"And Jesus said unto John: 'Come forth, I will give you eternal life!'. Unfortunately, John came fifth... he won a toaster." From Tetragemetic Chimerism.

So chefling has resigned, and yet again I'm having to splash out a couple of hundred quid (at least) to advertise for a new one. Welcome to Fight Club, the rules of cheffery are................ You must be hard as nails, tough as old boots, 16 hour shifts with barely enough time to go for a piss, standard day. You'll work Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Years Eve until three in the bloody morning and then some back for lunch shift on New Years Day, and every bank holiday. Every Friday night, while your mates are down the pub necking pints and on the pull, you'll be head down over the stove, with forty covers wanting food and twenty more to come, with your homicidal/psychopathic/schizophrenic head chef abusing your haircut/accent/parentage/skin colour/sexual preferences, and especially giving you grief over that "DOGS VOMIT YOU CALL A VELOUTE, I WOULDN'T SERVE IT TO MAN U FANS, DO IT AGAIN SCUMBAG, IN TWO MINUTES" . (Note, any answer other than a swift "Yes chef" earns you a second, louder bollocking, and then you'll only have one minute to do the sauce.) You will burn yourself, and cut yourself, often. If you wear t-shirts in public people will stare and think you are a self harmer, other chefs will recognise the patterns of lateral burns on the inside of your forearms, it's like a secret society tattoo. Floor standing ovens, they're a bitch. We don't do workers rights, fixed home time, unions, breaktimes, lunch hour, shop stewards, jobsworths and as for contracts ? I've heard they have them in other industries. What are the benefits then ? I'm buggered if I know. I must love food. Furthermore, there are some specifics that apply to my kitchen. 1) You must be able to converse in more than monosyllabic grunts, we will spend at least 40 hours a week together, I'm interested in cricket, politics, current affairs, music, wine, nature, football, sf/f, d&d, all sorts of things, the ability to hold a conversation would be good. 2) I play music, and sing badly, a lot. My music ranges from AC/DC through Led Zepplin and Megadeth to ZZ Top, if you don't like guitars, tough, we do not do dance muzak. 3) You must at least understand cricket, even if you don't love it. If I get stuck in a meeting for an hour, come back and ask the score and you look blank and say "Err, two nil ?", I will not be impressed. So that's it then, poor wages, dreadful working conditions, evil ogre of a chef, I'm hiring.

What fun! I haven't made bread for ages, this is a large lump of ciabatta dough pressed out and relaxing. The finished products, in a variety of sizes, and before you ask for recipes, it was one of those little blue packet reaady mixes from the supermarket. This however, is all my own work, last nights supper.................. Risotto with Pancetta and Parmesan, stir fry of Mushrooms and Pak Choi.

Apparently if you search google for Lewry Pedophile, I am no.1, sorry about that Fraser.

Pigeon Breasts with Madeira, Cream and Mushrooms. (A recipe request from The Village Pump) Skin the breasts, mix a handful of plain flour with a good pinch of salt, same of pepper and half a teaspoon of English mustard powder, roll the pigeon in this prior to cooking. Fry the breasts in clarified butter with a little oil, I got them slightly crisp on the outside, oozing with blood in the middle, but cook to your preference. For the sauce........ 1/4 pint Demi-glace 1/4 pint whipping cream good splash of Madeira 6 sliced button mushrooms handful dried ceps Warm the Madeira, soak the dried mushrooms in the booze. Sautee the button mushrooms, add to the Madeira, add the demi-glace and bring to the boil, reduce by about a third, add the cream and then reduce until you have reached a coating consistency.

Further news of the genius levels of IQ found amongst the Yorkshire Soul readership, Penny took the test and got a mighty respectable 127, but we all bow down to that paragon of knowledge, the mighty mental bastion that is Malcolm R...................142 Malcolm R 142 Dr. P 138 P 136 Pete 135 Y Soul 135 JR 131 Penny Farthing 127 "Your Intellectual Type is Visionary Philosopher. This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns. " - This is what they said about Malcolm, sadly, it's also what they said about me, and Plato is revolving in his coffin at the thought of being compared to a man who writes 'Tits and Tats' quizzes.

