The weekends have started to take on a slightly different pattern. On the day before yesterday, my son and daughter-in-law called around to jointly watch the rugby together and to discuss some family affairs. In the first match, Italy were playing Ireland and by half time Italy were actually ahead before they were eventually overhauled by the Irish in the second half of the game. The second match was pulsating as it was the oldest of rivals, England versus Scotland at Murrayfield Edinburgh) The Scots played out of their skins before their home crowd and deservedly won the match having outplayed England in practically every aspect of the game. They eventually won by 31:20 and the sports pundits have labelled their performance as outstanding – they are for the time being actually on top pf the mini-table of Six Nations results and have ended the England team who have had a run of 12 games without defeat. In all honesty, like the preceding match, my family and I only paid half attention to the match as we were simultaneously discussing some of our own domestic affairs. As we progressed into the early evening, my son and daughter-in-law ordered a meal of fish and chips which we ate on our knees in front of the TV. The late afternoon was also punctuated by the arrival of my chiropodist who cares for my feet on a monthly basis and who has been coming to our house for at least ten years. As we know each so well, we always have a lot of experiences and confidences to share with each other and although I was a little surprised to have a late Saturday appointment she had another series of clients who she could only see on a Saturday afternoon so this was a working day for her. Part of my new weekend pattern is to attend my local church for the early morning service on a Sunday at 8.30 rather than attending the previous Saturday evening. This new pattern is going to suit me a lot better because quite apart from being late which assists parking in a crowded church carpark, there is the additional bonus of tea-and-biscuits in the parish hall immediately after the service. This, I anticipate, will allow me to participate more fully with my fellow parishioners and certainly last week I had some delightful conversations over a cup of tea. This week the most amazing coincidence occurred. I got into conversation eventually with a lady who mentioned that she had passed me yesterday whilst we were both on the Kidderminster Road – I was walking down into town and she was walking her dog. It transpired that she had remembered me walking up and down the hill with Meg in her wheelchair and not only remembered Meg but they had chatted briefly. Now this parishioner now only knew my two sets of friends from down the hill intimately as she used to clean for one set of friends and also knew the French lady who was a neighbour but has moved up to Cheshire to live near her daughter. But the connection did not end there as she also knew one of my ex-Waitrose coffee drinking group who is now living in one of the nearby residential homes in Bromsgrove. Now that this particular parishioner and I have got to know each a bit better and she is a regular dog-walker as well as attending church, we will probably bump into each other quite a lot. So my new policy of attending the service on Sunday morning and then having a cup of tea afterwards in the church hall is already paying dividends. After lunch, my son and daughter-in-law are due to call around again and we are going to watch the French versus Wales match where we predict that the Welsh team will be slaughtered but surprising things can happen in rugby matches such as, after a transgression of the rules, we can witness a temporary period of sending off (popularly called being sent to the ‘sin bin’) for 20 minutes. This can alter the whole balance and dynamics of a game and it was a feature of the England v Scotland game the day before and the Wales team a week before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After I had got home from church, I looked in vain for my little black purse from which I knew I had withdrawn some coins to pay for my tea and biscuits in the parochial church hall earlier on in the day. So I decided to return to the hall at the conclusion of the 10.30 service to see if it had been handed in. It only contained coins and not the credit cards and the like which would be found in a wallet so I can just about grin and bear its loss. I decided to stay and and have another coffee and biscuits (and cake this time round as well) My purse had not turned up yet but there is a slight possibility that have been put in safe keeping for me by one of the 8.30 group of parishioners. After a little while I fell into a conversation (liberal politics) with a fellow parishioner and it was evident that our thoughts were very much aligned on a whole series of political issues. My new found friend is part of a discussion group of generally left-leaning individuals who love to talk about politics and my friend’s view is that I would find the group very much to my liking. They meet in a local golf club for breakfast about once a month or so and therefore it is likely that I will get an invitation to shortly to join them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I cooked myself a slightly out-of-the ordinary lunch as I had bought a couple of frozen duck legs to be served with a tangy orange sauce. This was cooked n the microwave oven for 45 minutes and then served with some potatoes and broccoli and I had just about completed the washing up when my son and daughter-in-law called around as we had agreed to watch the rugby together. This was always going to be a very one sided contest pitting on of the strongest teams (France) against one of the weakest (Wales) We vied with each other to see if we could predict the magnitude of the defeat as it was evident that the French would completely dominate the Welsh which they did. My family had brought around some homemade mushroom soup so we all enjoyed this in the late afternoon tea, made the more enjoyable as we complemented it with a home-made tomato bread<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The weekends have started to take on a slightly different pattern. On the day before yesterday, my son and daughter-in-law called around to jointly watch the rugby together and to discuss some family affairs. In the first match, Italy were playing Ireland and by half time Italy were actually ahead before they were eventually overhauled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8050,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8049\/revisions\/8050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}