Ivo Francis Walter Bligh, the 8th Earl of Darnley.

 It's funny how people can think alike from time to time. I was skiing down an icy run off the main quad chair off Mt. Perisher, thinking there is a very real chance I may die on this slope today. But then I thought, what am I going to do tonight - there's not cricket because the Aussies ballsed up their second innings and continued bowling short shite at the Poms to try and force a mistake rather than resort to BBBB (bringing back boring bowling) i.e. line and length!!! Anyway a mate of mine messaged  and said why don't you do a chatGPT version for Day 5. He sent through this as an example: Write a blog post summary of day 2 of the 3rd ashes test 2023 based on the writing style and humour of similar posts written on  https://aninsomniacsshesblog.blogspot.com   Title: Day 2 of the 3rd Ashes Test 2023: The Calamities Continue! Hey there, cricket fanatics and fellow insomniacs! Welcome back to our uproarious coverage of the 3rd Ashes Test 2023, where chaos reigns supre...

I wanted to call today's post, "The Empire Strikes Back". It's clearly the best of the nine Star Wars movies and any opportunity to integrate its reference into other areas of life, need to be taken. Well, it wasn't a surprise but 250 wasn't enough and Bazball lives! Just like Emperor Palpatine in Episode 9 - I can't even remember what the name of that abomination was, though it wasn't as bad as Episode 8 - fancy just taking your star ship and running it through another at lightspeed, I mean that crap was so poorly written oops. Sorry, I got caught in a nerd rant there.  Listening this evening from Ball 1 - thanks family for being exhausted from a massive day on the slopes, there seemed to be an air of inevitability about it. Wickets fell regularly, but it always seems that England had done just enough. D#$%it went early in the day - a relief given his performance in the last test, this time dismissed by a rockmelon of a delivery, full and swinging, to...

Viewers turned on the idiot box to see the Headingley pitched (and most of the ground) covered from the sky beers that were falling. Possibly similar to the covers that would have been needed in the Long Room at Lord's a weeks ago as they upturned their Pimm's & Lemonade on any Australians that snuck into the Members' Area based on their reciprocal rights of their M/SCG membership. The rain is not necessarily a bad thing. It can provide a time to reassess and reset plans for the day to come, a time to catch up on sleep, but I was a fan of playing cards. A former team mate of mine always thought the perfect day was to complete a full day of uninterrupted cricket, drive to the club, as you walk in it would start raining, continue to do so as you had a steak or parmy with half a dozen schooners, and then drive home as apparently "cops don't do booze-buses in the rain". If there are any kids reading, drink driving is not cool - it should only be done in modera...

A sunnier day greeted revellers in Leeds. If I was in Yorkshire, I would have definitely headed to Headingley, but others in my family would have checked out Trip Advisor and saw the Top 5 things to do were: * The Museum of Medicine, * Zombie Scavenger Hunt, * A 3-hour food tour (not sure how many beers and pasties you could consume in 180 minutes), * The Royal Armouries Museum, and * a 3-hour walking tour (surely that could be combined with the third option). In other words, it seems about as boring as bat poo if you're not watching cricket.  And it didn't take long to get exciting when Dud snicked off. Bowled Postman, caught Cleaner. A rapturous applause greeted the next batter, as local lad, CuddlyBair joined his skipper in the middle. I haven't seen as much ginger in one place since ordering the number 22 at my local Thai restaurant. But we didn't have to see that unsightly hair colour for long as Cuddles got hungry and decided to edge one to Smudge so he could enj...

We knew there would be some changes coming into the Third Test. The Goat picked up a serious calf injury (otherwise known as an "Old Man Calf Ping") - with Ashes debutant, Todd "Dan" Murphy stepping in. Boniface has hurt his shoulder and it was assumed another batter would take his place - wrong - Moeen Ali comes in, meaning Donny Brook is being promoted to bat No.3. It's always been said that your first drop should be your best batter - not sure what this said for the English line up then... Some of the other changes include some of the dead wood on both sides (forced and "rested") including Jimmy Anderson to make way Mark "Fire &" Wood; whose inclusion has been much anticipated despite not playing much cricket for the past 12 months; Cam "Giraffe" Green, who has been disappointing one must say, for The Bison himself, Mitchell Marsh, who last played a test four years ago in the last hotly contested UK series. Not to stop there,...