Yorkshire Soul's Rambling Quiz - Week 6 Answers There will be a new rule for next weeks quiz, details to follow........... 1) Two current European Tour golfers have fathers who have been Captains of Ilkley Golf Club, a point each for the golfers, a point each for their fathers. Colin Montgomerie, JD Montgomerie James Hepworth, John Hepworth 2) Which South Park character was based on a Goon Show character, name both and explain why ? Kenny ("Oh my God they killed Kenny") and Bluebottle ("You deaded me"), they nearly always get killed during the show and appear alive again in the next episode. 3) Which concept album tells the story of a drug addicted, high school drop out hired as a hit man to 'cleanse' society of lying politicians and hypocritical priests ? Operation Mindcrime - Queensryche 4) In 'The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant', what is the crime the leper Thomas commits as almost his first action in the new world ? Thomas rapes the young girl who has offered him help. 5) Earl Of Wilmington Henry Pelham Duke of Devonshire Earl of Bute What are the next two names in this sequence ? These are British Prime Ministers, the Earl of Wilmington was the 2nd, Pelham 3rd, Devonshire 5th and Bute 7th, all prime numbers so the next two answers are... Lord North (Frederick North) 11th Earl of Shelbourne (William Petty-Fitzmaurice) 13th 6) When Mikail Baryshnikov defected, which ballet company did he leave, and which one promptly employed him ? Kirov Ballet - American Ballet Theatre 7) When will we next be able to see the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 ? Ah, the trick question, this comet was first sighted in 1993, but after losing control at the tight corner near Saturn, it crashed into Jupiter the following year. No jokes about it landing up Uranus please. 8) What are the Bedford Levels ? The drained, peat section of the Fens. 9) What did Leonard Nimoy sell before he donned Spock's pointy ears ? An assortment of things, vacuum cleaners gets you a point though. 10) Who wrote the music for the USA's national anthem ? An Englishman, John Stafford Smith, wrote the tune as an anthem for his London social club. There were 17 points on offer this week, and you got................ Malcolm R 15 JR 15 Dr. P 14 Jo 9 Penny F 7 The League : Week 6 1) Dr. P 76 2) JR 74 3) Malcolm R 72 4) Kennamatic Dave 38 5) EvilBarSteward 23 6) Chay 13 7) DSP Andy 11 8) Penny Farthing 11 9) CountingSheep Jo 9 New rule as from the next quiz, if I have asked for one, two, three or any number of answers, you must only provide that number of answers, and not a dictionary like list of possibles in the hope of hitting the correct ones, cheers folks.

"Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light Himself. It struch him dead: And serve him right! It is the business of the wealthy man To give employment to the artisan. " A nice little poem by Halaire Belloc, and so true. I'm not a wealthy man but I don't try to put honest carpenters, sparkies and painters out of work by doing DIY, so don't you lot put chefs on the dole by cooking at home, get yourselves out to a restaurant. (Found via a link from Jim's new One Eyed Man.

Dinner last night............ Salad of rocket with pancetta and a warm poached egg. Seared Wood Pigeon breasts with Madeira, cream and wild mushrooms. Panacotta style set vanilla and coffee cream with cantuccini biscuits, and rather tasty as you can see.

On the course at the moment we have a schizophrenic pheasant, he has two distinct modes of operation.......... 1) The Lord of the course strut, a slow and stately stride, proclaiming for all to see that the 18th fairway is indeed his sovereign territory. 2) A cross between Road Runner and Daffy Duck, whoosh, zoom, run, squawk, scream, look at me ! Banana's ! Banana's ! Whoo ! Whoo !

Following on from yesterdays pill popping post, if you were going to top yourself, what music would you do it to ? Personally, Pink Floyd or Marillion. Mrs YS hates Lynyrd Skynyrd, and always says that Freebird is a wrist slashing song, strange, I've always found it a happy and uplifting track.

Ellie at Eureka! last week.

