12 posts tagged “rugby”

Well, im at home and having a great time, except I need a haircut later today.

I have never particulary liked haircuts, and what is worse because my graduation is coming up my parents have offered to take me to a proper hairdresser so I can look good for my photos and so my grandchildren won’t be able to laugh too much on seeing these photos in the distant future. I don’t really want to go, but as restrained and person  who knows how much it means to them (damn you British reserve and stiff upper lip, what have you done to my mind!) I was too polite to say no.  

But the problem is I have always had my hair cut by the same person, a friend of the family, for as long as I can remember and would trust with my life. And my hair. She knows exactly what I mean when I say "um, can I have it a bit like it was last time but not quite?"  and peacefully trim by hair whist I sit their tharn.

And yet in three hours I will find myself in a hairdressers/barbershop, with big glass windows so I am on public display whist some total stager wields sharp bits of metal around my head and tries to make small talk, something I have never been good at unless with a peer of similar interests. (”So, what’s your favourite element of archaeological science then?”  or “What did you think of Wales’s performance in the six nations this year?” does not sound like hairdresser friendly conversation….”What’s your favourite Prog-metal band?” is frankly not even worth considering).

 

To be fair, I would rather anyone waving scissors in the vicinity of my ears would not talk but would instead pay utter attention to what he or she is doing. Also I hate mirrors; I use an electric razor and shave by feel, not sight and I have never quite trusted mirrors. Oh yes, and I don’t know whether or not I will shave my beard of, so any haircut that looks good with a beard may look stupid without it, I hate hair gel, like long hair but have a receding hairline I ideally need to hide, and need to look respectable enough for my grandmother. Help!

...It's been a LONG few weeks.

The Student Union Real Ale and Cider festivals was all that it promised. Me and will teamed up to show whoever wrote the Pub quiz that setting a round on Dinosaurs followed by one on Ancient Rome and when one team consisted of an archaeologist with an interest in paleontology and an ancient historian was a recipe for disaster for them, and a guaranteed win for our teem. We only got one t-shirt, one bottle of beer and six beer tokens between the 10 of us, but the gloating right were worth it. I then promptly got onto the cider (I still maintain that the American phrase "hard Cider" is a blasphemy, ALL cider is by definition alcoholic) which was a nice whiskey cask conditioned scrumpy on the masochistic side of 8% and the rest of the day became quite hazy.

The next day, unwilling to let my unused low value tokens go to past, i went to the beer festivel again and had a far more sedate time with Bullmastiff Son Of a Bitch, Valley of Glamorgan Vog y Grog, Bragdy Mŵs Piws (purple moose brewery) Ochr Tywyll y MŴs (Dark side of the moose) and a whole other range of Porters, stouts and Milds, especially a nice little mild i think was by Rhymney brewery in Mertha tydfil.

Then came Thursdays trip to London to see the British Museum, then go to the millennium dome to see Tut Ankh Aten, later Tut Ankh Amun, well, we knew HE wasn't there, but a lot of his grave goods were in London on display, and although i have seen them, and in fact seen his mummy in Egypt, it was worth the trip to take another look.

However, to get there in time we had to leave Caerdydd at 0600, which for me meant getting up at 0530. For R it meant leaving work at 0430, drunk,  to get there just in time to fall asleep in a doorway, so me and the rest of our friends had to pick him up and guide him to the bus.

This more or less set the tone for the rest of the day as the next generation of the UK's finest archaeologists wandered in a sleep deprived, and as far as at least 50% of these present, hungover state, about the capital ("Hey guys, if we get drunk we'll get to sleep really early and so waking up at five will be okay!"). However the Brit was, as always, excellent, and as our lecturer knew some people there we  got to go behind the scenes and handles some roman finds.

Tut was also good. Sure, the boy king himself was absent and the display on Akhenaten, AKA Amenhotep the fourth, was far to brief, mentioning only that he was most likely the father of Tut-ankh-amen, and mentioning  briefly his sweeping religions reforms that replaced most of the traditional pantheon with the worship of one god, the Sun Disk, The Aten.

