Itchy Feet

30 June
From: Susan
To: Me


Hiya Kylie,

Paul asked me to pass on a message - sympathising with Hayman's toe injury is the general gist of it ; )

S X

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
30 June
From: Paul
To: Susan Deegan

Hiya Missus,

if you have a chance today you should mail Kylie. She sent you the mail saying how tough the All Black's are, quoting Wayne Shelford and the pitchside operation to stitch up his sack.

This is a stark contrast to Carl Hayman who can't play this w-e because he has a toe infection. Oh how times have changed.

P X


1 July
From: Kylie
To: Susan
Cc: Paul


very funny!
I thought you might enjoy reading this below. May the best team win this Saturday!

Kxxx


From today's Times, by Stephen Jones

Umaga 'out of credit'

All Black Captain Tana Umaga has redeemed himself from a week of controversy by phoning crocked Lions rugby captain Brian O'Driscoll to apologise for the 'spear tackle' that ended his tour, and revealed to O'Driscoll he would have called sooner but his mobile was 'out of credit'.

Umaga said he was 'real sorry' about O'Driscoll's injury, but reminded his opposite that rugby was a contact sport and that accidents happen, and if he didn't like it he shouldn't go trying to get the ball when the All Blacks want it.

O'Driscoll expressed his forgiveness to Umaga, explaining he thought the game was supposed to be played under touch rugby rules. He said it was 'swell' of Umaga to call.

The apology has started a flood of similar calls between former rugby foes.

Rua Tipoki of NZ Maori has revealed his relief at receiving a call from Lion Gordon D'Arcy to apologise for the late spear tackle he executed on the centre during the Lions match against NZ Maori earlier in the month.

A tearful Tipoki said "Bro, it's about bloody time, eh. I've been sat by the phone for weeks waiting for that neho to call. He could have bloody killed me, the bastard!".

Maori coach Matt Te Pou said he had intended to take a tape of the D'Arcy incident to the press after the Lions v Maori match to protest at the incident, but chose not to "cos only a real fuckin whinging loser would do that sort of shit eh".

Wayne Shelford has confirmed a call from French Rugby Federation officials, apologising for the impromptu removal of his left testicle by the French forward pack in 1986. Johan Le Roux and Sean Fitzpatrick were seen today holding hands in an Auckland park, the pair apparently having made up for their differences from 1994 when Le Roux bit Fitzpatrick's left ear.

Le Roux endorsed the new trend of apologising for every single physical act in a game of rugby. The former Springbok prop said that bottling up all that guilt over the years had made him feel all bad inside and it was good to get it out and reveal his true feelings for Fitzpatrick, who he described as his hero.

Danny Grewcock admitted he "had a bit of ringing round to do". Richard Loe's phone has been engaged all day.

27 June
New Zealand Herald article

 
One Irish newspaper has branded the All Blacks "thugs" over Lions rugby captain Brian O’Driscoll’s tour-ending injury on Saturday.

"Thugs!" exclaimed the headline on the back page of Ireland’s Sunday World newspaper.

"O’Driscoll crocked by Kiwi hoods." it went on to say.

The Sunday Express headed it’s back page report: "Was this rugby or All Black thuggery?"

They were referring to the tackle by All Blacks captain Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu on O’Driscoll, which resulted in the Irishman suffering a dislocated shoulder....... <li><a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=697&ObjectID=10332913">more</a></li>



28 June
From: Susan (in Ireland)
To: Me (in New Zealand)


Hiya Kylie,
 
How are you?  Listen, what's the story with your lads?  What kinda carry on is that putting our Brian O'Driscoll out of the competition and dislocating his poor shoulder?  Would you ever have a word with your blokes there, and tell them the Paddy's aren't happy at all!  Sort them out missus, sort them out.
 
Did  you watch the match?  As you might have guessed we were sickened - what a loss, and I don't mean the score.


28 June
From: Me
To: Susan


Hello Darling!