Some time Yorkshire Soul it-girl Avril Lavigne has been having a public spat with fellow teeny starlet Hilary Duff. Never one to miss a passing bandwagon, I am now pleased to announce that Yorkshire Soul will accept pictures of Hilary Duff in the buff. Avril Lavigne, naked or nor not, you just can't tell from this photo. Hilary Duff also not naked.

Supermarkets will now only sell you only packet of painkillers at a time, and then only 16 tablets. So when I wheel my trolley up, filled with gin, a Coldplay CD, paracetamol, a bread knife, two bags of peanuts and a stout length of washing line, it's the tablets that get pulled. "Can't have you killing yourself," the checkout girl laughs. "Actually, I'm going to trigger anaphylactic shock with the peanuts, swallow a pint of gin, slash my wrists and jump off a chair with the washing line tied to the roof beam, but I'm not doing it until Sunday and I've got a bad back SO CAN I HAVE MY FUCKING TABLETS BACK PLEASE ?" Of course, this measure has prevented all suicides in Nether Winterbottom, where Mrs Wiggins runs the village's only shop and has a memory like an elephant, where there is no rail or bus service, no taxis, and the only way to get into town is on the back of a flatbed with six sheep and twenty-three pissed up young farmers, and that's only every other Thursday. Everywhere else, would be suicides just buy one pack of aspirin at each of Tesco's 37 identical check outs. **Late breaking news, I am informed that Mrs Wiggins has alzheimers, and now rings everything in to the till as catfood, potential pill poppers of Winterbottom rejoice!!**

I feel I must apologise to the staff and customers of Tesco's Ilkley branch after an incident at the tills this evening. I was already having a bad day, no chefling again, when the check out boy took an unfeasibly long time in processing my last few items, the light above the till was flashing, my vino was being held up, a supervisor was approaching. "ALCOHOL," called out the boy. "ALCOHOL," I took up the call. "ALCOHOL, A MAN IN HIS THIRTIES BUYING ALCOHOL AT TEATIME. LAWKS A MERCY WHAT IS SOCIETY COMING TO ?." Silence, of the stunned shopper, baffled shop staff and possibility of pins dropping type, into which the boy spoke........"Actually it's because I'm 17 so my supervisor has to be here when I sell alcohol." "Of course," I muttered. Exit Y Soul, red faced, stage left.

You can't argue with that.

JR posted a great little IQ quiz in last weeks comments, you can find it here, a few of the regulars have taken it and the results are........... Dr. P 138 (No surprise there then!) P 136 Pete 135 Y Soul 135 JR 131 I always thought I attracted a very superior class of reader. To really puff up your ego, compare your IQ to some real bone-fide genii, I might be bright, but I still had to reach for the dictionary to find the plural for genius, previously I thought Genii were elemental crossbreeds from Dungeons&Dragons, ho hum. Further IQ stuff, click here to find your nation's average IQ, and reel in horror when you find you're dumber than the Dutch, but at least you're brighter than the French.

JR! If you want to criticize spelling and grammar, help yourself.

We have a new male blackbird at the feeding table this week, our resident male, White-Eye won't be happy when he catches him, feathers may fly. If you want some real violence though, look out for the Robins. Our current regulars are........... White-Eye and his Mrs New boy blackbird 2-3 Blue Tits 2 Coal Tits The Jay A Thrush 2-3 Robins, rough little aggressive buggers they are Some Dunnocks, I don't know how many, they all look the same Wrens, possibly two Magpies, the neighborhoods rough boys, about five of them The Jackdaw Clan who arrive mob handed fifteen at a time and hoover the bird table clear of food Across the course we see Mallards, a Heron or two, the usual motley collection of Gulls, and, at the moment, loads of Pheasants who have escaped the local shoot.

