Men (well, Ok, TROLL) and quilting #1

(This is the first instalment of my experiences when mixing Troll and sewing, believe me there is more to come...)

For those of you who don't know about what keeps me busy (other than singing, keeping Mini fed (and Troll when he decides to turn up), brahma breeding and avoiding housework) I sew. Not your everyday making clothes, mending clothes or fiddling-around-with-curtains-and-cushions sort of sewing (although I can do that sort of thing it bores me beyond description), but rather more your embroidery and quilting side of things. Although a fair number of people seem to find it baffling, and wonder what on earth I could get out of it, my sewing is something I couldn't be without - aside from the sheer relaxation of doing it, badly needed when Mini's depredations have left me in a particularly acute state of teeth-gritting rage, it's something I've always done. As soon as I was old enough not to endanger myself and others by being given access to scissors and needle (in truth probably a bit before that, but my Nanna liked to live dangerously) my grandmother thrust a needle into my pudgy paw and I was hooked. Childe Angevin's baby feet were on the path well trodden by previous generations of Angevin womenfolk and examples of my work were soon littering the house and those of my friends. Various charities who were the usual recipients of Angevin Family donations received items as my skills developed under the Stalinist tutelage of Nanna And The Great-Aunts.... you get the picture.

Now, Troll cannot understand this and despite the Grande-Troll doing a bit of dressmaking and knitting herself, has zero empathy with it. Note: Troll doesn't have any equivalent hobbies of his own and doesn't apparently feel the need for any so this might just be 'him' - the jury is still out on that one. The Troll lack of hobby-empathy MIGHT also be partially because the Grande-Troll, despite not actually being very good at said dressmaking and having less colour sense than your average woodlouse, used nevertheless to attempt to make clothes for Childe Troll. Even now the mention of a particularly strident homemade pair of purple dogtooth tweed trousers (this was the 70's) the nine-year-old Troll was forced to sport in the throbbing metropolis of style that is Sutton Coldfield is enough to give him the shudders. A few years ago I lived in dread of having battered parcels turning up at Chateau Angevin when the Afghans rejected the stream of repulsive jumpers we'd donated to them following attempts on the Grande-Troll's part to dress Mini for me. You can sort of understand Troll might be a bit suspicious of home-sewing given this background BUT after 22 years of living with me you'd think he'd also realise I'm not about to follow the Grande-Troll's lead and insist he wears something like, say, a mauve Wallace and Gromit jumper I've kindly made him (believe me, I am not overestimating what the woman is capable of - she'd make him something like that tomorrow were she asked). Everybody who comes to the house appreciates my embroideries... but somehow these bypass what serves as Troll's sense of aesthetics and he usually mutters something uncomplimentary about the place looking like something from Little House on the Prairie. I long ago gave up and just got on with doing my own thing. Cosy tales one hears of couples 'doing hobbies together' is just never going to happen at Chateau Angevin unless Troll finds something I can sew which he can also eat...

Anyway, to get back to the point, I'm in truth a better embroiderer than quilter, largely owing to more time spent on it - but following a major clear up of UFOs (Unfinished Fabric Objects for the uninitiated) on the embroidery front, and the resulting rather-larger-than-expected bill from Graham (not Graham-the-Veg-Man but Graham the lovely framer who lets me play with all the mounts etc. so I get exactly what I want) Troll threw an unprecedented Troll Stomp and I deemed it a diplomatic move to divert my attention to my quilting for a bit and hide my stash of embroidery materials where Troll can't see them. Above-average raids on the Troll Wallet are events which tend to loom large in the Troll memory banks, so keeping a low profile vis a vis embroidery for a long old while is the only option.