Thank you for your impassioned email.  Who would have thought you would get so fired up over rugby!  I had heard that the AB's were getting a hammering in the media over there.  I can understand your nation’s loss, and I want to write you an email in response that is full of sympathy and kind words, I really do……

…..but if you are wanting sympathy, or some sort of support, best not to go to an NZer for it, don’t you think?  

Lets face it, I am a dedicated rugby supporter who is fiercely proud of ‘her boys’.  What’s not to be proud of?  They’re strong, they’re huge, they look mighty fine in those tight tight muscle hugging tops (Daniel Carter, yum yum), and they’re tough!

Come back with me, if you will, to the year 1986, and an already badly injured All Black squad faced up against a physically intimidating French side at the now infamous "Battle of Nantes".  It was here that the name of Wayne "Buck" Shelford became embedded forever into rugby's rich history.

Playing only his second Test for the All Blacks, Shelford found himself at the bottom of a rather aggressive ruck on 20 minutes.

An errant Les Bleus stud found its way to his groin, where it somehow managed to tear his scrotum, leaving one testicle hanging out.  

This alone would leave most men screaming in agony and heading for the nearest hospital. But not Shelford.

He calmly instructed the physician on the sideline to stitch him up.

The French public were gob smacked as an over-eager pitch-side cameraman filmed the stomach-turning surgery, (voyeur is a French word after all) and even more so when Shelford returned to the field and carried on playing.

He also lost four teeth during the ruck.

A mighty man.

“A one off”, you say?  "Nobody is really that tough!"  

Let’s journey back some more to 1970, when Colin 'Pinetree' Meads broke his arm in a tour match against Eastern Transvaal. During a heated match Meads emerged from a particularly vicious ruck with his arm dangling horribly. It was an obvious fracture, and yet Meads completed the match. When the doctor cut away his shirt and confirmed the break, Meads muttered, "At least we won the bloody game." He treated himself with horse linament and, after missing the first two Tests, Meads returned for the Third with his still broken arm held together by a thin guard.

I’ve plenty more stories like this.  Our men who don the black shirt with the silver fern are playing a rough sport and sometimes find themselves playing through games with broken shoulders, arms and noses.  I am not suggesting that O’Driscoll should have played on – but I am saying that injuries (including serious injuries) are part of the game.  As Tana himself once said, “Its not tiddlywinks, ref”.  

I will say however, that I was very disappointed that Tana didn’t apologise for the damage caused, intentional or otherwise, and that was definitely wrong of him.  

I saw on Sunday Clive’s “incriminating evidence” in the photos he put forward and I remain unconvinced of anything untoward (I think O’Driscoll just fell badly in a fairly standard ruck – though you are bound to disagree!). At the end of the day, Clive picked a substandard team for the first test and the result came about because the Lions team was well and truly outclassed on the night.  The Lions camp was not a particularly happy one, even before the match, with some Lions players complaining about Clive to our media here (Gavin Henson).  Can you not help wondering if all the sour grapes is merely a device to stop the finger being pointed at Clive for doing such a lousy job?  Do you get any mention over there of Lions lock Danny Grewcock biting New Zealand hooker Keven Mealamu in the very same game?

Finally…..

In 1986 All Blacks hooker Andy Dalton kept the reputation of Kiwi toughness alive when he had his jaw broken in two places by South African Burger Geldenhuys during the New Zealand Cavaliers tour of the country. Dalton's response:

'No complaint's, it's a man's game out there'.


29 June
From: Susan
To: Paul (also in Ireland)
Cc: Me


I was telling you that I asked Kylie to have a word with her boys after damaging our Brian.  To say she's unrepentant is an understatement.........


29 June
From:  Paul
To:  Susan
Cc:  Me

Susan,
 
I think you just found out how seriously the NZ'ers take the game. I would agree with most of Kylie's remarks. Not enough said about Grewcock acting the gobsh!te. Clive, the luckiest coach in rugby history, is spinning the story of O'Ds injury to take the focus off his own incompetence. Relying on his old boys when the game has moved on was wrong. Proof being when Wales won the 6-nations with an open exciting running game built on pace and being first to the breakdown. (Their game was groomed by the current AB coach.)
Physically the Lions on the day were not up to the AB's level.
 