So aside from not mentioning the most interesting new kingdom Pharaoh, if not THE most interesting pharaoh exept in breif terms, the exhibit was good. Oh, and i had the minor inconvenience of having to empty all my pockets as the coin that slipped out through the hole in my coat pocket and is not trapped in the lining set of all the metal detectors. Considering that i carry several pounds of largely useless, occasionally VERY useful shrapnel such as miniature screwdrivers for fixing my glasses, a comb, gaffa-tape, a hip flask, a tin of fisherman's friends lozenges and a dozen bottle openers on my person at all times, as well as scrapes of paper with useful aids to the memory, this took five full minutes and attracted a small crowd. Remarkably the security did not bat an eyelid and were quite happy to let a walking toolkit like me in, despite the fact sleep deprivation was kicking in and i was quite possibly dribbling slightly at the time.

The exhibit was... beautiful.

After a full two hours and an quarter oggaling the exhibit, including giving a small child a basic lesson in how to read Hieroglyphs ( read from the direction the animals face, and remeber  that the names of gods come at the start of a cartouche name, so for example Tut-Ankh-amun is written "Amun Tut Ankh") we had to leave as several other groups had lapped us and because as i was wearing my National Geographic top, and the exhibit was sponsored by National Geographic, and because i was telling anyone who would listen about how great Akhenaten compared to the rest of the 18th dynasty several people had mistaken me for staff. Eventually, too tired to even get drunk, we were herded about London aimlessly until we got the bus home were me, R and the third year organizers of the trip ended up stuck next to the bus's emergency loo, one that by the smell had seldom, if ever, been cleaned. Ammonia closet aside, the trip back was utterly hilarious, in that way ANYTHING is when you have had 4 hours sleep in the last 48, some of them in a doorway if you were R.

Fast forward to Saturday; Rugby time!

the weather killed the attendance's at the big open air screen dead- we went twice and the first time about 12 people were there, the second only a few hundred. Considering there more than that on the ground floor of the gatekeeper when we left it to check out the open air screen we went back.

Ireland lost their match, which upset me, but i did take solace in the projector repair man. As the Projector the Gatekeeper mega-pub uses to show big games had broken weeks ago, and considering this was the biggest match for years and they were the closest watering hole of any size to the stadium, and this would be one of the biggest drinking days for years in wales, you would think they would have had the projector fixed before now.

They hadn't.

So when we got there, there was STILL a repair man rising out of the sea of red rugby shirts struggling with a machine that I could from a distance of ten meter, tell was utterly kaput. The burn-marks were a clue. so what did the repair man do facing a potential angry mob if the wales-France match failed to make it from the many small plasma-screens to the giant screen at the appointed time?
 
He went outside for a moment, came back with ANOTHER projector and, i kid you not, strapped it to the bottom of the first one with car-ties and gaffa-tape. Thus the second half of the Ireland match and the entirely of the vital wales France match could be viewed on the big screen.

As for that match i will say only this; I have never been in a more alive crowd and taken part in more genuine jubilation  than on that sweaty and beer-soaked pub floor on that day. It is not something i think i will ever forget, not look back on with anything but genuine happiness.
 

 
Wales, this is for you.

Oh and a happy St Patrick's day.

Well, with Ireland winning against Scotland and wales and england also willing it looked unlikely from the start that me and my Anglo-welsh mix of friends would stay sober, and it being Em's Birthday meant a party was inevitable.

First me, my flatmates and J went to a Weatherspoons to see the wales match and the first half of the Ireland match. This would have been easier on me and J if we weren't still very hungover from another birthday the day before. So during the interval we went to our respective homes to eat breakfast, shower, see the second half of the Ireland match and get changed planing to meet up at Em's birthday curry. The curry was good, and the place let you bring your own drinks in. Em's Dad brought lots of wine, and we got on fine as although he was Scottish i tactfully neglected to mention that i was a supporter of the Ireland rugby team; sometimes an utterly untraceable accent is your friend. After a very fun meal and fair amount of wine we went to the pub. after the pub we went to Em's house Sans Em's parents and ordered a crate of beer form the all night booze delivery people. It was not a proper Cardiff Archaeologists night in that the party ended at a mere 3three AM as opposed to the obligatory six or seven, but fortunately it had the other one hallmark of a real archaeologists house party; it only ended early as me and a friend had to carry an unconscious third friend back to his home. Considering Wales bet Italy 47-8 and most of my friends here are welsh, this was inevitable and all in all good clean exercise.

