Oh! It is the most exciting time of the year! It is "The Tashes" time! You may wonder what "The Tashes" are? Would you like to know? Of course you would like to know, so I will tell you! In fact, I am very much bursting with excitement to tell you! The Tashes is the cricket series of matches between us Aussie teddy bears versus the English teddy bears! The name is a merger of "Teddy" and "The Ashes", and I am sooo happy that I was picked to be a member of the Aussie Teddy team! It is quite a privilege to be a part of the team, you know. Ever since I was a little teddy and played for my local cricket club who was called:"Teddy Town Triers Cricket Club" or in abbreviated form: TTTCC, I have always dreamed to be playing for the national teddy team. I am a ted batsbear. When I was little, my ted mum used to remind me to eat lots of carrot cake and big helpings of carrots so as I would be able to see bright and clearly the ball as it was being bowled at me by the bowler. Oh, my mum used to make the bestest ever carrot cake! It would be a bit moist to eat and had a very nice frosting on the top. Sometimes, she would even make little carrots out of icing and colour them orange and place them on top of the cake to make it look even more fun! I also use to eat a lot of coleslaw because that had carrot in it too. I still like eating cheese sandwiches and drinking milk nowadays, because my mum told me that calcium makes healthy teddy bones which means my arm bones would be strong to hit the ball with the cricket bat a long way. Hmmm… well they would be healthy if teddies did have bones, but as we are all fluffy inside perhaps it won't help?? Well, I still think it is a great excuse to enjoy eating cheese and drinking milk just in case it helps! I know for a fact that eating carrots does help teddy glass bead eyes to see better!!

 The national Aussie teddy cricket has the best colours in the whole wide world! No…we don't wear green and gold, instead we wear grey fur. It is quite fashionable you know. The English teddy team wears brown fur as their national cricketing outfit. It is great that we wear different colours, to make the different teams more distinguishable on the field. Instead of tossing a coin to decide who gets the choice of batting or fielding first, the teddy umpire throws up a jar of honey in the air. Then one of the captains either calls out "Bounce" or "Burst". These calls relate to whether the honey jar stays intact and just bounces on the ground, or if the jar lands abruptly on the ground and bursts open! We sort of hope at each time of the "toss of the honey jar" that the jar bounces instead of bursts because the field gets quite sticky with honey splattered all over the ground! Then Clarence and Carter the cleaning teddies would have to come in with their mops and try to clean up the sticky honey mess! I cam imagine the problem if the honey was spilt right where the batsteddies were standing! Just as they were going to make a run after hitting the ball, their little teddy paw feet would be brought to a very sticky and abrupt halt! And can you imagine (I really can you know!)  the kind of confusion which would result from a bowler sinking his feet into the honey if the toss had earlier taken place in the bowler's run up pitch area! The ball could fly out of his hand in any direction! A poor little unsuspecting fielding cricketer could be hit on the head by a wayward flying cricket ball, end up with a big bump on his teddy head, need a stretcher to be brought onto the ground by the teddy division of St. John's ambulance and he may need to go off to the teddy hospital for observation all because of the bump caused as a result of sticky honey!

Us teddies don't understand why there has to be "sledging" in cricket! English and Aussie teddy cricketers are all great friends! We all just chat together and have a great time on the field. We catch up on all the family and friends news whilst the teams are batting and fielding. Sometimes the times between balls being bowled go on seemingly endlessly because you don't want to miss the end of a conversation so we all wait until the chat is finished between two or more teddies. Of course, we all try to hit the ball well and make runs, or try to bowl the opposing team out, but whether we win, lose , go out for a duck or make a century, we just have lots and lots of fun together! It is the main reason that it is considered such an honour to be a member of the cricketing team, because it means you get to have a fun  5 days of being together as a team chatting to each other and the other team, playing a great type of game…and having such great lunches and afternoon teas! Wow! The food is so tasty and delicious! The teddy caterers always provide delicious food, such a party pies, mini quiches, crinkle cut chips, herb bread, ripe red tomatoes, crisp lettuce, grated carrot and cheese stick and other nice tasty goodies. We are also served up fruit salad of every imaginable type of fruit, sponges, pikelets, scones, little cakes, and butter biscuits! The food certainly keeps our energy levels up! Well, you would not want our teddy tummies to be growling and rumbling whilst batting, fielding, watching or bowling!

Well, I better go now and do some training for the upcoming cricket match. Some of my teddy friends who are bowlers were going to bowl eggs at me in the Kiosk so as they could practise their bowling method and I could have batting practice, but I advised them against this idea. I thought that the cracking of the eggs could make the Kiosk a bit messy, with yolks and egg shells everywhere! 

 

Until next time,

          Cheer on all the Aussie teddies and players in "The Tashes" and "The Ashes" cricket series!!

Your friend, Mr. Kiosk-Ted Strath

                       Also simply known as "Ted"!!