Of all the AB's Shelford shall be remembered long after Zinzan, Jonah Lomu, Sean Fitzpatrick, Grant Fox or any of the others. Whatever about playing with broken bones, he acted above and beyond the call of duty.
 
I just can't agree with Daniel Carter bit though. Are there going to be some cheer leaders at the next game???
 
Come on the Lions in Game 2. Better line outs, fiercer rucking and a try please.


29 June
From: Susan
To: Paul
Cc: Me


You two are going to get on great ; )


From:  Si
To:  Me

Wow, I think you caused an international debate :)
Good work.

The huge ballroom at the Crown Plaza room was buzzing with the excited and somewhat drunken prattle of competing wine tasters when I walked into the First Glass Wine Options, a mere 2 hours after ‘kick-off’ late yesterday afternoon. I quickly slid into a vacant seat at the back, where other spectators were also sampling the wines (although, I noticed, not spitting). I immediately began scanning the room to locate Si’s team, but managed instead to spot Mark (and his ‘Dazed and Confused’ team mates) sitting not to far from me. Like the rest of the room, he was also in deep conversation.

An elderly man looking not too dissimilar to a leprechaun in a brown checked shirt materialised at my left elbow.

“Would you like a glass of wine?”

I was fully aware that as a tasting spectator, this would set me back $20.00.

“No thanks, I am just the here as one of the ‘support crew.’”

“Oh go on” he said “Just the one.”

“No thanks, really, I’m fine for now.” I said

As he faded into the background, I resumed my ‘boyfriend search’, which proved fruitless. There were simply far too many people to be able to see more than about 3 tables deep.

I was slightly anxious about this. Si had been struck down by a mystery illness only 24 hours previously, which had not only caused him to moan and groan in a very sad and pathetic way, but had forced him to sleep for about 16 hours straight. He had still been off colour yesterday morning before the competition, and was only managing to keep it together with large doses of paracetamol and exceptional will power. I hoped he was ok.

Not being able to find him made me very quickly realise that attending a wine option without competing yourself or having someone to support, is incredibly dull.

As if on cue, Leprechaun Man appeared at my elbow again.

“Are you sure you won’t have a glass of wine?”

“Actually” I said “that would be lovely!”

I selected red, out of the two colour choices and then promptly ruined the moment by stupidly asking what the wine was. Of course I should have thought about it and realised that I was being offered the same wine that the competitors were currently in the act of tasting. Fortunately, Leprechaun Man was either stone deaf, or a completely brilliant actor - he never batted an eyelid as he poured me my mystery wine out of a plastic pitcher. Shortly afterwards, he reappeared with a big plate of water crackers, just for me. Leprechaun Man appeared to be my very own private pixie. I thought he was fabulous.

The stewards continued moving across the floor like an army of ants, dispensing wines and collecting answers as the event progressed. Each wine had 5 questions with multiple choice answers, which ran along similar themes for each wine such as: what is the variety, the year, the country, the region and the maker. With my own now continuously topped up glass of wine, I began to settle in quite nicely to watch the spectacle.

The team name cards immediately in front of me caught my eye, and amused, I scanned about for the names of the other tables:

“There’s Methode to our Madness”
“Obi Wan Cabernet”
“Dancing with the Syrahs”

and my personal favourite:
“A Momentary Lapse of Riesling”

It was probably the competitors themselves however, that were even more fascinating. Teams did battle in everything from matching t-shirts, to fairy costumes (complete with sparkly wings). I saw Snow White (a 6 foot male wearing the proper Disney costume) and the seven dwarves (7 people in dwarf outfits who carried pick-axes and moved around on their knees!) high fiving each other (difficult to do if you are a dwarf) for each correct answer. I realised that Si was embarressingly underdressed in his shirt and jeans!