The first rule of fight club is.................. Well, it's not the 1st Rule Of Catering, but you know when the phone rings early in the morning, and it's a staff member on the line, they're not calling for a quick natter about the price of oranges. Invariably, when the staff phone you, it's to say they're not coming to work, bugger. At least I've got them well trained enough to call in sick early though, there's nothing worse than someone not coming in to work, and calling in sick an hour or two after they were supposed to arrive. This is a particular problem for small firms like mine, when 2nd chef doesn't arrive, that leaves a brigade of......................one. Thus I'm writing the blog at night. Anyway, well done to captain Michael Vaughan and the boys for creating cricketing history for England by going 2-0 up in a series in the Windies. England therefore retain the Wisden Trophy with two matches to go in the Caribbean. The Windies look to be in disarray, now without a manager, and a very out of form captain who said today "We don't need to press the panic button, yet." Not the most positive statement he could have made. I'll tell you what though Brian, you might have to press that button if Vaughan and Trescothick find some form. On to Barbados then. Tiny glimmer of hope ? For weeks, I have been resigned to the fact that Leeds United would spend the next season in the 1st Division, but last nights victory against Man city, who last week managed to slaughter the scum, has lifted us off the bottom of the table, and put the team within a few points of safety.

I can't claim any credit for the nice flowers I have been posting, they all grow around the clubhouse and are cared for by our gardener, John.

Pain : 5 The Company attacked the Flames Of Kossuth Warehouse, encountering a scattering of guards, plus a high level Mage/Fighter and his rogue consort. Although outgunned by the Company, the Red Redemptionists fought with cunning, the rogue targeting Callran the mage to try and knock out some of the Company's spellcasting, and Isis the monk was killed by a Finger Of Death from the mage. Nevertheless, they killed all in their way, located the next white gate, and placed a cinder gem from the Gemsword in it. Isis was resurrected back at base camp, and after rest and healing, they set out to assault the Temple Of Kossuth. Thinking that the chaotic Kossuthian priests and their Red Redemption followers would all be out drinking, drug abusing, and generally getting up to whatever seriously evil people do on a night off, they sneaked into the temple through a window............... .................only to find a Red Redemtionist masking ceremony in progress, an epic battle ensued. Sibornal launched a horizontal Blade Barrier, a spinning disk of tens of thousands of sharp blades that separated many of the evil ones from vital bits of their anatomy, this was followed by Ice Storms from the mages and powerful Dwarven magics from Beltain, the priest of Dorn Blackhammer. The fight raged on, well it did around the edges of the room anyway, no-one was going anywhere near Sibornal's prototype food blender, as the RR's dropped like flies they summoned a Living Holocaust to consume the good guys, but, well protected by defensive magics, they sent the evil flame creature back through the gate it had appeared from. When the battle ended, it had taken 42 seconds in game time, at J+C's house, it took us all evening to dispatch the 23 assorted evil fighters and clerics, but they still don't know where the next gate is.

2nd test, Day 3. After knocking over the Windies on a rainy day 2, England got off to a frightening start losing their top two for the same number of runs, disaster looming ? Not quite. Enter the obdurate Nasser Hussain and Mark Butcher. Nasser dropped anchor and scored about one run every four overs (or so it seemed) making Butcher's slow progress seem breezy by comparison, but they did the job and gradually batted England back into the game. Graham Thorpe showed a return to form and ended the day 81 no, with contributions from Flintoff and Giles, England ended the day in the driving seat, almost 100 runs ahead on 1st innings.

2nd Test, and despite a solid start from Gayle and Smith, it was all downhill for the home side after lunch, Harmison again ripping out the top order, and from a very promising 100-0 the Windies collapsed to a very average 189-8, first day to England then. I'm still wondering about Brian Lara's (as in Brian Lara nil) comments before the series started, perhaps he meant he wanted to score 380 in total, at this rate he'll have to add on his one day scores as well.

