My colleague Dick Roberts’ blog yesterday was titled ‘Forget The Rugby For A Bit, The Grass Is Growing’. Great advice Dick and, as usual, you are pointing our customers at some fab deals and machines – (MD Tondu Wheeled Strimmer? total bargain). However, let’s be honest it’s very hard to forget the rugby when it’s IN YOUR FACE 24/7.
One of our local pubs, The Gifted Child, has got seriously involved, having installed three new TV screens and is offering what must be the most middle-class rugby evenings going, with special offers on prosecco – the rugby players drink of choice – ‘world cuisine’ menus and half-price carafes of Picpoul De Pinet (so ‘in’ right now it hurts). It’s getting awfully Hugh Finicky-Whippingboy everywhere around here. You can’t get a bacon sandwich within a two mile radius that hasn’t been made with artisan sourdough at £3 a slice and pigs lovingly reared on specially imported grass by Josh, an ex-marketing executive who’s gone back to nature. It’s all quinoa and cuttlefish up our high street, washed down with coconut water and craft beer and with the amount of game being consumed in the local Gastropubs, I’m amazed there are any wood pigeons left! Not that I mind that much; I mean I’m a posh nosh girl through and through – although I was just thinking that a certain supermarket may have stretched the language a little far recently by referring to a packet of 8 chocolate-chip Brioche rolls as ‘essential’.
Nice, yes. Essential? NO! Get a grip.
And yet, there I was yesterday, sitting alongside several of of our local Scrummy mums and Boden bedecked Boho creatives, including one very charming young woman called Keela, who is a New Zealand ex-pat, a graphic designer and has more tattoos than a premiership footballer. We sat there, all tension and Chanel No5, admiring the tenacity and skill of the All-Blacks, with at least one or two of us clearly trying very hard not to scream “Come on, smack him one and rip his arms off” at the tops of our RP voices, and the others trying not to think too much about muscly thighs, while gently sipping Italian bubbles and nibbling on ‘pan-fried sustainable Tarakihi goujons with mango salsa and couscous.
In fact, to be honest, my local area has generally gone rugby mad… and I don’t mind a bit of bulky muscled 15 a side action on the big screen, in much the same way as those delightfully dramatic premier league footballing chaps keep me amused with their perpetual falling over and pretending to be hurt. I’m a fan of sport but a rugger girl if it comes to the crunch…as it so often does in Rugby Union.
And the Oscar goes to…
But all this is at a time when the real sports drama of the moment, in my opinion, is being played out on the Tennis courts of the world with GB actually in a final with a chance of winning for the first time since the 30s.
There is no contest in my mind. Tennis is always going to be number 1, and, to be honest, even from a garden machinery perspective, the finish on the centre court at Wimbledon has Twickers or Wemblers beaten hands down.
So Dick, although I won’t forget the rugby, my lawn being in great condition for once, I may well put it to the back of my mind in late November when GB play the final against Belgium – the spiritual home of the ‘essential’ chocolate eclair.
For me the only thing that is essential is that we win. It would be an awful thing to fall at the final hurdle. And in the meantime, I guess a tad more rugby and prosecco won’t hurt… well not me anyway. See ya! Holly
