As waverider37 has already written, there was a suspicious car outside of our town's police station on Wednesday 9th of November. It had no license plates, a large package on the rear seat and a note was left at the door of the police station.

The car was noticed at about 6am Wednesday morning. By 6:30 every officer in town was at the scene. By 7am, all streets were blocked off within a 5 block radius of the station. This made it very hard for me to get to work at the hospital as the highway was closed down. What should have been a five minute car trip was turned into a fifteen minute wait for traffic police to get in order and get us past the highway. You don't notice it usually because it never happens but being stuck behind a semi-trailer as it tries to make it's way through the back-streets. I made it to work just before 9 which is good because my punctuality record is flawless.

The next major problem presented by the 'bomb' was that some year twelve students had exams in a building which was inside the blocked area. That didn't really bring too much drama. The exams were moved to the Community College and all went on with relative ease.

Then the helicopters with all of their cameramen came and started messing things up as all media types do. They had taken up the entire road on my path to leave town. I was trying to get out to the small country town of Willaura to assist with a speech examination of a young girl. After taking the long way around again, I was on the road to Willaura listening to the radio for the latest update on events in Ararat.

Just before midday the bomb squad had used their remote controlled robot which is specially designed for this type of job and basically resembles a MALP from Stargate:SG1. After deciding that enough had been done and the officers had moved in and inspected the car more closely. It was then found that it was not a bomb in the car. It had been left in front of the police station by an elderly lady. I have yet to clarify exactly what she was thinking, leaving a vehicle with no number plate and with a huge package on the backseat outside the police station. Your guess on that matter is as good as mine.

I do agree with waverider37's point about the local TV station not giving it enough airtime. This type of thing doesn't happen every day. I will update this if I find out why the car was put there in the first place.

Officially my worst... day... ever. (And that was the worst... comic book guy-ripoff... ever.) I was again up to my cricketing tricks, this time out at an Aboriginal-sounding place called Tatyoon. Unlike most other pitches around my home town's area, which are made of concrete and covered with artificial grass, the pitches at Tatyoon, Alexandra Oval (in my home town) and Central Park in Stawell are all made of turf.

The official pitches.

These are supposed to be better for spin than other pitches, so I was promoted from C Grade to B Grade to play against Tatyoon's tougher lads. Apparently, these guys are a pretty weak team, even though they're in B Grade.

We fell in a screaming heap.

We fielded first. There was a lot of greenness on the usually light-brown to yellowing pitch, whoch is also supposed to help bowling. Thing is, it was also hard, which apparently makes a batting pitch. Hmm. And those black clouds on the horizon didn't help matters much, either.

Forty overs and I did not bowl one. I mean, that was all I was sent there for - bowling. My batting is quite crapola, as I shall elaborate on later.

My fielding was quite mediocre, though I did stop a few tricky ones. I dropped an easy catch, and so did mostly everyone else on the team - the Under-16 wicket-keeper counted eight drops - but a guy named Beano held on to one. That was one of the few wickets for our side.

Coming off the field in a somewhat subdued mood, I sat in the car and played some Ministry Of Sound on my iPod. (God, I'd hate to work for ABC Radio here... they are not allowed to use brand names because it's a non-commercial station. You should hear them sometimes: "Phone Dome" instead of Telstra Dome (a footy ground in Melbourne), "music player of choice" instead of iPod... etc etc.)

I was called on to bat No. 9, or seventh drop - meaning, the batsman who comes in at the fall of the seventh wicket. I forget who went out first, but he did, and then Beano went on and came back a minute later. That was two blokes out in two balls. One more and the bowler would have a hat-trick. So, I went in and tried to ignore all of the encouragement towards the bowler from the opposition. Rathie, my partner, told me that the guy was swinging the ball, or, getting the ball to curve through the air. Kinda like a tennis ball when you slice it.

I looked at the bowler, and thought, Bullshit Rathie, look at his run-up! It was typical of a spin bowler, and swing only comes with faster bowlers. But, still, I stood up to the bowler, and took my stance, thinking that I would just block the ball out and keep my wicket intact. So the bowler comes in, and of course, swings the ball from (the equivalent of) next to my legs to (the equivalent of) middle stump. The ball hits my pads and the bowler appeals for LBW. I look at the umpire.

He raises his finger. I am the third wicket of a Tatyoon bowler's hat-trick.

I took a moment and thought, YOU RETARD OF AN UMPIRE! Any Tom, Dick or Harry could see that the ball had pitched (bounced) outside leg stump. And any OTHER Tom, Dick or Harry knows that to get a successful LBW, bowlers must pitch the ball directly between the two sets of stumps, and the ball must have been judged to have hit the stumps if the batsman's leg hadn't interfered. There must have been no inside edge, or snick from the bat. If a ball pitches outside off stump, the batsman cannot have offered any sort of shot at all, and it still must have been judged to have hit the stumps. If it pitches outside leg stump, there's no WAY you can be called out.

I went off the groud like a gentleman, and then threw my gear in my bag like a madman (when I took it off).

I had a bit of a sulk on the bench where substitute footy players sit, and then my captain came up to me and had a word. He said that he had had a day like this some time ago, when he had been promoted to A Grade. Sure, that made me feel heaps better. But I was still a bit shitty. I went back to the car to get out of the rain that was approaching and threatening to end the game prematurely. I watched Bernie and Jumbo (both over 50) struggle through the rain, Bernie with a crook leg and crook hand, and try to last the remaining 20 overs.

The rain came and stopped the game. When they went back on, it took 5 minutes to bowl one of them and end the game - think it was Jumbo. And then the rain started again.

I'm pretty sure I'll have worse days...