Ireland v. Wales

Yesterday began with quite a flurry of text messages, mostly from my bed. D and I lazed about and drank the free coffee (Café Aromec). My feet were suffering heaps, the cut was protesting mightily and I'd accrued rather impressive blisters that were now stinging.

So, from the comfort of bed, texts were to and froed mostly between myself, Ruairí, Eric and Kieran to organise where we would watch the Six Nations final. The problem being that it clashed with the Arsenal match and, being a nation of footie fanatics, it would take priority in every bar over rugby.

I'd only managed to catch one other game in the tournament: Ireland v. England, and had thankfully not been the only England fan. This time I was definitely the only Wales fan! Nostalgic for the home in which I spent three years before arriving here (Caerdydd) I roared on the reds.

We'd eventually managed to wangle invites to Jane's house, the Deputy British Ambassador, which was extremely kind. Cathryn was the only one who knew the way, so Amy, Ruairi, another guy - Micheál (who we met at the ball), D and myself met up with her outside Novotel at the start of Embassy Row. I managed to hook a moto from my house. The driver spoke good English and was really helpful, so I took his number and he'll be my call-up guy whenever I need to get out of Gikondo as he knows where my house is and he can come straight to the door. His name's Theobard.

Cathryn directed Ruairí and Amy, who walked, and the rest of us took a taxi because of my foot. The taxi driver, too busy on his mobile phone, missed the turn-off. By the time we'd gone all the way to the end of Embassy Row and back again, Ruairí and Amy had almost beaten us there!

Jane's house is absolutely lovely, with a beautiful veranda and comfy chairs, a magical fridge that never runs out of beer, and a large box of extremely nice wine. Plenty of pizza to boot. Along with other guests, we piled in to watch the match. Creepily, she has two cats the exact same colour as mine: one black, one grey - with the little white bellies! Hmm... methinks perhaps their father got about a bit.

It was a great atmosphere, made exciting by occasional power cuts and waiting for the TV to find the channel again once the generator kicked in. That not-knowing suspense, nervously nibbled pizza.

Final result: Ireland 17, Wales 15 - first Irish grand-slam in sixty-one years! As a friend back in Wales said: "Seven world champs, women's champs, deaf world rugby champs... guess we can give away one championship to someone else for this year..."

It was a really nice night. We hung around on the veranda chatting afterwards, before tackling the hill back home. D and I walked all the way to the top, kissed goodnight, then I got on a moto that went right back down the hill the way I'd just come! *sigh*

Oh, well. Another extremely lazy day today. I like doing things on Fridays, it makes the weekend seem longer somehow.