Eventually I worked out that if I timed myself properly I could catch Leprechaun Man with the tail end of the wine currently being tasted by the competitors. Having no one to high five, I began quietly competing from my little back row seat, and the competition became a lot more interesting. I have to say that I don’t think I did too badly.

Eventually, right at the very end of the tasting, I managed to catch Si’s eye. He was sitting at the very front table, right in front of Kingsley, the MC.

I waved. He waved. He looked surprisingly ok. He stood up, and ploughed down the aisle at speed towards me. His mystery illness was obviously long forgotten!

“Hello”

“Hello”

“I’ve had quite a bit to drink” I announced, rather proudly.

“Really? Did you pay your $20?”

“Nope”

“Wow.” (Like myself, Si is equally frugally minded.)

And that was the end of the conversation - hardly a very meaningful reunion. Kingsley was winding up yet another lame joke and indicating that it was nearly time for the last wine. Si disappeared back to his seat.

My leprechaun friend materialised right on cue and poured the final drop. Impressively I got four out of the five questions on this wine correct – I felt pretty chuffed!

Finally, 4 hours after it began, it was time to announce the winners. For the sake of avoiding a disappointing anticlimax, I will quickly say that my boy’s team did not win first place. That prize went to “Kinsley Kong - The Grape Ape” who apparently win every year. Second and third place was a tie, but a couple of points behind them in fourth place was Si’s team “I'm as Shiraz I’ll ever be”. Yay! Not bad going from 54 teams, and a qualifying score for the national finals in August (which sadly Si cant go to as he will already be in Shanghai by then). The booby prize went to the trade team from Nobilo, - a black gumboot with the word “BOOT” written along the side was awarded to each member.

The event was concluded with Si (who had been spitting all his wines) driving me home- a VERY good afternoon indeed!

This weekend I learnt a valuable lesson about people, namely that people will buy any old crap if you offer it to them. This is, of course, something that the good people at McDonalds have known for years.

Specifically, I am talking about online auctions.

Wow.

I had no idea that such a world of excitement and cut throat competitiveness even existed.

It began (as all great discoveries generally do) with a particularly rainy weekend, which inspired a cleanout of the cupboards in our spare room. Beneath the wine boxes and old French text books, I found a cardboard box containing our cast-offs – all the unused and unloved items that we hadn’t gotten around to getting rid of. I decided to try my luck at selling them online.

The items in question were an old keyboard and mouse, a camera and the piece de resistance – a cow wine bottle holder. The keyboard, mouse and camera were all straight forward enough, and luckily for me generated enough interest to meet the reserve and sell.

The cow was a whole different story. I say this because it is truly awful. This simple fact cannot be stressed enough. Usually animals of the bovine persuasion are things of simple beauty – great gentle doe eyed creatures whose only vice I suppose would be their tremendous ozone depleting ability. They are generally not (unless you happen to be standing behind one in the act of ozone depletion) very offensive creatures. In contrast, this cow has the potential to make maidens faint and small children cry. (Can I just add here, that this was not an item that we bought for ourselves, but was in fact a gift from a well meaning, but clearly blind friend of ours, and we must never speak of the cow’s fate with him. Ever.)

I haven’t pinpointed which aspect was the most frightful – the horrific reclining position exposing gigantic oversized udders, the “come hither” eye expression, or the cheesy maniacal grin. Or possibly the addition, for some explicable reason, of a very dirty and rather tatty looking chef’s hat. Or finally, maybe it was that in addition to this monstrosity, there was actually another one, in miniature, which is designed to hug the neck of the bottle.

Finally, but most importantly, in terms of practicality, the cow shaped wine bottle holder was about as useful as a one legged man in an arse kicking contest.

Anticipating that other people would likewise find this object something that could result in some serious counselling sessions, I accordingly set my auction price with a $1 reserve.

To my amazement, it not only reached its $1 reserve, but surpassed it, rising very quickly in 50 cent increments to the grand total of $4.00 at the end of its first day for sale.

