Rugby day

I went into Twickenham again today, this time to supply the computer repairers with the power lead for my ailing laptop. The basic procedure they tried first did not fix the problem and so they are going to take other measures that mean it will be Monday at the earliest before I am reunited with the machine.

My walking was definitely less laboured than yesterday. Another difference was that we were sharing the pavements with hundreds, building to thousands, of rugby supporters walking up the main road from the station to cheer one of four teams playing in two matches at the RFU Stadium in the afternoon.

I really enjoy watching a good game of rugby: so much more satisfying than football and with a mystique engendered by the labyrinthine incomprehensibility of the rules, although the true aficionado must be reckoned above that basic, naive level of enjoyment.

Hard though to get away from the notion that the game brings out swagger and bravado in spectators of both sexes and that the game is a mass sublimation of some of the most aggressive tendencies of our species. It is also an opportunity for some to consume alcohol in epic quantities, some of the fans being barely able to walk by the end of a match (sometimes even before). In consequence brightly coloured team shirts are stretched over burgeoning bellies that their owners would, unlike their heroes, have difficulty in hauling from one end of a pitch to the other.

Overall there is a good atmosphere here on rugby days but we are beginning to find the increasing number of fixtures and the resulting noise and disruption a little bit old. Our thoughts move tentatively in the direction of moving somewhere less on the public map. Early days, though.