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Friday 4 July 2003, 5:33 PM
Friday: A sticky wicket
Friday 4/7/2003
The ZDNet UK office is mad about sport. Man, woman, manager: the lot of 'em. Except me. With the solitary exception of croquet, there's nothing in the bundling of a ball across pitch, field or court that thrills the heart of Goodwins. I do tell everyone that my way is a better way, and that obsession with half-naked people bouncing around on television will only lead to tears, but they never listen.
Last night was a case in point. As I trudged out of the building, I had to push through an impromptu cricket session taking place in one of the emptier areas of the office. "Aha! Another fielder!" said Graeme 'Silly Mid Off' Wearden, star reporter and sports nut de tutti nutti. "If you had any sense, you'd come to the pub," I wearily reposted, and was roundly laughed off the pitch.
Come Friday and the trudge back in, and it looked as if something nasty had happened in the labs. One of the glass partitions between the labs and the rest of the office had been cracked -- had some experiment gone horribly wrong? No. It turns out Graeme misread a leg cutter and, trying to drive it back over to the bowler's head, hit the pavilion window for six as the bat left his hand and disappeared over square leg. Or so I'm told -- it could be Martian for all I know.
Riven by guilt, the aforementioned reporter and would-be Boycott (well, he's from Lancashire. Close enough) actually came in early to tidy his desk and 'fess up, hoping that both actions would forestall managerial revenge. As yet, he appears to have been given not out, but the rest of his sympathetic colleagues have been busy downloading sound effects, songs, pictures and other memorabilia related to his smashing time and surreptitiously installing them on his computer.
Proof positive, if proof were needed, that drinking is a far safer occupation than all that blooming sport.
(Obscure fact: both Nick Lowe and David Bowie sang songs about breaking glass, but when Bowie released an album called Low, Nick released one called Bowi in answer).
Click here to see more of Rupert's diaries.
The ZDNet UK office is mad about sport. Man, woman, manager: the lot of 'em. Except me. With the solitary exception of croquet, there's nothing in the bundling of a ball across pitch, field or court that thrills the heart of Goodwins. I do tell everyone that my way is a better way, and that obsession with half-naked people bouncing around on television will only lead to tears, but they never listen.
Last night was a case in point. As I trudged out of the building, I had to push through an impromptu cricket session taking place in one of the emptier areas of the office. "Aha! Another fielder!" said Graeme 'Silly Mid Off' Wearden, star reporter and sports nut de tutti nutti. "If you had any sense, you'd come to the pub," I wearily reposted, and was roundly laughed off the pitch.
Come Friday and the trudge back in, and it looked as if something nasty had happened in the labs. One of the glass partitions between the labs and the rest of the office had been cracked -- had some experiment gone horribly wrong? No. It turns out Graeme misread a leg cutter and, trying to drive it back over to the bowler's head, hit the pavilion window for six as the bat left his hand and disappeared over square leg. Or so I'm told -- it could be Martian for all I know.
Riven by guilt, the aforementioned reporter and would-be Boycott (well, he's from Lancashire. Close enough) actually came in early to tidy his desk and 'fess up, hoping that both actions would forestall managerial revenge. As yet, he appears to have been given not out, but the rest of his sympathetic colleagues have been busy downloading sound effects, songs, pictures and other memorabilia related to his smashing time and surreptitiously installing them on his computer.
Proof positive, if proof were needed, that drinking is a far safer occupation than all that blooming sport.
(Obscure fact: both Nick Lowe and David Bowie sang songs about breaking glass, but when Bowie released an album called Low, Nick released one called Bowi in answer).
Click here to see more of Rupert's diaries.
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