Once upon a time my girls and I decided that we would like to go to the cricket.  This is probably not true; what we decided was that we liked some boys who wanted to go to the cricket.  Except they called it criggit. Because: Aussies.  So we decided we would follow those fine fellows to watch this game of gentlemen.

But not without refreshments.

So we got prepared.

Two nights before we got about a dozen oranges and froze them: check.  The night before we got the vodka: check. I worked in a pharmacy at the time, and we sold syringes back then, so I got us a couple, for injecting.  Not us, the oranges.  With vodka.  Seemed like a sound idea at the time, as the fun police at the MCG had recently come up with some cockamamie rule that said that you could no longer take your blue and white foam esky full of VB cans into the criggit.  Some nonsense about drunkeness, or too many rounds of OzzieOzzieOzzie I suspect, either that or the newly fashionable Mexican Wave, replete with the throwing up of all manner of debris as you ‘waved’.  Like Melbourne’s version of Cyclone Tracey.

It took much longer than anticipated to fill up the oranges, as the only syringes we had in stock were tiny gauge 1ml ones suitable for diabetics and junkies.  So two shots of vodka per orange equalled 60 injections.  Per orange.  After a while our fruit resembled pithy citrus sieves, and our voddy was leaking all over the bench, and not into our mouths as planned.

So we slurped it up and turned our attention to the watermelon.  I suspect we may have been less than expert, and more than tipsy as we proceeded to bore a tiny hole into the melon, tip the fluid in with a funnel and, prepare to freeze it.  Again, a little* ended up on the bench and in our bellies.  The watermelon didn’t fit in the freezer, so we smashed it open and lapped it up like puppies at the bowl.  We were nothing if not conservationists.

The only fruit left were some scungy tomatoes at the bottom of the crisper.  Remember we were uni students, and were it not for Vodka, Lime and Sodas we all would have had scurvy long ago.  Fruit was not our thing.  Some bright spark** said, “Yay, Bloody Marys” so we valiantly went about volumising with vodka.  The bright spark had the idea of also injecting a bit of Worchestershire Sauce and Tabasco.  For authenticity.  You may suspect this plan also failed.  If so, you are a genius, and correct.  So we pashed the mangled mess of tomato, vodka and condiments off the bench top.  At some point we decided that criggit was a most excellent sport, and eagerly awaited the morn, where we would arise, fresh as daisies and smelling twice as good, dress in our finest hats and summery frocks and amble off to the match.  Graceful and genteel  we stumbled off to bed and didn’t awake until the phone rang mid-morning, with one of our beaus asking where we were, and wondering when we would be joining them.

Even with our jangling heads and husks of voices we managed to answer in the refrain known to all fans of the criggit when the man in white makes an error against your country:           “Fuuuuckkkk offfff”.

Those boys were ne’er seen, nor heard of again.  Good riddance.  We’d been burnt by The Ashes.

*whole bottle

**me