Freeze Mob Film...

Yuletide and Noel to you all.

Milo has posted the edited version of the freezemobs from a few weeks back.

you can watch it by clicking here 

Burying Bad News

Any election campaign is full of wonderful intentions. Promises are made, targets are set and goals are described as 'challenging, yet achievable'. Every breath a politician draws back on is documented in some form of media during this time, hence they are easily recalled if the broken promise isn't properly buried under big news. I'm starting to find out that I shouldn't be making promises that I can't keep. Such as the foolish 'I'll buy the beers at the rugby' offer or any other commitment that I've made on this blog. It’s much harder to for me to deny and/or bury my broken promises such as Jo Moore's infamous 9/11 email, or any president sneaking in pardon's for friends or laws beneficial to their doners in the minutes before vacating office.

WOW THAT DRUG ADDLED PIECE OF MAN MEAT BEN COUSINS IS BACK PLAYING AFL AGAIN i haven't been to a trim trail in 6 weeks AND HOW ABOUT THAT MADOFF FELLA WITH HIS EEEEEEEVIL PYRAMID STYLE SCHEME neither have I been to the gym WHA???? STANFORD MAY PULL OUT OF HIS CRICKET FUNDING I was out all night on Friday night after only promising to have '2 or 3' drinks at my Christmas party DID YOU JUST SAY THAT KATIE, 20, FROM BIRMINGHAM TOOK TIME OUT FROM POSING TOPLESS TO GIVE HER OPINION ON THE BRITISH MILITARY ON PAGE 3? WOW, SHE REALLY IS MORE THAN JUST AN EASILY CO-ERCED SLAPPER WHO MISTAKENLY THOUGHT SHE'D GAIN RESPECT FROM GUYS BY GETTING HER BAPS OUT IN A NATIONAL RAG.

It really has been a couple of weeks of unspectacular action from my end. Although a daily commitment to working on the 'core area', as boring fitness instructors refer to my gut as, has already paid dividends. It did wind up in a humorous situation last Thursday, however. I was nearing the end of the session in my loungeroom and had built up quite a sweat, hence had taken off my shirt. The last few reps of this routine generally see's me struggling a bit, hence I was panting loudly. It was at the final point that I let out a loud 'argghhhhhhh' and collapsed back on to the floor. AT THIS VERY MOMENT, my flatmate opened the door to find me post-grunt, shirtless, panting and sweaty all over. The horrified expression on her face meant only one thing. She thought she had caught the tail end of me furiously 'banishing a white russian from my kremlin'. Needless to say it took us both a few seconds to regain our composure before a barely-believable explanation was offered.

Time to run. I have cricket to watch. Death to all Jarpies.

London is Freezing and other poor puns...

I woke with a fright yesterday morning at 5am and knew instinctively that I wasn't getting back to sleep. Whether it was the genius who put the central-heating system behind a paper thin wall that had loudly kicked into action, or the previous nights kebab that was well and truly knocking on the door, or the massive dehydration and stonking big headache from 16-pint Friday, I just knew I wasn't getting anymore sleep. Not at least until I got out of my work trousers.

This inauspicious start was hardly a precursor to what was to come. If the alco-binge on Friday was almost a direct result of the malaise expressed in my last blog (nothing like a depressant to get rid of the blues...), yesterday was the best antidote possible to rekindle my spirit and enthusiasm for training, our trek, cricket, and life in general.

It was to be action-packed, exercise-heavy, and concentration-sapping day. So my choice to turn up feeling like Paul Gascoigne after an FA Cup final was an interesting one. The first section involved a freeze mob. Organised by Kirt and Dave K, we went to Parliament Square, Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Sqaure. At each location we had our trektators wrap up in sleeping bags, before our 2 umpires Curry and Bung Shoulder

marked out our 'pitch'. On walked the 'fielders' to raucous rounds of applause from the trekkies, myself placed at first slip. On followed the batsmen, with Dave marking out a guard on the concrete and all the fielders shouting encouragement to Wes, our 'bowler'. By this stage we had the attention of all the people around.. as you'd expect when 30 people turn up wearing cricket whites and 'trekking' gear such as goggles, harnesses, beanies, and scarves. With ball in hand Wes would pretend to bowl, Dave would play forward, and Joe (your archetypical short-leg) would dive forward and 'catch' the chance... although the ball was in his hands the entire time... but lets leave that as our little secret. In unison, we would all jump into a massive appeal, Curry would raise his hand to begin giving him out, and then we all froze in that position without making a sound for 3 minutes. After 3 minutes, Dave would 'walk' as if given out and all the fielders would jump into spontaneous celebrations. 

