Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn - rugby

Saturday evening in New Zealand

2011-09-25T09:45:00+01:00

A lot of people have made out that having the rugby on in the morning is a bit of a pain for fans. I've been quite enjoying the matches so far. The last two weekends Fliss and I have rotated cooking a Canadian style breakfast to go with our morning rugby. This week was my turn:

[caption id="attachment_2438" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Enjoying adding the syrup."]Picture of bacon, pancakes, eggs and maple syrup.[/caption]

Although England have been really lucky with their group it was hearting to see much better game than the last outing. There were a few times when Romania threatened to put a ball over the line but it brought out the best in the England team. In the end though the match was one sided and England were able to start romping the tries in.

The France vs New Zealand promised to be a very well contested game for the first 10 minutes. However the All-Blacks soon asserted themselves over France and pummelled them into submission. This bodes well for England as it puts of the inevitable All-Black confrontation until the end of the tournament (assuming we make it that far).

We're currently watching the Argentina vs Scotland which looks as though it will be the tightest of the lot so far.

Weekend Rugby

2011-09-19T13:14:00+01:00

While last weekend involved a hilarious last minute rush to get a proxied ITV player working while in Paris this weekends England game just involved getting up at 6.50 on a Sunday morning. As some have pointed out I am not yet a Dad so this early awakening on Sunday is an alien concept to me (although oddly I tend to wake up naturally early on the weekends compared to weekdays).

The game was very exciting from the start and Georgia's ability to maintain such a fast and aggressive pace for the whole game was pretty impressive. Although England got an early try and awful lot of the first half had me very worried about their discipline, especially with a sin-binning right on the cusp of half-time. The second half was a lot better and I was glad to see that once they got their discipline under control there was some very good flowing rugby and yielded a lot of tries for England. However Georgia kept challenging to the end so there was little let-up in the pressure.

It's been said that the English rugby team are slow starters who's game improves over the tournament. I have to hope this is the case as once we are out of the groups the games are going to get a lot tougher.

Mountains, valleys and the meaning of romance

2011-02-15T13:25:00+00:00

We spent the weekend in Wales on what has become an annual tradition of post-winter walking loosely organised around a couple of friends birthdays. The location changes every year but this year we were based in a hostel in the Snowdonia National Park.

By convention there are usually two walks, higher and lower. I opted for the lower walk to ensure I was back in time to catch England's crushing defeat of Italy in the Six Nations. Fliss decided to skip the higher walk in favour of climbing Snowdon with Lee. They made it with no major incidents although I suspect it will take a few days for muscles to reach full flexibility again, especially as there was no bath available for post-walk soaking at the hostel.

I walked to the local pub in Dolwyddenlan with a couple of the Scottish contingent to watch Wales dominate in their match. The banter with the locals was all in good humour and I was able to claim English neutrality for the whole game :-)

We sensibly had taken a couple of days of to make this a long weekend and spent Valentines day taking it in turns to level up Fliss' [STRIKEOUT:killing machine]profile in CoD. Fliss assures me it was a most romantic gesture on my part! Our one nod to the local economy on this hallmark holiday was to visit the local for a swift pint before they filled up with romantics enjoying a pub meal. We saw no reason to pay the inflated prices these "special" meals usually incur so I cooked a romantic meal myself. Romance on a budget, no reason to be contradictory concepts.

All downhill after the first climb

2010-03-21T08:57:00+00:00

Today I'm quite achey after Saturday morning's excursion to the top of Alderley Edge . Although the ride to the base of the climb was fairly easy the actual mile of steep ascent defeated me as well as the chain on Fliss' bike. By the time we got up to the Wizard Coffee shop we were both soaked through and looking forward to the promised "downhill all the way from here" back to Knutsford.

Unfortunately we couldn't get the chain on Fliss' bike working so she retired early via taxi to a nice warm bath while myself, Mufi and Daz continued on back via the predominately downhill route. I say predominately because there where still a number of rises we had climb as the landscape of Cheshire is still considerably more lumpy than the flat fenland that is my usual staple cycling experience. This wasn't helped by the occasional navigational snafu. The 10% incline was great to zoom down but not so much when we discovered we needed to go back up it to take the turn we had missed.

By the time we made it back to the house we'd managed 34 miles and some very soaked feet. The king size bath was a welcome end to the excursion.

The rest of the day was mainly concerned with the last three games of the 6 Nations. The Wales game was fantastic, all credit to the Scot's for saving themselves from the humiliation of the wooden spoon. It was also good to see England playing considerably better than they have been the last few days. It's a shame it wasn't enough to win but good that we held France to such a narrow lead. There was a mini party afterwards although no overly late nights as there was a preponderance of tiredness around.

Waterfalls

2009-11-23T14:44:00+00:00

We spend Saturday visiting the big smoke for a birthday party and house warming. For Graeme's birthday we frequented a cordoned off area of an Ausie Sports bar to watch the two Rugby international. England where predictably beaten although managed to hold onto their dignity up until the last twenty minutes when it all went to pot. To give the Scots their due though they did very well to hold (and finally beat) the Wallabies. After the game we repaired to Hackney for El Franco's South American themed house warming. My voice had started to go by this point (the tale end of my last cold) so I switched to soothing White Russians. Fliss was also asking me to do various Barry White impressions as my voice had dropped an octave or two and was apparently super sexy - an association I've not made with illness before!

After much breakfast and getting a lift through London traffic we finally made it back to our house to find the kitchen floor covered with water and the light fitting dripping. This pretty much eliminated the planned evening of unwinding and led to hurried calls to the insurance company to get a plumber out. After much lifting of carpets and floorboards and scratching of heads we finally tracked it down to a leak in the shower pan seal and the dripping shower head that had not been fully turned off. The water had evidently slowly leaked through over 24 hours and then run back into the centre of the ceiling through the helpful hole formed by the light fitting. Luckily no major damage has been done and getting it fixed up should be a pretty simple task. I'm glad I took out the home emergency cover with the house insurance though.

Defeat by the Red Dragon

2008-02-04T12:58:00+00:00

Most of Saturday was taken up with the Rugby. We tried a new layout of the front room so we could fit everyone in front of the TV. We more or less succeeded although without the backing of the wall the Buddha bags do tend to achieve a rather flat wide aspect. Fliss has convinced me of the benefits of moving to a sofa. Comfy as I find them the ease of extracting yourself from a sofa is becoming more appealing.

The games themselves were good. I don't remember much about the Ireland game except they had a reasonably easy time of it except for a few injuries. The England-Wales game was the main event. It started well with England taking an early lead and the Welsh supporters voicing their hopes it wouldn't be a total embarrassment. This probably made the victory taste even sweeter when England forgot to play well and Wales having stopped kicking the ball about got some good grinding play in to go ahead.

Sunday not much happened except me waiting for a tradesmen to turn up to price the decorating job. We have however started in earnest on the second season of The Wire as well as a review of the original (new) series of Battlestar Galactica for the benefit of Will and Fliss. We are all hopelessly out of sync for various TV shows so I'll have to catch the latest lost at some point when everyone is away from the TV :-)