It has to be said my decision was also aided by the fact that the English side of Chateau Angevin is almost fully recovered from the effects of the July 2007 floods, when most of my ground floor was a foot-and-a-half underwater. For those who don't know (or to whom indeed the thought wouldn't have occurred in a million years) even with my extensive collection of embroidery materials, quilting takes up a lot more space than embroidery; space which just wasn't available when we were trying to live in half the house whilst SuperNige and Jay-the-Pikey (our superb and cuddly builders who are almost part of the family now) dealt with repairing the flood damage in the other half. Aside from my kitchen, music room, study and utility room, also damaged were a lot of things in the old milking parlour which had been stored there whilst we slowly renovate the farmhouse from the near-derelict mess it was when we bought it in August 1998; unfortunately the casualties on this occasion included my grandmother's quilting frame. Now, putting aside the purely sentimental value of having something my grandmother used, this wasn't an entirely bad thing - the frame had been home-made by my grandfather, mended and amended on many occasions, and even when fully operational could most charitably be described as Heath-Robinson in conception and design. Thankfully my insurers were both overworked and deeply ignorant as regards quilting so I managed to blag enough wonga out of them to replace the old frame with an all-singing, all-dancing brand-new frame all the way from Salt Lake City. Whey hey.. you can imagine the excitement and girly squealing when that little baby turned up... only to be replaced by rather more of a choked gurgle when I realised the thing was flatpacked for home assembly.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not a total incompetent when it comes to flatpacks; I've been known to assemble the odd item of furniture unaided, out of necessity seeing as I am on my own most of the time. I've got the assembly time down to about 15 minutes as regards the flatpacked chicken houses I get from Simon's woodyard, with the secret aid of Troll's new electric drill which I am strictly-forbidden-to-touch. (What the Troll doesn't see the Troll doesn't stomp about). But to compare the assembly of this quilting frame to a Simon chicken house is a bit like comparing making the toy from a Kinder egg to assembling a lifesize operational Starship Enterprise - it takes the issue of flatpack to a whole new dimension. Perhaps this is some sort of Mormon joke, but the instruction booklet alone was about half an inch thick AND, to add the final touch of gibber-inducing panic IT CAME WITH AN INSTRUCTION CD.

I was in a dilemma... I probably COULD, given time, Mini out of the house for the afternoon, a glass of decent red and a couple of hours when my friends and family decide to leave me alone vis a vis the telephone, have done it myself. With the addition of a lot of swearing, no doubt. BUT... as you can imagine, this frame is not cheap and if I, in the worst case scenario, cocked up badly and broke the thing, I would be more likely to be up for the Nobel Chemistry Prize than I would for getting the dosh for a replacement out of Troll - who would doubtless regard the event as God's judgement (albeit emanating from the Mormons) on my naughty, lotus-eating sewing activities. Even a casual flick through the instruction booklet indicated you needed a First in Mechanical Engineering with a bit of experience at the NASA Space Centre to stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting it right... what was a girl to do??

Inspiration struck. I might not have a space scientist on hand, but I do have a mildly autistic geophysicist who has an interest in keeping his stomach full and an inability to fulfil that task by himself. Hehe... TROLL could do it on his return from his Algerian Camp for Autistic Men (aka his workplace): it would give him the opportunity to be mildly patronising as he dons his I-Am-The-Great-Handyman persona (a role he adores) and, more importantly, mean if HE broke the frame he'd have the moral obligation to replace it. That, and the threat of no meals until he did. Thus, as I waved Troll and Mini-Troll off to France I had the satisfaction of knowing that, buried under the mountain of food, in the back of the Aquatic Passat II were the components of my new frame (WELL - HE NEEDED SOMETHING TO DO IN THE EVENINGS WHEN MINI'S IN BED DIDN'T HE?).

What a result: -
1. I get my lovely new frame, and already have the necessary all ready to start hand quilting a project when I get to France at the weekend;
2. Troll gets the satisfaction of feeling he is a Wonderful Understanding Provider for His Feckless Wife's Silly Pasttimes;
3. I get the satisfaction of knowing Troll is gainfully employed and Doing Something Useful rather than reading the ghastly science-fiction novels in which he would otherwise be indulging (or shooting aliens/monsters in whatever foul PC game he's currently enthralled by on his laptop)
4. Troll knows I know he has Done Something Useful and thus Feckless Wife has no excuses not to make him his favourite meals.
5. I have a guarantee that if the thing gets broken in the construction I don't have to 'do without'. The Troll ego will simply not allow him to be defeated by it, a replacement will be bought and there'll be no build up of quilting UFOs.

Everybody a winner... somebody should make me head of the United Nations.
(Although this would be Troll's nightmare as I'd have the world quilting in no time, with the exception of the Grande-Troll - there are only so many offensive colour combinations a body can stand in a lifetime).

[All this having been said... it occurs to me WHAT IF Troll doesn't pull his finger out and get the frame assembled before I get to France?? Perhaps as an insurance policy I should get the mauve wool and Wallace and Gromit pattern now?]

R.I.P. Sebastian

Unfortunately this week saw the demise of my beautiful blue-columbian boy, Sebastian. We aren't sure what happened to him, but we suspect either heart attack or stroke, because we found him just curled up in the front garden, looking as if he'd just gone to sleep.