The first one at Parliament Sqaure went ok but there wasn't many people directly around us, probably because you aren't actually allowed onto Parliament Square itself (a technicality in the law that is vigorously enforced to prevent the permanent protesters taking over, similar to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy). It was a good practice though and got us in the mood for more. The coup de grac was definitely Buckingham Palace. It took some excellent determination, quick thinking, and a touch of arrogance from Wes to get us past the Police... the conversation going something like

Rozzer: It's not going to happen mate

Wes: It'll only be 3 minutes

Rozzer: I can't let you do it I'm afraid

Wes: But it's for charity, it won't take long

Rozzer: Which Charity?

Wes: .... ermmmm... The Prince's Trust....

From the moment the freeze occurred, we had tourists swarming in and around us, all curious at first before they got into the spirit of it and started taking pictures, mock appealing with us, high-fiving a perfectly still Wes, and even going as far as molesting my backside as I stood perfectly still. By the end of it there were so many people in and around us that we couldn't see each other, but it did provide some hilarious shocks when we sprung back into life again. We were thwarted in Trafalgar Square somewhat by the giant Christmas Tree, however the stunt there managed to get us onto cricinfo

All of this was quite a good rush and great fun. I can now see why actors and musicians get addicted to performing on stage. The ability to get people intrigued as to what you are doing is invigorating. Funnily enough, it's exceedingly difficult and also tiring and a bit painful to hold one pose, particularly a full-blooded appeal, for 3 minutes. Then again, in the state I was in, spelling my name was also an issue. There are some photo's attached (with thanks to Zooby) and there will be a video coming soon. I've seen the unedited footage and it looks brilliant.

Following these stunts we headed to the home of cricket for a full expedition meeting. Loads of great stuff came out of this as we sipped on coffee's overlooking the nursery ground. Amongst them, a possible change of charity was floated, Blinky showed us his skills with the interweb that could see us being able to send back daily video updates from the

 mountain and also be 'tracked' online, and a kit sponsor was announced in MKK - run by former England cricketer James Kirtley (Dave's brother and Kirt's cousin). The designs look sensational, and will see us kitted out in training kit, polo's, and coloured match kit. Tenzing's gear will be navy trousers and a fetching pink top with navy piping, similar to the Middlesex 20/20 kit. Although judging from what Graham Napier had to say about conditions at GorakShep, we will need some base layers underneath and some thick jumpers on top. Present at the meeting was a member of the Lords Taverners, who as an organisation seem very impressed with what we are doing and are keen to get on board. I can assure them that, with their reputation and impressive alumni, the feeling is more than mutual.

Hammered home was the need for fitness. Kiwi reminded everybody of his fitness sessions, as did the Terminator, which was a stark reminder of what was concerning my massively hungover brain. There was a bleep test coming. As I was trying to avoid making excuses, I had hidden my hangover from everybody. But when somebody said 'we've forgotten the bleep test CD, so we won't be doing it today' I 'fessed up that

 I was horribly hungover and celebrated by doing a lap up and down of the nets at Lords without any pants on. 

To my horror, Kirt had remembered he had it stored on his laptop and I almost died. Much to Butler's delight, I started puffing during the warm-up. I had wondered what he'd be like in this environment. Petrified would be a word to describe him in the meeting when asked to introduce himself. Obnoxious would be the word during the warm-up. As I took in the deep breaths I could hear comments such as 'Your Mum puffs like that when I'm with her' etc etc. Several insults were exchanged before he trumped me with 'bleep, bleep, bleep' and the horror that I was about to encounter shut me up. It started OK, but my lack of sleep and recent exercise, combined with sweating pure Peroni, saw me conk out at 9.3... which is similar to what I achieved in June. I'm willing to argue that this points to me being fitter. But I am now under no illusions, it's time to get back off the beer and into the gym or the trim trails (coincidentally I'm watching Run, Fat Boy, Run as I type this). 

Further illustrating the point was the ensuing 2 hour net session. Conducting a bleep test prior to this was a stroke of genius as it will give us a good insight into how we play with the oxygen reduced by 34%. It also displayed that, whilst we whooped Hillary in our only matchup so far, they have some quality to fill the void. Dave Kirtley, as you'd expect from somebody captaining Cardiff CC, was a different class and Kiwi doesn't hit the ball so much as murder the fricken thing. We were all genuinely scared and I found myself quickly running to the side of the pitch post-delivery as he is especially good at hitting the ball straight back at you. By some stroke of luck however, I did manage to make him my bunny, getting him out twice and also seeing him survive a french cut. How this was possible considering I'm incapable of swinging the ball and bowl at a speed regularly described as 'backwards', I'll never know. I did feel for Mark, who was bowling directly after me (and, incidentally, is much better than me) as Kiwi would take out his frustrations on him and marmalised several of his deliveries. It was like watching footage of the Iraq war, for the balls took on the form of ballistic missiles once they'd hit nothing but the middle of his bat. Amusingly, the Kirtley name doesn't guarantee that everybody has cricketing talent. Kirt, whilst improving, still has trouble getting the ball down the other end. Genealogy is an interesting thing.

