Day four: Those dark satanic mills

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!¹
Relax, I'm a qualified cricket umpire.²

Unless I am sadly mistaken (or perhaps just mistakenly sad), this will be the first Test series decided by non-precipitative cloud cover since Zimbabwe beat Pakistan in 1998 when the final Test was fogged out.

It's not a question of whether Australia can do something miraculous on Monday to snatch victory. England will not choke from here. Not this England eleven (plus sub[G.Pratt]).

Sunday night, there was only one way to start psyching myself up for the inevitable transfer of ownership of the Ashes - TV sound off, music on. In particular, that annual orgy of Upper-Class Twittery, Saturday's Last Night of the Proms. And most particularly, the climactic sequence of "Rule Brittania", "Jerusalem", and "God Save The Queen". Here's the link to the audio-on-demand at BBC Online, cued up to the relevant spot.

Midwinter-Midwinter points for Sunday: 2 pts - Andrew Flintoff; 1 pt - Matthew Hoggard. Progress tally shortly.

¹ from "Jerusalem" by William Blake
² from "Relax I'm a qualified cricket umpire" by Cameron Bruce and Steve Abbott.