Tea is the key

Australia's bloody miles away from England. They're in a different time zone. We all have to find ways of coping with the irregular hours.

We made the mistake of vaguely complaining about this to an Australian friend the other day. It elicited no sympathy whatsoever. The response was something along the lines of: 'Oh boo hoo. You'll have to stay up late for once. Every bloody sporting event's on during the night here.'

Once he'd finished, he offered some advice. His frankly revolutionary technique is to have two sleeps. One from early evening until start of play and then another later on. We're not trying it, because we're not one for this 'waking up' thing that people often talk about. His second ploy rang true, however and it's catchy: Tea is the key. This is the kind of thinking we can latch on to.

That's our Rhinolast mug in the picture. It's chipped and naff, but it says 'Rhinolast' on it and it's bright yellow. After about ten years, we only just went to the trouble of finding out what Rhinolast was. Disappointingly it's a nasal spray for allergies. We've no time for allergies or their treatments. It's a sign of weakness. If you're allergic to stuff, you'd die out in the wild.

We wouldn't die out in the wild because somebody would look after as through pity. Our abject uselessness is a survival mechanism.