More Belleisms......... Ey up like, tha’s only wun belle, tha’s me, reet. Posted by "Yorkshire Soul" I am Bell-end de Jour Posted by "Viz" If all these phony Belles de Jour were laid from end to end I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Posted by "Dorothy Parker" I know who the reall bell is! Posted by "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"

Yorkshire Soul's Rambling Quiz - Series 2 : Week 6 Sorry about the delay, rules as always, e-mail the answers to Yorkshiresoul@hotmail.com if you want to join in, answers on/by Friday 26th March please, no spoilers please folks. 1) Two current European Tour golfers have fathers who have been Captains of Ilkley Golf Club, a point each for the golfers, a point each for their fathers. 2) Which South Park character was based on a Goon Show character, name both and explain why ? 3) Which concept album tells the story of a drug addicted, high school drop out hired as a hit man to 'cleanse' society of lying politicians and hypocritical priests ? 4) In 'The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant', what is the crime the leper Thomas commits as almost his first action in the new world ? 5) Earl Of Wilmington Henry Pelham Duke of Devonshire Earl of Bute What are the next two names in this sequence ? 6) When Mikail Baryshnikov defected, which ballet company did he leave, and which one promptly employed him ? 7) When will we next be able to see the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 ? 8) What are the Bedford Levels ? 9) What did Leonard Nimoy sell before he donned Spock's pointy ears ? 10) Who wrote the music for the USA's national anthem ?

Book Review, Kil'n People - David Brin ***** "Al Morris is a private investigator. Actually, he's lots of private investigators." Al lives in a future where every home has a kiln in the kitchen, ready to bake copies of you to go out out and live life on your behalf. No one really enjoys going to the office, send a gray ditto instead, you have a construction job ? Send a green ditto, it should handle the manual stuff. Need some specialist research doing ? Bake an ebony. Each ditto lives for a day, at the end of which it collapses slowly into a pool of organic sludge, but before the ditto decomposes, you can upload it's memories of the day back into your own head. Nobody really works anymore, except Al, he likes the hands on approach from time to time, but he still uses dittos for the everyday stuff, and the dangerous stuff. Al is hunting for Beta, a master criminal who makes illegal dittos of famous people for nefarious purposes. After many close calls, Al believes he is closing in on him. At the same time he is hired to investigate the death of the head scientist of the global company that makes the ditto blanks. Al makes some ditto's, two grays to undertake some routine investigations, an ebony to stay home and do some paperwork, and a green to take care of the shopping and mow the lawn. There's another ditto in the house, Al's girlfriend is away, so she left him a pearl ditto in the fridge, just in case he gets lonely/horny. For the rest of the novel the action swaps back and forth between RealAl and his copies and Brin lets his imagination run riot with freaky ditto wars, even freakier ditto sex clubs, and a memorable scene involving a bomb and a dinosaurs arse. Later in the novel Brin uses the advent of clone replicating technology, dittos able to copy themselves, to examine the question of the soul, and where it resides. David Brin writes to a consistently high quality, The Practice Effect, The Uplift War, Earth, Glory Season, all have been intelligent and stimulating reads, he is also able to inject a little basic humour into his characters and that sets him apart from many sf writers. Kil'n People is a doorstep of a book, but at around 600 pages, still a good inch smaller than Earth. It is entertaining, but at at the same time uses the story to ask some salient questions about the meaning of life.

So Belle de Jour has been 'outed', supposedly, by the Times. To find out who the Belle really is go to I Am Belle Due Jour. I am, and so is my wife. Posted by "Snigely McTavish" Actually I’m Belle de Jour. Except when I’m Tiger Woods. Posted by "Postman Pat" The bleach-job fooled you all Posted by "Anne Widdecombe" Ring-a-ding ding, it’s me, it’s true. Posted by "Belle de Door" Could you do with more? Need to keep it up longer while its bigger and better? Contact us on www.noOneInTheirRightMindWillClickThroughToThisPopupHaven.com we can help!What do you mean you’re a woman? Posted by "Spam de Jour" She’s not Belle de Jour - she’s a very naughty girl. Posted by "Ma de Jour" Will the real Belle do Jour, please stand up. Please stand up. Please stand up. Posted by "Eminem" First rule of Belle de Jour is you do not talk about Belle de Jour. The second rule of Belle de Jour is that you do NOT talk about Belle de Jour… Posted by "Club-de-Jour" me am she. Posted by "Lim Zim Tim Bim Boodlam Boodlam Boodlam F'tang F'tang Ole Biscuit-barrel Bus-stop Walrus-titty"

Borrowed from Gromblog, this article about the Nasa Sub-Vocaliser will ring a bell with anyone who has read Kil'n People by the very wonderful David Brin.