An excellent day was capped off with a couple of brews and a warm glow was felt on the way home. A massive thanks to Kirt and Dave for organising the freeze and to Lords for donating their venues for the day, particularly the impressive indoor nets. An invigorating day was just the tonic and has refocussed my wandering and blue-funked mind. Long may it last.

Time goes by. So Quickly.

Great. It took me 10 seconds to come up with the above title and now I have 'hung up' by Madonna in my head. Everything was going well until recently, and it feels like only a few weeks ago when everything was going swimmingly.

The last month has seen as a massive downturn in everything, basically in my life, but especially in my preparation for the trip. The company I work for (Ogre pty ltd) has completely and utterly shat itself in the wake of the doom and gloom. Not helping has been my so-far cruisy demeanour and performance this year. All this = I'm in a lot of trouble and have had to scupper any outside interests for a while, lest the axe of doom find thy cranium. As a result, I've only been to the gym 3 times since my last trim trail, which was 4 weeks ago.

I'm trying to paint out like this is everybody's fault but mine. But I've also managed to pull 3 all-nighters since then, and in-turn missing 3 trim trails. To make it up to the boys one afternoon, I turned up to the pub 5 hours after retiring to bed to meet the Everest boys to watch a game of social-networking witnessed by 15 rugby players form both Australia and England. There I had promised to buy beers for all Team Tenzing members up until Australia's first try. That didn't happen until the 65th minute. Luckily only Neil qualified for what I now see as a foolish promise. The beer purchasing was alright. Watching 80 minutes of rugby union was a ridiculous thing to put myself through and I never want to have to be punished like that again.

Since then we have had a couple of dropouts due to illness and work-commitments. Stepping up to the plate is a guy that I've played cricket with sporadically for the last 5 years, James Butler. Below is the email I constructed to introduce him to the team.

I have know James for 5 years now, and when he hasn't been serving suspensions
as part of a lengthy list of on-field misdemeanours, has been my cricket club captain. You'll soon notice we share a common love of regular swearing, quoting The Office, and mother jokes.
James bit my hand off for a chance to join Team Tenzing, and I'm sure will prove to be the absolutely ideal Tenzingite. James always shows unbridled enthusiasm for
anything he's involved in (and this has already transferred to The Everest Test), thrives in a team environment, has a great sense of humour, is generous with his time, and obviously captaining the 1st team at Harlow would show that he can commit to events outside of work. You would also assume that he has more than a fair cricket ability, however this is stifled somewhat by ridiculous shot selection and 'eccentric' running between the wickets. He has shown time and again that he is willing to donate his time to mentoring young players and even menial tasks such as general club admin, not lest of these fielding the endless questions as to why he continues to pick such a talentless, hungover grub as myself in the first team despite a distinct lack of wickets, runs, fielding ability, or friends

Other things to occur. Well, we are playing on THE F*CKING OVAL during the fifth F*CKING ASHES TEST (lunchbreak) next year. I swear when I see Charles B-N (who basically swangled this single-handedly) I am going to drop to my knees (fill in the rest yourself). And after we have played on The Oval, I am going to send the video and pictures to every single f*cking school teacher of mine who ever said 'why do you keep writing fantasy stories about you playing cricket against the English in front of a packed house, it's NEVER going to happen' - And I am going to include personal diatribes against every single one of them. Even Sister Annette is going to going to hear about it. Let's see what she has to say in her hilarious Irish accent then. I am then going to ask them to revisit every single piece of creative writing that I did and remark it, based upon me fulfilling that dream. And don't think you'll get off lightly either Miss Saraceno.

On top of that we will have bi-weekly net sessions at the indoor nets at The Oval. Think that sounds salubrious? Think again. Essentially it's a multipurpose gym marked out with plastic stumps with a couple of surly second-teamer's wearing the 20/20 kit looking upset that they never made the big time.

We have a massive event on Saturday that involves some Freeze's (click here for an example) where we intend to hold an lbw appeal pose for 3 minutes and record the reactions of passers-by. Somebody suggested a Flash Mob, but ever since the 'incident' where I mistook Flash Mob for meaning showing my genitals to an entire Mob, I have been banned by court order not to take part in one ever again. After that it's off to Lords for a meeting, followed by the hellishness of a bleep-test, and then a net session. I assume my legs will be wobblier than Steve Harmison's when he boards that plane this evening after the whole day is done.

Finally, it has been my role to organise the Christmas Cards. Without doubt, the gayest part of organising the trip fell to me. Unbelievable. So expect one of those if you're family, friend, foe, or somebody whom I think might have a compatible kidney.