Ireland lost their last game; this has annoyed me more than I have thus far let on.

Practically dragged from by bed by my flatmates yesterday in order to make it down town in time to get a good spot in a pub to see the Wales-Scotland game I soon found that my flatmates had forgotten to take into account the fact that said game was being played in the Millennium Stadium in Caerdydd and as a result getting anywhere on foot was imposable as the streets were rammed to bursting with welsh fans, a few Scottish fans, ticket touts, mounted policemen (pointedly ignoring the touts, they were there to break up fights and only break up fights and the touts knew this) police horses (they may or may not have been pointedly ignorring touts, with horses it is hard to say), drunks, loonies, hot-dog and other fast-food salesmen and one French fan hoping to find a quiet place to wait until the France-Ireland match started and feeling very alone in the world in the mean time. I knew how he felt.

Having settled on the Gatekeeper, which was rammed, we set about getting pints and watching the Wales-Scotland match, which wales dutifully won to the adulation of all my welsh friends who had dragged me down there, and to the slight adulation of my English flatmates with welsh girlfriends.

On the suggestion of one of these welsh girlfriends we left the gatekeeper to find somewhere a little quieter to watch the Ireland match, something that even then struck me as a bad idea given that as soon as the Wales-Scotland game had finished and the stadium started chucking out the population density off the streets outside had risen to approximately that of downtown Calcutta, and most of them were drunk. The game started in five or so minutes. Getting to the Bar in the establishment we were already in required serious effort and deployment of T.E.M, Tactical Elbow Maneuvers. Getting from one pub to another would require, preferably, a bulldozer. However as it was go with my friends or watch the match on my own I went.

Once we were allreday stuck in the streets it was casually mentioned to me that the pub we were heeding to was opposite the stadium.

Twenty-six minutes and one encounter with a megaphone-wielding evangelist later, we reached the pub. It, of course, had a giant queue to enter, but at this point all the girls were desperate for the toilet as they failed to go before leaving the last pub (why they couldn't have used the stalls in the gents in the gatekeeper like ever other woman in that bar I have no idea) and several people whom I had never met but who were from this point on referred to as "all our friends" were already in this pub, so we obviously had to wait to get it. 

The Pub in question was in fact the bar of a youth-hostel/hotel. As  it was opposite the stadium and cheep lots of traveling Scotland and wales fans had decided to stay there. As a result they could get in without queuing. The result of this was the bar filled up instantly but the queue did not move one iota for a very long time. By the time we got in the first half was nearly over, Ireland was loosing (clearly due to the fact i had not been able to wish them on as I could not see the game), the worlds tallest, biggest, baldest, nastiest looking welsh fans ever born had taken up residence right in front of the screen and as their teem had won they were partying and not moving for anybody (as a result I watched most of the second half reflected of the shaven head of the one standing in font of the projector), I had been waiting so long I had semi-sobered up and left the happy-drunk stage, I now needed the lavatory as well, "all our friends" had evaporated back into the aether without ever introducing themselves to me, and we had all waited far too long to get in here to go somewhere better. So i got a pint and watched the  second half.

Despite the best come back since Lazarus in the last quarter of the game, when Ireland were within a try of winning and in Frances danger zone in the last seconds of the game, the French still found touch and ended the game to secure them a win. This quite annoyed me, and not even the remarkably good singing of the Welsh fans behind me could cheer me up (their must have been a Welsh male choir in there somewhere). So the night ended with me going home to the worrying news our neighbor two doors down had been burgled, spending far to much money, drinking far more than is good for me, and still feeling faintly disappointed. Still, Blogging about it helps.    

Firstly, national preferences aside, i think anyone will have to admit that the Welsh comeback in the last quarter of yesterdays six nations match was a peace of utterly thrilling rugby.

As Ireland had already won their match i was happy to sit and watch the England-Wales at Rob's house and indiscriminately egg-on/mock both sides as the game progressed. What was quite fun was that out of the two Welshmen, one half-Welsh-half-English, one half Irish-half-English (me), one Australian (a girl) and two Englishmen only one person there supported england. He was quietly confident all the way through the first half. Then the second half started. Things did not go well for Wales to start with in the second half either, and so it was suggested that if Me, Rob and Joe wore plastic Viking Hats, Wales would win.as the person suggesting this was giving me beer i did not think this was a bad idea.

