Being Matthew Hoggard

..must be difficult, like being a slightly less effectual Polonius. Now I love Polonius, and I really like Matthew Hoggard. He's the only guy in the England "bowling" line up who's actually turned up in 75%+ of tests in the past few years.

But your humble Drummer is a Hoggard of his very own, trundling into work and into a blogosphere that prefers Lees and Aktars.

Never more have I felt this than tonight, Victorian shopping night in the Drummer's village. Now your Drummer is a capitalist. But this really is capitalism gone mad. Every building in the village is adorned with vile, offensive lights, and there are grasping hands and piss-poor costumes leaping out at you from every doorway and shadowplace; there is the frustrating sound of money not being dropped into buckets, champagne being ignored and crap games being passed by. The cashpoint is the longest queue in town, so - where are they spending the money?

Where else? The pub, of course. At least there, you're guaranteed a top class product, unlike an arse-awful impression of a century dead town cryer and his long deceased monarch; she's dead, goddammit, she's dead and she's not coming back, no matter how many pounds change hands, and none of you gives a toss because as long as those coins change hands no-one cares that no-one cares about the theme of the evening.

Here's the Drummer's suggestions:

1) a public execution
2) stocks
3) we import cholera and dystentry into the village for the night
4) we make all the stallholders sign the 39 Articles
5) all pregnant teenagers are hurried off to backstreets or given huge doses of gin and hot baths
6) the village stages a series of summit meetings with a German village, announcing periodically that the opposing village needs to negotiate on its number of ducks, while the German village relentlessly builds up its amount of ducks, and we just stoke the river, ready for the inevitable conflict.