Right here we go at Old Trafford...Aussies have won toss and are having a bat.... Smith back in for them at 4...... Seems like a batting day but hopefully a fast bouncy pitch will help bowlers in first innings... C'mon England
An update on the lost ticket situation.... I e-mailed my mate who had made the booking (my ticket was one of four) and explained what had happened. He then contacted the Oval and they said that they would cancel the original booking and issue four new tickets, which he's now received. All good, but that's not the end of the story. The cab driver that picked us up at Stansted coming home was the same fella that took us on the outward journey. As I got into the cab he presented me with the lost card wallet that, it turns out, I had dropped in his cab. 'I tried to phone you', he said, 'but you must have already been on the plane'. So I now had back my wallet with the cancelled bank cards, the cancelled over-60s Oyster, the cancelled Oval ticket and my QPR season ticket, which I hadn't yet got round to cancelling. The replacement cards had all arrived when we got home, so I cut up the old ones and put the new ones in the wallet with my still valid QPR season ticket and the cancelled Ashes ticket. All good, but that's not the end of the story either. Going to work on Monday, I got off my Piccadilly line train at Hammersmith, where you have cross over the road to get the Hammersmith & City Line. When I got to the exit, I had that sinking feeling again - I'd dropped the card wallet on the Piccadilly train! With no Oyster, and no bank cards or cash with which to buy a ticket, I had to blag my way out of one Hammersmith station, into the other and then out again at Paddington. Once at work, I had to go through the whole process again of cancelling cards and requesting replacements. The only saving grace was that I hadn't yet been given my new Oval ticket. That's still not the end of the story, though. This morning I got a call from QPR customer services asking if I had lost my season ticket. 'Yes', I said, 'but how do you know, I haven't reported it yet?' Remarkably, it turns out that one of the staff at QPR, Hadley, had found the wallet on the tube, checked the contents for an address to return it to, and found the QPR season ticket. Well played Hadley.
Crikey mate, what are the chances? If you tried to incorporate that tale into a work of fiction it would be dismissed for being too far fetched.
