Thanks to MyT and The Chariot

It would be fair to say that I have not been totally enjoying the Ashes Series to date. The odd moment of wild over-optimism; interspersed, far too often, with long hours of realistic contemplation of ‘our’ impending doom.

Whatever! I owe it to the shades of Jonners, CMJ, The Boyle, Fiery Fred, John ‘No nickname that I can remember’ Arlott and, above all, my Dad to glue my ear to Test Match Special throughout the long watches of the night whenever the contest for the urn goes Down Under. 

It’s definitely not been a lot of fun to date. But, two nights ago I had a brief flicker of enjoyment.

The game was grinding on and England were being ground down when Alison Mitchell came to the microphone as Glenn McGrath departed. Alison commented that Glenn had scooped up all the milk chocolate frogs in the sharing bag that she had brought and left the dark ones. This says a lot, of course, about both the selfishness and lack of taste of Glenn and, by extension, of all Australians.

Moving on, Tuffers and Alison set off on a riff on the subject of why a confectioner in Adelaide had gone down the road of marketing chocolate frogs. That’s an interesting story in itself and I leave it to Google to tell you all about Alfred E Haigh and his ranatic* invention of 1915.

The chat was entertaining enough until Alison advised that the boy Alfred had extended his range to other creatures. She said that Haighs also produced chocolate representations of small mouse-like creatures – she thought they might be called brumbies.

Well, even wild horses would not, normally, be able to drag a word of criticism from me when it comes to Alison, A  great commentator and, in my opinion, a thoroughly good egg.

But, it’s 4 in the morning and I am wide awake knowing that she is havering and that she clearly means bilbies and not brumbies. Eventually, Twitter advised her of her faux pas.

So, kudos to MyT and the Chariot. Without my time thereon, I would never have known what a bilby was or had so much self-satisfaction in having that knowledge.

Regards to Bilby if she’s looking in and thanks to her and to all the other MyTers and Charioteers for all the fun over the years.

* ranatic – relating to frogs. Can’t find it defined as such on t’Internet but it seems to me to be a perfectly acceptable coinage from the Latin ‘rana’.