We put on the hats.

Wales won.

Now, a must say i cannot take sole credit for the welsh turn-around that started seconds after the plastic hit my head, Joe and Rob also had the hats on, and so the 3 million Welshmen who now owe me everything should also defer to those two. But needles to say, there was quite a party; we could, in the house, overt the top of the music and drinking, hear the distant chart of "Wales! Waaalllles!"  from every pub in Caerdydd. I can remember comparatively little of the next few hours as we went drinking when we exhausted the supply of alcohol in the flat, but i recall the center of town was packed to bursting point with jubilant Welshmen, and that i ended up drinking beer out of one of the plastic horns of the helmet (yes, as a archaeologist i KNOW that real viking never wore horns on their helmets, but real viking also did not have plastic molding and rugby) and getting very lost and winding up with a kebab-meat pizza.

which just goes to show. something.

One, despite a good show byScotland, France-managed to pull of a very lucky, inconveniently timed and controversial try and win the Six Nations on points. After a blazing_Ireland match. On Paddy’s day.

Despite what may have been suggested I am not resentful.

Two, Utterly unconnected to this, I have documentary proof all French athletes and all South African spotting officials are evil killer weasels in disguise and plan to ruin the world. And they are the reason Wagon-Wheals are smaller that they used to be and why Walnut Whips now only contain one walnut, thus destroying all the was once pure and chocolaty and marshmallow-filled.

Three, this is rather funny. http://www.safenow.org/

Four, before Paddy’s day I had a friend come to Caerdydd to visit and see if he wanted to come to Uni here. With him came a late Birthday present; Tales from Watership Down, the currently out of print sequel I have waited for so long to get my WD crazed paws on. I haven’t started it yet but it looks as promising as a certain trilogy of five.

Five, have a song. But remember, I am a man of wealth and taste. So show a little courtesy, some sympathy and restraint.

Now for a real Post; Rugby and the problems therein

Facts;
One, i am half Irish and like it when the Irish rugby team wins stuff.
Two, So at the moment i am happy with life in general because_Ireland has won the Trippe crown and the six nations are still very open.
Three, The last 6 nation games are this Saturday.

Four,This Saturday is St. Patrick's day.

Now there is know problem in that, but i like to make it to the SU early and catch the Irish poetry before the place fills up with drunks, who i then join. However,

Five, the last match in the 6 nations is England vs. Wales in Caerdydd. The Student Union will be one huge shine to rugby and things will get very messy as they always do when england play wales in Caerdydd. and i will be expected to watch the match as i am a nessisary buffer zone to sit between my english and my welsh friends.

Not that bad, BUT,

Six, Saturday is also the date of the Archaeology vs anchent history paintballing which i have allready paid for. It will seriously eat into my Paddy's day cash and make me miss not only the game, but several hours of drinking by which time the Student Union will be awash with drunken English fans, Drunken Welsh fans and Drunken Irish fans. And i will be walking into that still acheing from paintballs.

only one thing to do...

buy green paintballs and make those Anchent Historians whish they'd never been born!

 

Believe it or not, despite the apparent superficial similarity, Rugby and American Football have surprisingly little in common; One is an action packed sport for real men playing dangerously with oval balls, the other is American Football, which from a rugby fans point of view consists entirely of padding, Cheerleaders, and forward passing, which takes the skill out of any game. That and the fact American football seems to accelerate you to the speed of light, because that is the only possible way to explain why everything seems so slow when you watch it. Do we really need to see every single trough in super slow motion eight or nine times? Why does the game consist entirely of stoppages? Some people say American football is like war. They are right; Short, brutal periods of action separated by long periods of boredom. I like American football, but I simply can not watch it after a Rugby match. It’s a great sport, all football sports are, but compared to Gaelic football, Australian rules or it pales. Heck the Canadian Version is far more fun, and association football faster.  After racing or athletics it seems great by comparison because it has far more action, after rugby you start to wonder what the point is. Plus due to the time difference it will be on at the time the pubs start to close, which means watching it at home, And if I am going to watch anything at home with a few beers tonight it is going to be the UFC Mixed Martial Arts. THATS a sport for tough men that is genuinely exiting to watch! Plus you can do it in the comfort of your own home... if you are in SouthWales and live with a Muay Thai kickboxer. We had a few friends over for the boxing in Vegas a few weeks ago. One of them is on the welsh judo team. He was drunk, due to time difference the main fight would not start until 5 am and we were all bored. Result; light My Tai sparing with pads in the living room, until someone panicked at being boxed, resorted to Judo and took a leg of our table using one of my flatmates as a blunt implement. Everyone was fine and the table is now sturdier than ever thanks to the magic that is Gaffer Tape. This may be a terrible example of what people will do when they get board watching sports at home, but after today’s stunning Rugby (I am half Irish, and very happy!) I do not think I would actually sit though the Superbowl considering the truly brilliant sporting action we have already had today from the Irish and Welsh Rugby teams and the promise of MMA later.

