Ashton-Under-Slime

Do you ever have one of those days? well, I think I did yesterday......

It started at midday when I went to the RFU office to pick up 3 duplicate tickets for the England v Wales rugby international, remember that word, duplicate. These were tickets which we were assured had been left in Cleakheaton, and they , therefore, gave three of my regular rugby colleagues the chance to bring three of their children.

This detour meant that I had to hot foot it to Richmond to join the drinking session a little later than planned. That went OK although the pub insists on showing football when it is full of rugby supporters. Given the match kicked off at 16:30 yesterday, I had arranged food at Zizzi's in the town centre. I booked for 13:45 thinking we could arrive about 14:00 and all would be sweetness and light. First crisis of the day, they had given our table (for 14) away aledging they had rung me to see where we were. They hadn't so we returned to the pub for more pints of foaming Pride and burger and chips 14 times!

Still we had the bus trip to the ground to look forward to, and after a fine rendition of Jeruselum, Sloop John B, Bloody Great Fishes are Wales, and others, we arrived in good time to take our seats.

Crisis number two. The three tickets left in Cleakheaton had in fact been posted by the owner to his son-in-law in High Wycombe, and he and his chums were sitting just where we had hoped to be. His father-in-law has a touch of Alzheimers, and had forgotten he had posted them on, so his problems are obviously greater than ours.

I watched the game from eight different seats as I got shuffled around the stand, and frankly after the second half, it was eight vantage points too many. Don't let any one eyed welshman cons you into believing Wales won, the stark reality is England lost. Do I really want to pay £68 to watch a product which is not up to scratch?

I should be used to it though, for years, the match has always been the low point of the day.

More disappointment followed though as Manchester United salvaged a draw with the last kick of the game against Spurs, and the Argyle crisis continued with a 1-0 defeatat home to Hull. As a point of interest these two cities, Plymouth and Hull, are the two biggest in the Country never to have experienced top flight football.

So as days go it was pretty harrowing, but all clouds have a silver lining, and following a very good sesh in the Prince Blucher, with all the right sort of company, and a few pleasant distrations, a bus came along just as we were leaving. That meant a quick call to the local takeaway meant it stayed open a few minutes late to allow the day to finish with the first food for over twelve hours.

Bread of Heaven, bah! give me Chinese of Chiswick any time!!!