23:54 AEDT Wed 13 Dec 2006

I’ve been out here now for a month. It’s no longer strange to sit cross-legged on the floor of this flat – my flat – and fart around on this computer – my computer – which is most definitely was before.

I haven’t written owt about the cricket, except on t’other blog. I have toyed with trying to reduce the agonizing personal and professional nightmare of the Adelaide Test Match into a few well couched sentences but it can’t be done. Suffice it to say I fucked up good and proper, with a double helping of extra zeroes to boot.

You might think well, check out King Lucky Bollocks himself – jetting round the world to watch cricket and play cricket and bet on cricket and read cricket books and cricket websites. Day after day after day.

Even I get sick of it at times. I shouldn’t blame cricket, or even cricket gambling, for what I perceive to be the holes in my life, but it’s a convenient enough scapegoat and readily to hand. Particularly when, as during Adelaide, it stops you sleeping. And lying in bed, wide awake and staring at the ceiling just isn’t a time for happy and contented reflection.

One cause of insomnia is to do with work. Firstly, I can't explain what it is that I do for a living and I think that the reason for this is that I haven't yet developed the critical faculties, mathematical framework or experience that I need. I believe not in a 'system' for winning money but in a process: a better analytical framework within which to understand and quantify expectations. Secondly I live an expensive London life and work for a small, specialised desk in a unique company. There isn't a career ladder to climb and I am never going to have much job security or any kind of tenure, so to speak. I can't increase the size or number of the chances to employ my skillset, such as it is, because you can't make more cricket matches happen and you can't make good volume at value prices suddenly appear. This fact seems particularly salient not when you lose, which happens all the time, but when you fuck up (which should be seen as something very distinct from the simple fact of loss). I fucked up in Adelaide. We've been here before though.

The second cause is loneliness. My friends Craig and Glynis have been wonderful at looking after me and the Southerners CC guys are fun. However I live on my own in this flat and work on my own on this flat. Mummy sends regular texts, some London friends email, others pop up on MSN and of couse I can always vent out here. The adjunct of feeling lonely and more than a little sorry for myself is to warp my perspectives a little on my job and life and so forth. I have had precisely one brief and largely unsatisfactory relationship in twenty-eight years, and that ended the morning after we won back the Ashes. I draw all sorts of tacit conclusions from this statistic which are too trite even for me to write about. Now we're about to lose the Urn back, which in a way is a small milestone of personal and romantic disappointment to be passed.

Dry your eyes though. Happily enough I have been channeling some of this angst more effectively of late. I spent a couple of days reading a range of interesting relevant literature in the State Library of Victoria and the University of Melbourne Library. I have been going for 10km runs around the Albert Park lake, which is about two laps of the Grand Prix track. That takes the F1 drivers about 2 mins 50 seconds and takes me 47 mins and 40 seconds on a going day. Tomorrow is the Perth Test. But tomorrow is also T-Day. T standing for Troy, my new personal trainer, who at considerable expense is going to whip me into shape. When I lost weight two years ago I did two-thirds of the job and was pretty pleased with myself. After all, I had been BIG. But with one thing and another I didn't get that last third off. I didn't finish the job. Now, with the help of Troy, it is time to shift the flab that remains. I have a fantastic pair of manboobs which may ultimately require surgical correction but I do have to get as much fat as possible off the hard way first. Teeth-wise I'm still waiting on the list for orthognathic treatment at the Eastman Dental and open my emails every day hoping for news of an appointment. In the meantime I will get the fangs and stumps cleaned and whitened at one of the myriad clinics down here.