Normally, although this is obviously sad, I wouldn't make a huge fuss about it because, to quote my father, "If you've got livestock, you've got deadstock" and the passing of various chooks (whether naturally or whether en route to the Aga) is viewed as very much part of the whole cycle of life, or in more accurately in this case, death.

However, Sebastian was special. Weighing in at around 5kg he was one of my heavier birds and in style everything a brahma should be. He'd hurt his leg last autumn and over the winter I'd been babying him more than a little (the look on my vet's face when I brought a 5kg cockerel into his surgery isn't something I'm going to forget for a long while) and he was slowly getting better. Just lately he'd been showing more of an interest in his 'girls', his limp was almost gone, and we were living in hope we'd have some little Sebastians by the end of the season. All hopes now destroyed... his girls are now assimilated into Gordon's harem and Barry (White - because of his deep crow), my huge black brahma, and his ladies are now in the front garden being spoilt with first refusal on the kitchen scraps. I'm going to miss Sebastian, though - his gentleness, slightly lopsided stroll up whenever I was outside, and his lovely confederate grey cresting brightening up the space outside my kitchen. He is now residing under a new rosebush and lavender bed and I'll think of him everytime I look at it...

On a brighter note, chicks from the latest hatch started popping out today. Although however many times it happens it's quite exciting, this batch is especially so because these are from unlabelled eggs - Mini thought he'd 'help out' a few weeks ago and came back clutching a bowl with lots of eggs he'd collected from various pens but had forgotten to label them. [Note, when Mini 'helps' it's usually a prelude to either some act of lunacy or disaster so I suppose I should be grateful it wasn't worse]. The result of his labours today is a bit like 'chick pot luck'. Although some types are immediately obvious, other brahma colours are not hugely different when in chick form so I'm having some fun trying to guess what is what.

Aside from chick-tombola, planting roses on the chicken grave, and little bits of general daily domestica not even I can avoid doing, so far my 'down time' is absolute heaven. I've been able to sit around reading and quilting without the continual interruptions necessary to bail Mini out of whatever new mess he's got himself into (usually chicken, goose and/or poo related and therefore requiring immediate bathtime) or to satisfy Troll's seemingly continual requests for sustenance. Much as I love my child, it IS nice sometimes to have time to be 'me' again rather than 'Mummy'!

The news from France is also good, thank heavens. Troll has so far managed to heat up selections from the food-stack without either blowing up the cooker or killing himself and others, Mini has managed not to skim the upper layers of skin off his legs as he indulges in his favourite game of lying on top of his plastic truck and tobogganing down the road outside our house, and the house is, apparently, still standing. Perhaps I'll kick the pair of them over the Channel more frequently!

Hahaha bleddy ha ....

... at the looks on the faces of the 'judges' of Britain's Got Talent when Susan Boyle opened her gob and belted out I Have a Dream on the show last week.

I absolutely LOATHE reality shows and things like Britain's Got Talent as a rule as I think everybody's time would be better spent getting off their butts and DOING SOMETHING more positive (either for themselves or for the community, I don't care which) as opposed to necking back cans of lager and packets of crisps and watching a bunch of usually third-rate bods lining up for potential future exploitation on TV. In short, most of the time all the show proves is that Britain HASN'T got talent, well, at least if we have it hasn't been prepared to turn up for the auditions. The show as I whole I would suggest is brazenly narcissistic, adds absolutely nothing to our lives and is a symptom of the generally pointless and navel-gazing attitude which seems to have infected just about everything over the past couple of decades in my humble opinion.

For Susan Boyle, however, I am prepared to make an exception. Here is a lady who through no fault of her own has had to deal with the ridicule of her community for the entirety of her 47 years on the planet; reading between the lines it seems she's had an extremely tough time of it. And yes, she is not the most aesthetically pleasing bundle of humanity to have crossed the Angevin TV screen it has to be said. However, and unlike the vast majority of participants in this sort of show, she DOES have talent, and, speaking with my singing-teacher hat on, could be even better if she got some decent training. A fact which even the mostly ignorant, jeering and prejudiced studio audience managed to recognise within 10 seconds of Susan singing as they did a consummate volte face and changed from resembling the crowd at the Roman Colisseum waiting with keen anticipation for the 'thumbs down' humiliation of a protagonist, to giving Susan a standing ovation which was richly deserved. The look on that ghastly ape Simon Cowell's face was worth a thousand words, although I note only Piers Morgan had the grace to actually look ashamed of himself and it took Amanda Holden to vocalise the guilt they all SHOULD have felt for the oh-so-obvious prejudice they'd seen when they'd just looked at Susan rather than listening to her first.

