Cricket cheats and an Easter cheat.

Hello Dear Blog Reader
So sorry that it almost two  months since I posted anything, but the days just seems to fill up with things to do and they are going past so rapidly that it is confronting to realise the sun is now in the Northern Hemisphere and we are less than ninety days away from the shortest day of the year.
I did intend to write about the disgraceful behaviour of some of our test cricketers. Appalling!
However, and I can't say we don't deserve it,  a lot of people, mainly non Australians, are now a saying that everyone in the team is guilty and that they all should be sacked.
Please remember that Fav du Plessy was found guilty of ball tampering twice. He is the captain of the South African Test team.
Vernon Philander was found guilty of ball tampering once. He opens the bowling for South Africa.
What the Australians did was deplorable and inexcusable but they owned up straight away. Du Plessy has never admitted either of his offences and has never apologised.
To those who say other Australian players must have been in the know, do they also believe no other South Africans knew what Du Plessy or Philander were doing. Or the England players when Mike Atherton was caught tampering with the ball. Or the Pakistanis when Imran Khan and later on Afridi were tampering with the ball?
Anyhow, I will stop there and comer back to cricket cheats another time, when I am less emotionally fragile about my favourite sport.
Now I will do some blog cheating of my own and post a story about Easter that I just wrtote on Facebook.
It is the only was I will get a blog post completed before the end of March.
It is about FAKE EASTER. That is when Easter comes a day before it actually happens.

Two months ago I noticed that my Collins 2018 Diary has designated Saturday, March 29, as Easter Sunday. I immediately e-mailed the publisher of the Collins Diary to point out that Easter starts on Easter Sunday, which is the start of Easter Week. Easter Saturday comes seven days later, at the end of Easter week, which this year is on April 7.

Within an hour, I received a reply from some responsible responder at the publishing company to say that they referenced the website of the Federal Government's Department of Home Affairs for all dates pertaining the Public Holidays in Australia.

So there!

I checked the link and it was correct. The Australian government is telling us that Easter Saturday falls on the day before Easter actually begins on Easter Sunday.
I replied that just because the Federal Government got it wrong there was no need for their respected company to fall into the same error.

Two months later I am still awaiting their reply. Of course I could have provided them with my mother's irrefutable logic when in my boyhood I claimed immunity for my misdeeds because, "My friend did it, too."

"If your friend chopped his hand off with a tomahawk would you do it, too?" would be her devastating retort.

So now I have written to the Minister for Homeland Affairs, Mr Peter Dutton, telling him to get his public holidays sorted out correctly. After all, how long has Easter Saturday been a public holiday? Answer. Never, ever! And it cannot possibly come BEFORE Easter begins on Easter Sunday.

The 2016 Census, flawed as it may have been, told us that more that 50% of Australians have no religious beliefs. As this percentage will probably continue to increase, until we are all scared to death by a major world conflict, it is possible that one day we will no longer use Christian Feast Days to designate public holidays. Remembering of course that all of our holidays originally started out as Holy Days.

Christmas is already under threat. More and more people refer to it as the Holiday Season.
Perhaps, Easter will one day dress down to become Fruit Bun Friday and Chocolate Egg Sunday.
However, until that sad day arrives, as we are using Christian terminology, we should get it right.

Easter starts on Easter Sunday and Easter Week finishes seven days later on Easter Saturday.
The week before Easter Week is Holy Week, so those blockbuster Easter Thursday and Easter Saturday football matches that Bruce McAvaney and his commentating mates gush over are really on Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday.

I know a lot of people could not care less about this matter, but it seems rather ridiculous to be naming days as Easter days before Easter has even started. It would be ike having New Year's Eve the day after Boxing day.

The only people who are into an earlier arrival of Easter are Coles, Woolworths and other retailers who started selling hot cross buns and Easter eggs one week after New year's Day.

Happy Easter to all family and friends. And remember that chocolate eggs consumed on Easter Sunday contain no calories, no fat and are very high in fibre.