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.