And this, in my opinion, is Susan's greatest achievement; whilst not taking away anything from her singing, the naked courage and composure she showed in dealing with the overt, crude jeering of both judges and audience deserves every award which can be thrown at her. In being 'different' it's obvious she's had to endure a level of abuse which would probably make our more tender younger people these days head off to find the pills, gin and razors after about 10 minutes. She's experienced it all her life and has obviously managed to retain both a sense of humour and develop a level of quiet dignity which even I find awe-inspiring.

Is it too much to ask that this could not just be an individual flash in the pan and that it could be the start of us, as a society, having a 'wake-up call', to quote Amanda Holden. Because there's no doubt we need it - just how many people, like Susan, have been nursing an exception talent of some sort which has been completely overlooked because they don't fit the bill with regard to what we've been brainwashed into believing is 'beauty', 'camera-presence' or whatever label you want to put on it? Does everybody really have to have the perfect nose/teeth/skin/figure before any talents they might possess can be considered? What a pathetic waste if we continue down the road of saying 'Yes, they DO'. I'll use the usual example given whenever this is discussed and point out Roosevelt, wheelchair bound, would undoubtedly not even been considered as a candidate for the lowermost rung of government had he been born later, into the media-obsessed 'modern' world. And he is by far from being the only example.

Ultimately, it's all about 'respect'; a commodity sadly lacking most of the time. Had Susan Boyle been shown more respect during her life, despite her conventionally unattractive appearance, she could have developed her talent and been given a chance to fulfil her dream well before her current 47 years. Had Susan Boyle been given more respect she might not have had to admit she's 'never been kissed' (although what that has to do with her singing is beyond me) and somebody out there would have seen her qualities and loved her for them. Had Susan Boyle been given more respect she would not have had to expose herself to crude humiliation on national TV to get her voice heard. Respect is the most fundamental and precious gift we can give to another human being.

How many more Susan Boyles are out there? I guess we will never know unless we all give ourselves a mental kick in the pants and start looking around us with fresh eyes. A profound thought indeed for Low Sunday.

Old people... again

Yes, it's back to familiar territory again I'm afraid folks....

Troll is taking Baby Troll to the French manifestation of Chateau Angevin tomorrow to give me a much-needed break from the latter's general stroppiness and attitude. (Freedom, at least for five days, beckons heheh.) Naturally, being Troll, he can't be expected to feed himself adequately, much less serve up something which isn't stuffed to the gunwales with ingredients writ large on the Baby Troll Banned Substances List, so this afternoon found us taking on Waitrose in all it's Saturday glory. I'd already cooked some home-made ready meals for the pair of them, so this was really just stocking up on a few can't-do-withouts for the journey etc.

Unsurprisingly, given the demographic of the town and surrounding area, there were a fair number of older citizens trundling around, who, judging by their dress and general demeanour, were of the more well-heeled variety. None of your council-home inhabitants here, oh no... Most of them seemed to be behaving themselves for once, and I thought my blood pressure had escaped unscathed; BUT...

Baby Troll, as is his wont, demanded to go to the coffee shop and indulge in his favourite pasttime of sitting on a barstool scoffing a sandwich and pretending he isn't anything to do with the deeply uncool pair sitting on the table close by. As he hadn't been particularly appalling for the previous half an hour I didn't feel I could deny him on this occasion, so there we were, in the queue, clutching our paninis and Bottle Green fizzies WHEN...

... a reasonably well dressed and stylish old lady interrogated the serving-muppet regarding the hot cross buns she and her invertebrate husband had on their trays:

Old lady Would you be able to toast our hot cross buns for us?
Serving Muppet No, I'm afraid we don't do that
Old Lady (in a doubtful, disappointed tone) Mmmmm

All of which is fairly innocuous... until you realise during this seemingly innocent exchange the creature had been SQUEEZING THE SAID HOT CROSS BUN with gay abandon. Muttering to itself, it then shamelessly removed said buns from said tray and replaced them, without even an apology or seeming SHRED of embarrassment, on the display. For once, gentle readers, I was absolutely gobsmacked - but regained my stride in a few seconds to mutter loudly 'Who will want those now they've been pawed over by you two?' Sadly, I was ignored, and the pair of them slithered off to a table adjacent to that at which Troll had been patiently ensconced with The Times.

Scampering over, I shrieked to Troll 'You'll never guess what I've just seen' and recounted every graphic detail of the the bun-molesting incident in my best I-Want-People-Nearby-To-Eavesdrop-On-This-Conversation tones. Which those sitting at the tables round about did... and these of course included the guilty bun-molesters themselves.

