Blog Day 198 - 09 October 2020

Welcome to a another virus free Friday (in Blog world anyway).

Very difficult to avoid the virus today given the bucket load that Ms Mikakos has dumped on the premier this morning.  I will discuss  this in more detail tomorrow, but I think that the premier forgot one of the rules of the Socialist Left, "keep your friends close but your enemies closer".  Actually I think that this was originally one of the rules of the NSW Labor right faction, but what the heck, same desert - different tent.

No trivia tonight, some of the key trivia players seem to think that a football match being played in a country far, far away is more important than trivia.  A number of my many readers have an interest in tonight's game with supporters of both sides being keen followers of the blog.  I was thinking about this year's footy season and I thought wouldn't it be terrible for your team to get all the way through this difficult season and win the grand final only to have the win marked with an * due to the season being compromised.  Will it still count as a "proper" grand final?

I can't wait to see who the entertainment will be this year's at the grand final, particularly as it will be drawn from local Queensland talent, that should pull in the crowds through the turnstiles.  Has any Queenslander won Idol, X Factor, the Voice etc in the last ten years who could be thrust up on the stage to entertain the masses.

It was interesting that the AFL was trying to recruit dancers for the grand final spectacular but didn't want to pay them, they were looking for volunteer dancers to perform for nothing.  This is from a code that thinks nothing of paying a 20 year old half a million dollars to kick a footy around for 6 months of the year.

Anyway to be fair to the supporters of both teams good luck and may the best team win.  And remember, as they say, there is always next year.

I had to laugh, there was a guy on the radio talking about attending a AC/DC concert and how and his mates took their beer and ice along in rubbish bins.  It reminded me a bit of the good old days going to the cricket at the MCG.  In those days you didn't have to book, just turn up and walk in with your esky turn right at Bay 13 and find a seat in the sun and have a drink.  A standard esky would hold a slab of cans (24) and some ice and possibly room for a small sandwich and it was one esky per man per day.  We would meet at a mate's place in Hawthorn, have a couple of drinks, his girlfriend would usually drive us to the MCG or a pub in Punt Rd for a couple of beers and then we would walk to the MCG heavily laden with bulging eskies.

The day was then spent watching the cricket, drinking beers from the esky and joining in the fun that was Bay 13 in those days.  By the end of the day the fun was getting pretty robust and some of us with fairer skin were getting pretty sunburnt.

At the end of play we would retire to a local pub for a couple of beers, carrying our now considerably lighter eskies and head back to the mate's place in Hawthorn for a couple of beers where the mate's girlfriend would be delighted to see us.

Now, some people thought that using eskies you couldn't carry enough beer to last the day so some groups used bathtubs and other varieties of large containers carry larger amounts of beer and ice to the cricket.    A mate of ours decided to make a large esky for the cricket.  He got a large industrial chemical container in the shape of a barrel with a lockdown lid, cleaned it inside and out, coated the barrel and lid with refrigerator quality insulation, then coated that with fibreglass, painted that white and attached handles for the convenience of carrying the thing.

And do you know what happened, just after the mate finished the new giant esky the MCG changed the rules so that you could only take standard size eskies to the cricket, so the big esky never got a run at the cricket so it was back to the standard size esky and one esky per man per day.

All was not lost as the giant barrel shaped esky was successfully used on some camping trips which as it was turned out to be a good thing anyway.  Because as we discovered once the large barrel shaped esky was full of beer and ice it was impossible to lift, so we would never have got it to the MCG anyway.

There is a moral to this story, I am just not sure what it is.

Fun covid facts and figures tomorrow.