Runs on the Cheeseboard.

We all know that Australia is in the middla ocean in the middla nowhere. A back of beyond, full of the Bush, the Outback, the Bushfire, the Cricket and big mobs of the Whoop-Whoop.

Our country is like one half of a pair of ships that pass in the night, except there isn't any other ship for miles, unless the other ships are lost or have been overrun by pirates who like vegemite on toast and a glass of milo before a night of pillaging on ye high seas.

The remoteness of Australia often gets my goat. You know when you're on a lilo in a pool and you get to the edge and you kick off with your feet to drift to the other side? I wish we could do that with Australia. We could traverse the world! I suppose the sharks would pop an inflatable Australia with their baby teeth in seconds.

One of my main gripes with our remoteness is during The Ashes. If you don't know what The Ashes are then how dare you.

The Ashes are an extremely tiny but important urn that is given to the winner of a series of cricket test matches between Australia and England.

Aussie cricketer Mitchell Marsh tucks
 into a cheeseboard because yum.

Cricket is a religion in Australia. It is an institution founded on the worship of skank slash loveable rogue slash cricket commentator Shane Warne and a strict set of beliefs. Like winning. 

And giddily jumping up and down when this happens. So happy. And then so sad. So sad. All the emotions. And that's just after one ball from a fast bowler, the dramatic divas of the cricketing world. Ours are called Mitchell. It's just easier to remember one name.

If you need me to explain cricket to you it goes like this: two teams, one wins. Although sometimes they play for five days and then shake hands, drink tea, and eat cheese and agree to a draw so no-one wins. It's complicated. 

It's also non-contact. At no time during a game is it acceptable to touch each other, until they all hug and drink tea at the end of a game after agreeing that this sport doesn't always need a winner, sometimes it's just nice to drink tea together. Lovely.

A lot of people think cricket is boring. Well many things are boring to those who unable to grasp the concepts of strategy or thinking.

I think you are probably going to get some enjoyment out of any sport if you attend in person. 

Live elite cricket, for example, highlights the speed of the game, the precision, the skill, the technique, the strategy, the dedication, the persistence. That's all worthy of an admission price, innit?

You may not love it, but you will appreciate something about the skill sets on show. Unless we're talking about the sport of boxing, in which case you may as well save your cash and just hang around the pub and appreciate that no-one has KO'd you yet.

I love my cricket. However at this time of the year - winter in Australia - any cricketing event of import involving my national team is played on the other side of the world, in another time zone, in another galaxy.

But now that this year's Ashes is finished, I need to find a way to get off London's Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and return to a time zone that is vaguely, or, even better, specifically, connected to my every day existence.

Another Mitchell. So confusing.

While I happily exist on London time my home town of Canberra, Australia is not. It is from the future.

GMT was invented in England in the late 17th century to give English cricketers a general idea of when to stop their match for a spot of jam and scones, or cheese and crackers if that's your jam. 

And, to this day, the unruly GMT continues to ruin the sleeping patterns of cricket fans the world over.

A Tale of Two Warring Tribes

I’m off to the big football game on Saturday. The one where they play with oval shaped balls.

Collingwood versus Carlton at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, the World, THE UNIVERSE.  

Should be fun, if I don’t die in the crossfire between two warring tribes.

I’ve made a lame attempt to learn a bit about these tribes, so I can negotiate my way out of a blood-soaked armed combat situation if the need arises.

Back in 1892 (or maybe it was 2189, I forget), a bunch of tribes joined together in Melbourne, Australia to create a new form of entertainment for the masses, to replace the previous form of entertainment that involved watching people die of bubonic plague or something. I don’t know; I was unalive then. 

One of these tribes was known as Collingwood, and everyone dressed in black and white and stripes and nothing else. They all looked very much like human zebras but they’d bust your chops if you said that to their faces so no-one did ever. 

The Collingwood tribe took fortress in a crowded, unhygienic place with historic buildings and, like modern times, most people worked in places and did other things when they weren't doing the work things. 

This tribe grew and grew until it had over 300,000 likes on Facebook which is important because Facebook likes meant everything to everyone in 1892.

The other tribe was known as Carlton, and to this day do much the same thing as the Collingwood tribe with their days, but they have only 225,000 likes, so what even is the point of them. 

Back in the day, both tribes spent much of their free time engaging in hobbies such as breeding rats and suffering from typhoid and cholera and other health related conditions. It was the fun, carefree days.

And since 1892, on one day of the week, both these tribes gather in sports grounds and watch men throw their balls, while they engage in cheering and alcohol drinking and the ensuing violent tussles and then go to bars to discuss all of those things in gratuitous detail. 

Both tribes still obsess day and night about the hunting and gathering of the points earned at these sporting fixtures with the aim of bragging about it the next day at the work places and while they huddle in shops to purchase caffeinated beverages. It’s just what they do.