Wine Review, Luis Felipe Edwards Cabernet Reserva 2001 **** 'A major bang for your buck' as I read on one American wine review site. What I think our Yankee comrade is trying to get across is that this Cabernet is a big, fruit filled, very direct wine. It is very accessible and open but backed up with enough tannin and acidity to make it interesting. A lovely dark purple colour in the glass, good on the nose, immediate, open flavour on tasting, blackcurrants/cassis and a hint of spice, long lasting and full in the mouth. Bought from Tesco, usually £7.99, but on offer at £5.99 at the moment, it's well worth sticking a few in the cellar/under the stairs. Luis Philipe Edwards Page

Book review, Gardens Of The Moon - Steven Erikson **** The problem with really good fantasy writing is.........that there isn't any. Well, hardly any. The real problem with fantasy is that the best ever fantasy novel came first, and all other writers have been trying to live up to Lord Of The Rings ever since. That said, Steven Erikson makes a good effort with his debut novel. Gardens Of The Moon takes place during the Malazan campaign to occupy Genabackis. I would like to write a brief synopsis of the plot, but whereas many authors concentrate on a handful of major characters, Erikson has a dramatis personae that runs to five pages. Any character may play a major part further on in the novel, or may die a bloody and messy death on the next page. Hurrah, Erikson has no qualms about killing characters, adding a nice touch of realism to his work. His writing is compact, there is description and dialogue here, but nothing extraneous to the plot, or plots, of which there are many. Magic in Eriksons world is ever present, and can be devastating, but is just as often in a cold war state of play, with powerful mages afraid to unleash their magicks lest they become weakened in the effort and other mages take advantage. Eriksons world is well thought out, and very believable, it has a gritty, dangerous, realism which sets his work apart from most other current fantasy authors. His characters are much the same, they don't charge a thousand opponents shouting "For the honour of ", no, they hide round corners and stab people in the back, or they look at the oncoming demon/dragon/undead and think, "I'm not fighting that." Gardens Of The Moon seems very much a novel set in an ongoing fantasy world, the story starts amidst a military campaign that is already well advanced, and when the book ends some 720 pages later, the invasion that has been the background to the story is still gong on. It isn't a happily ever after conclusion either, although most of the major characters escape with their lives, some escape only to face the prospect of joining a rebellion against their former masters and the prospect of further hardship and bloodshed. Erikson displays a marvelous level of inventiveness throughout the novel, I particularly enjoyed Hairlock the mage, soon to be Hairlock the insane mannequin, the three thousand years dead T'lass Iman warrior Onos T'oolan, the warren powered magic system, and the fight at the masked party, long drawn out sword fest ? Not for Erikson. Gardens Of The Moon is a complex, real feeling fantasy, awash with good ideas and interesting characters, I'm looking forward to the next installment already.

Now listen here you lot, loose lips sink ships. The readership is being joined today by no less an august personage than the Lady President of Ilkley Golf Club herself, welcome ma'am. I trust all the regualrs will behave themselves, at the moment Lady Pres thinks I'm nothing more than a cook with questionable taste in music. If you want, point out to her my well thought out and intelligent articles on child pornography, the fall of Srebrenica, the state of modern cricket, or fine wines of the 90's. I'm sure you'll agree though, she doesn't need to know about Tits and Tats, Norway's Famous Burning Mountain Huts, Angela Jolie's Cat, or indeed, Naked Teenage Lesbian Pop Singers.

Succinct...............terse, concise, briefly expressed. This is for the benefit of the Blogger spell checker which does not recognise succinct as a real word, and also insists on using lazy American spellings for words in the English language. **Instant Blogger spellchecker update, it didn't recognise terse either, hahahaha**

"Bastards, Vote ETA." A comment too succinct for the readership I fear. In the immediate aftermath of the carnage in Madrid this week, as the bodies of sons, daughters, husbands and wives, parents and siblings were being cleared from Atocha station, I wrote that three word piece. At the time it was assumed that the Basque liberation movement ETA had planted the bombs, and as the time chosen was the penultimate day of campaigning in the Spanish general election it appeared they were trying to swing the voting with massive violence. I am aware that you can't actually vote for ETA, their political wing is called Batasuna, and has been banned from elections until 2005 if I remember correctly, the three word critique was supposed to be ironic/sarcastic, failed on both counts apparently.