Now, had I been a guilty bun-molester, I would have been absolutely mortified to be treated in this manner. However, you have to remember these were OLD PEOPLE and did they thus show any sign of being embarrassed their filthy, selfish little actions had been spotted and were the subject of now-public discussion? Don't be daft - being OLD PEOPLE they obviously were holding firm to the belief their bus-pass gives them permanent membership of the Infallible Club and instead, they made it plain they felt *I* was the one at fault in exposing their nasty habits. Slurping down their tea, and making ready to slither off to continue their bun-molesting elsewhere they gave me a look which would have turned me to stone, had I not been innoculated by many years of educational torture at the hands of various Anglican nuns. I merrily wiggled my fingers at them with a coy 'tut tut'. Suffice it to say I don't think I'll be on their Christmas card list...

If that wasn't enough, Aquatic Passat II needed some juice for the Troll Twins epic journey to Dover tomorrow so therefore, an hour after the Waitrose Bun Incident, La Famille Angevin could be found at the local Shell garage; Troll doing what he is for and operating the diesel pump, and Baby Troll attempting to climb over the central console, gain the steering wheel and enact his current fantasy of being Lewis Hamilton, whilst I practised my thousand yard stare and clung on to the thought 'tomorrow they will be in France and I'll have some peace'. The fact there were a posse of bikers at the adjacent pump had sort of penetrated my cerebral cortex, but I wsan't really paying attention as they were of the middle-aged-serious-well-behaved-biker-out-for-a-sunny-afternoon's-ride sort of biker as opposed to the I'm-going-to-splat-myself-on-your-bonnet-after-trying-an-exhilerating-but-stupid-move-on-my-overpowered-wheels variety.

The peace was shattered when a shiny, leather-seat-ridden 'executive-mobile' pulled up behind the bikers and beeped them without apparent cause or reason. They weren't blocking the pumps, causing an obstruction or generally doing anything to warrant this behaviour so unsurprisingly the bikers gave their verdict to the driver in the time-honoured one-finger ritual and drove off, having just got back on their bikes from paying anyway. The shiny car stopped IN THE MIDDLE of the two pumps, effectively rendering one of them useless as far as other customers were concerned, and out got a creature which can only have been the result of some bizarre experiment in combining human and lizard DNA. Another old, well-heeled lady, in VERY EXPENSIVE drapey casuals, immobile bob, and immaculate maquillage, who had the air of greyhound-thin, I've-been-starving-myself-and-living-off-fags-and-hot-water-with-a-slice-of-lemon only a fashion model of 1960's vintage could hope to attain.

Again, was this vision at all embarrassed it had upset a group of people who were doing absolutely nothing wrong, and was selfishly taking up double the amount of amenities it required? Again, I regret to say, all it was capable of was staring down its aquline nose at me, slumped in the Aquatic Passat II next to it. I treated it to my best impression of my grandmother's famous 'I know you have dirty knickers on' look... with a flare of its nostrils Mrs Lizard then perused Troll. Who, not realising I'd already put the Angevin evil eye on it from the front seat, just stared back with his usual insouciance...

I've said it before and I'll say it again... how on EARTH can I be expected to wallop any semblance of manners and the notion you should treat your fellow human beings with respect and decency into Baby Troll when we have such glaring examples of the opposite behaviour - from those very people who have been infesting the world long enough to have become so good at the respect thing they can do it standing on their heads. For pity's sake OLD PEOPLE, sharpen up your act. You cannot sit on your skinny butts whinging about what a state the country is in and then go and do exactly what selfish, crappy thing you like, without thought to anybody else. Have some shame.

Blog break...

Regular readers of this considerably-younger-and-female homage a Victor Meldrew, such as they are, will note there hasn't been a new post for a few months. This is for a variety of reasons, some of them significant, some of them completely trivial, which I lack the inclination, time and energy to bore you with here. Doubtless some of the events will crop up in subsequent posts, but that depends on what surfaces for me to rant about in the future. Suffice it to say, I'm back, ready to have a strop about whatever the latest bit of asinine crap to cross my path turns out to be... and let's face it, there's an awful lot around on which I could base a tantrum just now....

However, it's Good Friday, I have some decent food and a bottle of vino waiting for me.... normal service will resume later....

It's a hard life....