By the end of the second day, it was up to $5.50, but sadly, my favourite bidder “Aunty Moo” who had quite successfully been outbidding everyone else, dropped out after $5.00, the price obviously becoming a little too rich for her blood.

For the rest of the week, there were no more bids, but my crazy cow wine bottle holder auction was being keenly watched by a total of 8 people, all apparently suffering the same form of mad cow disease.

The final day came, and about 5 mins before the auction closed I logged in to see if there had been any change. I couldn’t believe it – there was an absolute frenzy of bidding going on, all in 50 cent increments. The auction even had to be extended, so that everyone had a chance to get all their bids in! Finally it closed, and my $1 cow sold for $10.50 to “an avid cow collector” from Karori. She was so keen to get her hands on it, she even paid me straight away. In real money!

What a pity I am such a slow learner – maybe I could have been a millionaire if only I had cottoned on to other people’s crap buying compulsions sooner. I will certainly be going through the rest of our stuff to see what I can get rid of!

Today, for the first time in my life, I succumbed to the red hazy madness that is road rage.

The truth is that I am not ever the most patient person, so it is a great wonder to me that this has never happened to me before.

The problem really begins with the road works. Every day for the last month or so (ok, maybe less), a chain of static road diggers, orange bollards and little signs of men digging (which in reality I have yet to see) have made the experience of getting to my car park before work, about as exciting as if I were to become a trapeze acrobat in a circus, in my car. Even though it has added an extra 10 minutes onto what would normally be a 90 second manoeuvre, I have staunchly set my jaw and put up with it, comforted by the idea that this was all for the greater good.

Last week, some idiot thought it would be fun to move the bollards, turning what used to be a two way street (albeit with potholes you can lose your car in) to a single lane road with traffic lights at either end to control which direction we all get to move in.

Tuesdays are never a good day for me anyway. In additional to the usually frantic pace at work, I always have to try to make my excuses early, so that I can get out the door, sprint the 2 or so kilometres to my car park (that distance is true - its too dam expensive to park any more central!), along dug up footpaths, over gravel hillocks, concrete barricades and little orange bollards, then sit in traffic for an indeterminate length of time to get to class. This is a regular Tuesday night ritual.

Today was, naturally, no different than any other Tuesday. Except today, as I sat grumpily in my car waiting for the light governing the single lane minefield, I was even more stressed out than usual, being later than normal and having already noticed that the traffic was barely moving along my route (which incidentally I am not longer able to use, some charming person having posted a no right turn sign at the end of the obstacle course). Finally, the light changed to green - I was good to go. The trusty Daewoo sprang to life, obviously as eager as I was to get going.

I couldn’t believe it – there was a bloody car coming from the other direction. A little white starlet with two very lost looking girls inside driving at about 5ks per hour, when the light was very obviously against them. They saw me, and probably noted the steam already beginning to rise from the Woo, and stopped, completely blocking me (and the 4 cars behind me) off from our exit. This situation very obviously has definite road rage potential. However, I calmed myself down a degree, telling myself as they squeezed sheepishly past me, that they were lost, the road works are indeed messy and confusing, and for all I knew they could have been circling around inside this labyrinth for days.

At last they were past and I was off again, elated to be moving and secure in the knowledge that the lights were definitely still with me. My joy was short lived however - as the finishing line appeared on the horizon, I saw another car (to be honest I was so mad I didn’t even notice what colour it was) blatantly disregarding their red traffic light, and ploughing straight down the dirt track towards me.

I started beeping my horn, rather aggressively, and it was about then that the mists of rage descended. To be honest I don’t remember too much about what happened next.
The next thing I do remember, I was pulled up along side this arseholes car, giving him a serious piece of my mind. He did look rather bemused by my tirade, which I think had something to do with the fact that my window was wound very tightly up (much like myself!) so he would have probably heard nothing, but seen me waiving my arms around, pointing aggressively and making rude gestures, while my mouth opened and closed very quickly, letting out a string of expletives that he would never have heard.

I wonder if he ever worked out what my problem was.