There's fire on the hills, a controlled burn of bracken and heather on the moors towards Addingham.

A swift note about the budget..................BASTARD!

Two bowlers have, in the past week, reached the magic score of 500 wickets taken in their test match careers. The man at the top of the list, Courtney Walsh, is a paragon of the game, a hard player respected by everyone in cricket, further down the list you have the likes of Kapil Dev, Sir Richard Hadlee, Ian Botham, Wasim Akram and Glenn McGrath, all honourable stalwarts of the game. The two men now ranked as the number 2 and 3 players of all time are respectively, a drugs cheat, and a man who most of the cricketing world regards with some disquiet because of his bowling action. His bowling action aside, Muri is otherwise a decent enough player, Warne on the other hand............... Well, where to start, the betting allegations, were Australian wickets really thrown at particular points during games to allow huge wins on spread bets ? I suspect we shall never really know, the Australian cricket authorities also responded quickly, and with a big broom and carpet, when it was revealed that Warne (and Waugh) had received money for, ahem, no laughing at the back there, for 'weather reports', right. Warne and Waugh both studied meteorology and greenkeeping at university and were therefore well placed to give weather and pitch reports to dodgy backstreet bookies, not. It's a sad day when these two have become the creme de la creme of modern cricket. On a happier note, India vs. Pakistan, I'm not the biggest fan of ODI matches, I far prefer the 5 day game, but these two national sides have so far produced two of the best one day matches I have ever seen, well done both teams.

Yorkshire Soul's Rambling Quiz : Week 5 Answers Look to last Monday's posts to see the pictures. 1) Stephen King 2) Nathan Hale 3) A-10-A Thunderbolt (I've accepted Warthog, and after some pondering, Tankbuster) 4) Hudson's Bay Company, the Canadian Government 5) That's the Graf Spee running from HMS Ajax, Achilles and Exeter, entering Montevideo 6) Charles II, Algernon Sidney, Lord Russel 7) P51 Mustang 8) Hmm, everyone got the same answer, which wasn't the one I was really looking for, you can all have a point, but note, a Cadaceus is a heralds wand, it was carried by the heralds to denote their special status, Hermes and Mercury both carried one. 9) Beyonce Knowles 10) So that Atlas would then be free to fetch the apples of Hespiredes. The quiz was obviously far too easy.................from a total of 17 points then.......... JR 17 Malcolm R 17 Dr. P 15 Evilbarsteward 15 Kennamatic 8 The League : Week 5 1) Dr. P 62 2) JR 59 3) Malcolm R 57 4) Kennamatic Dave 38 5) EvilBarSteward 23 6) Chay 13 7) DSP Andy 11 8) Penny Farthing 4 I have not written a quiz yet for this week, I will try to post one on Tuesday morning.

Dorna's Not Singing Anymore The mighty England romp home by 10 wickets in the 1st test as the West Indies are dismissed for their lowest ever test score. Steve Harmison showed the Windies fast boys how it should be done with an incredible 7-12 in the 2nd innings. If, like me, you'd popped out to make a cup of tea when the Windies started batting, and therefore missed their entire innings, don't worry, Sky Sports will be playing the innings back to back all day today to make up for the missing final day.

Day three, we're ahead, but only just, and due in the most part to some dismal bowling by the Windies, just how many extras have they let go ? If there is any more rain, it's looking like a draw already. I'll do the quiz answers on Monday morning, I'm off to spend the day at Eureka! with Mrs YS, Squirt, Brother in law mk.1, and the Godchildren, a wahey is in order I think. Then off to P&C's tonight for a spot of hack and slay, and to teach JR how to use his answerphone.