As you perch there on your sofa, beer to hand, yelling at the stupid ref, please spare a thought for families such as ours. Every year the England –France match in the six nations rugby tournament ends up with someone in a strop. In the last year we have had to live through this twice, what with the world cup.
I’m ashamed to say I cried when they knocked us out of the world cup before the semi-finals, well, actually I’m not ashamed, it wasn’t fair, I really wanted us to win.
Not only do we have an apartheid regime in our household, with the English supporters ( that’s me and BOTH kids now after number two came over from the dark side last year!) – watching TV upstairs while the French contingency get the sofa in the living room, but, if we lose, then I have to run the gauntlet at every social event, and some unsocial ones like work, for the next few weeks.
The evening of the world cup disaster (I’ve tried typing “they beat us”, but it’s just too painful so we’ll stick with a few euphemisms) we were at a surprise party organised for a friend’s birthday. After his speech he got the DJ to shine a spotlight on me while they played “God save the Queen”, the only English person amongst over sixty guests.
To ease the pain, I’ve resorted (as so often!) to alcohol. I’ve taken to buying a good bottle of wine or champagne to take to work to celebrate the victory. As the match is usually on Sunday afternoon, after the shops have closed (we must have a chat about French opening hours one day) this means I don’t know the result by this point, and take the bottle anyway, whatever the outcome, that’s just how magnanimous I am – it’s how we built an empire after all.
I must say I particularly appreciated this bottle of champagne today at lunch with my colleagues, a less bitter taste than some years I believe, and I’m not the one in a strop either.
Oh, and before you all write in and complain, I know she's wearing the wrong flag, but give her some credit, she was only five at the time!