Winter Chills: Impromptu Rugby, Winter Wanders and Mince Pies

As Monday, once again, rears its gruesome head it doesn’t feel so long ago that it was Friday morning and I was struggling to haul myself to work. Doesn’t time fly when you’re busy and having fun? But then again, I don’t think I actually did much. In many ways, actually, it was pretty much the reverse of last weekend (except I think I’m just about over the fact that there’s no Downton).

I was chatting to a friend on Friday afternoon – uhm… I mean I was really working very, very, very hard – deciding which pub we were going to watch the rugby in on Saturday afternoon when we had a much better idea – why didn’t we just go? Scotland versus the Springboks (A.K.A. South Africa) doesn’t come up all that often, and at £20 the tickets weren’t hugely expensive. An almost impromptu trip to Murrayfield it was.

Well, apart from the fact that it was a very underwhelming match – there were so many penalties it was stop-start-stop from pretty much the first whistle – and that we lost when there were more opportunities to score, it was a fun afternoon out. Whilst the crowd wasn’t quite to so fun as when the All Blacks were here last weekend, they weren’t exactly without the odd laugh in them. For all our flaws, however, at least we’re not Fiji. Once we navigated the pedestrian detour to get back into the city centre – bloody tramworks – we accidentally-on-purpose found ourselves in the pub watching Ireland walk all over the Fijians as though their line was a welcome mat. Even with a few sliced kicks our emerald friends found themselves 53 points the better of their Pacific opponents. As I said, at least we did better than Fiji; it’s just a pity that we had to beat the South Africans for any chance of a decent way into the next World Cup.

After a leisurely evening in the pub and an equally laid-back approach to Sunday morning, I decided to do some boring domestic things (READ: I had nothing to wear to work today, so thought I should probably do a little ironing), but I was thankfully interrupted by a friend coming over to walk her majesty, Queen Keira. With light fading earlier and earlier we opted for a stroll up Costorphine Hill. Crisp air and winter-esque sun being the order of the afternoon we pretty soon discovered that the bright colours of autumn are well and truly fading to that dull inter-season carpet of mushy-brown, but thankfully they’ve not all gone quite yet. What was going though, was that much-needed daylight. We were fine on the way up to the top of the hill, and were indeed treated to the bright glow as we crossed the fields on the far side; but as we came back down the eastward-facing side of the hill it was becoming ever more obvious that the sun’s time was pretty limited.

This weekend whilst in many ways mirrored last it differed in one key way: whilst The previous weekend was very distinct in its Autumnal-ness (totally a word), this week very much announced that winter is here. With that thought very much in our heads we hurried back to mine for a cup of tea and a discussion about the optimum amount of filling in mince pies (I kid you not).

It seemed little more than a hop, skip and a jump around Brazil with Michael Palin later that it was indeed time to brace myself for Monday morning, but it’s not all bad, because I’ve been informed that I have this week to re-watch the first series of Spooks (the amazing BBC MI5 drama) before we will be watching the second series – with perfectly filled mince pies, presumably.

Cr