Upon being bored into submission (a treatise)
Friday 2nd February 2018: Anglo-Welsh Cup Round 4: Northampton Saints v Harlequins at Franklin’s Gardens, kick-off 7.45pm: Result – Northampton Saints 36 Harlequins 10: Latest position – Northampton Saints qualify for the knockout stage, Harlequins will now have to rely upon results elsewhere in order to progress.
I had a long day of it yesterday. With my aged mother billed for a trip to a medical consultant in London there was no time in the schedule for my regular restorative cat-nap. Instead it was a case of grabbing the newspapers as soon as my local newsagent opened, setting off into the countryside to carry out the ‘pick up’ and then immediately returning to my gaff for a quick light-bite for lunch plus pit-stops all round, now joined by my sister, before the pre-booked hired limousine arrived to convey us in and out of town.
The main event of the day passed swiftly – the session with the consultant, who surprisingly turned out to be ahead of schedule, began twenty minutes before our allotted time and lasted but twenty minutes instead of the hour I had anticipated – and by 4.15pm my sister and parent had embarked upon their return to the outer reaches of civilisation in the height of the rush hour.
My part in proceedings complete, it was from this point that I could wind down and relax.
When your beloved relative has reached the stage where her understanding of what is going on around her is at best fleeting there is always a certain degree of stress involved.
Earlier, as I arrived for the pick-up, she had no idea that my purpose was to take her to London, let alone why, even though we had discussed both at length the previous evening.
Throughout the day she repeatedly asked what was going to happen next and, even though she had seen the consultant several times previously (yesterday was the occasion of her latest six-monthly check-up), she appeared to have no recollection of this, to the point where – when he came out to the waiting room in order to bid us goodbye – as he then retired to his room she inquired of us “Who was that?” even though ten minutes before she had been subjected to a most intimate examination by him.
The above goes some way to explain the fact that by 5.00pm last night I had taken up a position on the sofa in front of my television armed with a gigantic tumbler of Artisan gin and tonic – supplemented by a slice of lime, two drops of Angostura bitters and a mountain of ice cubes – and my so-far-unread daily newspapers.
Which brings me to consideration of this Harlequins defeat in a competition in which they had previously been the only unbeaten team.
In hindsight the telephone call I had received earlier in the day from my daughter’s godfather now seems to have been a harbinger of doom.
With his habitual irrepressible cheerfulness he had announced that he and his wife were ecstatic at the prospect of coming to my offspring’s wedding, in his case particularly because its day and date later this year would meant that at last he would be unable to extend his unwanted record of so far having been to every one of the so-far ten Harlequins home ‘Big Games’ that have taken place annually at Twickenham Stadium between Christmas Day and New Year.
When I countered that – on the contrary – as far as my daughter and I were concerned this unfortunate conflict of engagements would give him an automatic and cast-iron ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card entitling him to not to attend our family nuptials, he brushed my comment aside with the rejoinder:
“No – I’ve been looking for and excuse to get out of the Big Game for yonks … it’s become completely absurd, for last year’s I had to organise and buy tickets for a party of 42 family, friends and hangers-on – and who wants to go on watching a piss-weak team playing crap rugby anyway?!?!”
I could empathise with his stark comment.
Later in the evening, having discovered by chance from the TV schedule that this Anglo-Welsh clash between Saints and Quins was being covered live by BT Sport, I began watching my favourite piss-weak team playing crap rugby in their latest (crimson) ‘away’ strip.
By half-time in the contest the combined effects of weariness, gin & tonic and my simultaneous flicking-through of the disappointingly-unengaging contents of the newspapers were causing my eyelids to droop.
I announced that enough was enough, I was going to bed.
I can assure my readers that the fact Quins were 0-26 down by this stage had nothing to do with it.