... but somebody has to write a blog, sitting in the November sunshine with a great cup of latte on the terrace of a good hotel, watching the sun sparkling on incredibly blue sea, whilst thinking of her friends sitting freezing their butts off in the greyness of an autumn UK. Hehehehehe, I'm not REALLY rubbing it in, guys....

Yes, I've finally made it to Malta, and it's like I've never been away - although I was beginning to think I'd never get here when our plane was delayed at Heathrow. Ghastliness over, and once in the air, the Maltese pilot, true to form, put his foot down (probably ignoring all traffic control instructions) and got us to Malta in record time, only ten minutes later than the scheduled arrival. The joy at experiencing once more the wonders of Maltese roads and crazy driving was slightly tempered by not seeing the familiar converted RAF Nissen hut housing the 'Malta Rabbit Club' because it looks as if it's been pulled down. As I can remember this being there for as long as I've been coming to the island, it was a sad loss indeed....

All this having been said, it's so good to be here again. Now... to find where the Taffia are hanging out today to watch the Wales-South Africa match...

Winning and losing

Some of you will know one of the enduring passions in La Vie Angevin has been rugby... not just any old rugby, though - WELSH rugby. For this deeply unfeminine interest, you can blame my lunatic Welsh grandfather: my absolute first memory was sitting on his lap and being thrown around in a manner the child protection services would almost certainly find dangerous these days whilst Grancha screamed at the Welsh performance, good or bad, on TV. The potential for toddler-sick was not considered - The Child had to be initiated into Wales' one true religion, and, by Duw, he was not going to shirk his responsbility; not even the threats of my Nanna ( 'you'll scare The Child, mun') were going to hold him back. I, Childe Angevin, far from being scared, loved every minute - far, far more exciting than going on the playground swings, with the added opportunity for learning new and forbidden words when Grancha forgot himself from time to time. Which he always did, and which were always flagged up by the clucking coming from the kitchen when it happened, where Nanna was usually employed making the half-time tea, sandwiches and Viscount biscuits and avoiding the noise.

In my street, you didn't need the Radio Times to find out when Wales were playing - you could hear the old man howling bilingual imprecations, in his fine Welsh tenor, from several hundred yards away. Afterwards, under pretext of taking me (and the dog) for a walk in my buggy, there was the inevitable post-mortem in the local (known as 'Little Wales' to any English who encroached on our enclave) with the other geriatric would-be coaches, all of whom, of course, said the team was 'just right' and EXACTLY the one they would have picked if they had been in charge (if Wales had won) or called 'English sabotage' and demanded the head and vitals of the management (if they hadn't). I regret to say my taste for post-match pints probably stems from this too... inevitably The Child was bought off with quarter pints of India Ale and a pasty as part of the ritual.

Much to the disgust of my English father, Grancha's early indoctrination won out despite the lures of English culture all around me, and standing freezing my butt off in the pouring rain watching various Welsh teams at various grounds has been a pretty much constant feature of life ever since. So.. yesterday found me wrapped up like a mummy at the Madjeski Stadium in Reading, screaming imprecations at the Ospreys whilst they attempted to beat London Irish and get through to the semis of the EDF Anglo-Welsh cup. Possibly rather tactlessly, I was in the company of my Plastic Paddy mate, Joe, who was manfully doing his best not to shout TOO loudly for the Irish because I'm bigger than he is and can do better Chinese burns too...

Well, unfortunately, the Ospreys, despite my almost continual and very loud directions from the stands, lost. The bunch of women. However, they managed not to lose by too much, got themselves a bonus point as a result and thus made it through to the semis anyway on the back of their previous good performances. So... winners and losers as it says in the title. The Irish supporters were all happy because they'd got a good win, so there was much merriment in the bar afterwards (although sadly no pasties).. and indeed in the shuttle bus taking us all back to Reading Station (Who IS John, by the way?). How unlike the situation were very tipsy, mixed coaches of round-ball supporters being carried around... that, unfortunately would closely resemble Armageddon, I suspect. Another proof that rugby is miles better than the so-called sport of football, should any more be required.

Roll on March when the Aquatic Passat will be forced into service on the road to Coventry and the Ricoh Stadium: the Ospreys this time facing Gloucester. Now... if the boys manage to pull their collective fingers out this time AND the Cardiff Blues manage to overcome Northampton we are facing an all-Welsh EDF final in Twickenham, the cradle of what passes for rugby in England. I bet my Dad is spinning at the prospect, but Grancha and all your pals, whereever you are, save some India Ale for me and wait until I get there before discussing whether Little Shane is as good as Gerald Davies, please... A pasty or two wouldn't go amiss either.