Friday 21 November 2025

Please note: Since authoring this first blog post, an absolute calamity has today (Saturday 22 November) befallen the England Cricket Team. I shall probably write and post about that tomorrow a.) once I have processed what has happened, and b.) now that I have three empty days of time to fill.

Christ, WordPress is hard work.

ANYWAY….

In an effort to remain away from the social media companies and other ‘content providers’ that will one day either enslave us all, or, more readily, destroy the planet by continuing to harvest all of our data in their climate destroying large language models and GenAI initiatives, I have decided to maintain a travel blog for the duration of my trip abroad. If you’re reading this, you’ll likely already know that. And, more likely, have experienced the absolute shitshow that is my putting anything up on here.

ANYWAY…

Today has genuinely been one of the best days of my life- watching one of the most insane days of cricket for many, many years.

Best of all- I got to enjoy it with my dad.

But we’ll get to that shortly…

An inauspicious start to our trip saw dad pacing a trench into his hall-way as the cab to Gatwick at 5am Tuesday morning was running 15 minutes behind schedule. Even more concerning, for me in any case, was my total inability to lift my left arm (and at the time of writing it is still very limited in movement.) Not ideal when setting off backpacking for the foreseeable future. As to why they have a raised platform at the edge of the dance-floor in the Eagle, Vauxhall, will remain a very painful mystery to me. Shout out to Freya who I believe was the only one to witness me hitting the ground. From the the feel of things I hit it hard.

Eventually, and after much stress (on dad’s part), we made it to Gatwick with plenty of time to shove countless plates of Luke-warm full English breakfast down throats with a couple of bloody maries (on my part). Long ass flight though a decent movie selection, passably good grub, and extra leg room made it more than bearable, despite the only 20 minutes of sleep.

The Surfer (2025) 4/5 stars.

Sinners (2025) 4/5 stars.

I also ticked off the first book of the trip- 2.5/5 stars.

Landing in Perth 14:00 local time Wednesday, having set off at 5:00 (ish) Tuesday GMT, was made manageable by the beautiful weather at 30 odd degrees and dad’s insistence we don’t even countenance a nap. Good call. We went for a stroll, hitting a few pubs along the way including a jam-packed ‘Lucky Shag’ on the water. We managed to keep this up until about 22:00 when we called it a night after watching a terrific pair of musicians, including a class-act guitarist.

Waking up fresh Thursday morning, but with my arm in absolute agony, and dad’s eyes having developed some sort of airplane/airborne ooze, we kick started the first day of our trip proper with a trip to the chemist. $115 Australian dollareedoos later and Jenny, the Australian nurse, doesn’t think my shoulder is fractured. She is concerned there may be ligament damage but to avoid unnecessary expensive x-rays, she has proscribed resting the arm, proper painkillers, and heat therapy. So that’s good.

We spent the rest of the day exploring Perth on foot. It’s beautiful. Loads going on up at Northridge where we spent the best part of the afternoon, bar hopping and scouting out possible dinner locations. We then crossed the main highway and up to Jacob’s Ladder and Kings Park for some sightseeing and a quick doze. I also, on the recommendation of a book-shop proprietor, bought two more books to add to my sodding backpack library: ‘Perth’ by David Whish-Wilson, and ‘Wake in Fright’ by Kenneth Cook.

We ate an outstanding meal in Northbridge at ‘Authentic Bites Dumpling House’. I am not a lifestyle influencer and don’t take pictures of my food- other than those which I send with the ‘view-once’ setting turned on to provide the cover of deniability. You’re more likely to get a photo of my nether regions than a food photo which can be linked back to me. The food was stellar and we ‘won’ a free steamed bun next visit on this rather bizarre scratch card with your bill thing.

We then walked over to the Barmy Army Ashes launch party which was shite. I’m putting it down to the fact we seemed to be the only people there who hadn’t been there since the start and weren’t the wrong side of half cut. Oh well. Great first day.

And then we come to today (or what would have been today, rather than yesterday, had WordPress not been such a bastard.) The first day of the Ashes 2025/2026. The West Test.

As my pal Charlene messaged me when she woke up at a sensible time GMT and saw what had been going on: “Carnage.”

Absolute bloody carnage.

I can honestly say that not only was it one of the greatest sporting occasions I’ve ever attended, but it has been genuinely one of the best days of my life. It’s been such a long time coming. We’ve flown such a long way, and dad and I both needed it but never could have imagined a better time.

The sun was shining. The people we were sat around were all lovely. I am not remotely ashamed to say that I welled up at the singing of ‘Jerusalem’. We got ripped through in the batting order and then- oh boy and then- we absolutely smoked ’em. Smoked ’em. It was the sort of occasion when, in years to come, I’ll be able to say ‘I was there’.

We headed back to the hotel for a few pints, in a euphoric daze, and then off for dinner where Dad was sat directly behind the Chef. Fortunately nobody was bothering him and it is just a coincidence that I insisted on getting a photo of dad mid chew/gurn thus capturing Cook’s likeness. Sheer coincidence.

Incredible time. I wouldn’t have missed it for the World. And I got to enjoy it all with dad.

First ball tomorrow… should be another rippah.