In this post I would like to get the Adams and Adams joke out of the way to start with, then move on to a description of my day and end with a randomly selected comment from a list me and my friends made on a forum a few years ago detailing thing not to say in a film.

Question; What's sadder than the ending of the animated version of the Plague Dogs?
Answerer; Having your planet blown up by Vogons before the film can end.

Right; now that compulsory homage to my two favourite literary greats is out of the way, here is a description of my day;

9 AM; woke up with an hour to get to my lecture on Technology and Materials in Archaeology at ten. usual barge of 6 alarms got me out of bed and closer to the door than to the bed. therefore it is easier to get up and showered and dressed than it is to go back to sleep, something that there is no excuse for under the circumstances described above.

9.55 AM; Woke up again, looked at the time, swore, threw clothes on and actually got out the room.

10.05 AM; arrived at lecture exhausted but in good company, as so few others had turned up on time that the lecturer had not started yet.

10.50 AM; went downstairs after my lecture and into the garden of the university block, which as ever was full of smokers, thus making coming down for some fresh air rather pointless. Sun was shining painfully bright as it often does on November mornings, birds were singing. A squirrel that must have lungs of iron not to have been killed by second hand smoke from living in a dray in a tree directly over the main ash tray was up and about, clearly having decided that global warming made hibernation pointless. I was relatively happy and ready to face the world. I would go home and work on analysing the bone Data I had to analyse for my oseitoarchaeology project. For one brief moment I contemplated the possibility of having a little power nap first. but no, that would have been week. Under the circumstances that would have been inexcusable.

2.31 PM; Ben woke me up my knocking repeatedly on my door and yelling "" Looked at clock. it wasn’t there. apparently I had got up, turned of the alarm I had set fore noone, thrown the alarm across the room and got back into bed without actually regaining consciousness. Swore. Got up. Got kitt on and went downstairs to fill my vast collection of empty Lucozade_bottles (also known as my carpet) with water because I knew the others would forget to bring any.

5.40 PM; Got back to flat sans water, my friends forgot to bring any and drunk all mine. The park locks its gates at forty past three and we didn't arrive until ten past. So as usual we had to break out of the park after being locked in. some time between this point and six O'clock I had my pre-lecture shower and breakfast, thus making up for what I had missed this morning.

6.00 PM to Present; My nose hurts from where someone bashed me on the upper lip in and then considerately withdrew their elbow forthwith... vertically upwards. I have got very little work done on my project, essay, or my creative writings. I have however finally got a game running on my PC that has network play  and which another flatmate owns a copy of. My evening was thus devoured by the all consuming Lovecraftian monster that is the LAN Party. On the bright side, please give me this; I did go to my lectures and get some exercise first!

And now for the things not to say, exactly as quoted from the forum. number 1 (and yes that was a lie when I said selection was random);

I THINK WE NEED MORE THREADS OF GENERAL DISCUSSION. TREAT THIS LIKE THE RANDOM STUFF THREAD, ONLY WITH THIS, ADD STUFF YOU SHOULD NEVER SAY IN A BATTLE_OR ANYTHING.

YOU KNOW WHAT SORT OF THING I MEAN.

ONLY ONE PER POST, AND AVOID DOUBLE POSTING FOR THIS THREAD. THIS WAY THEY DON'T GET USED UP, AND EVERYONE HAS A CHANCE.

I'LL START THIS OFF WITH THE OBVIOUS:

"WELL...AT LEAST THINGS CAN'T GET ANY WORSE..."

GET THE IDEA OF WHAT U GOTTA DO? GET POSTING!

 

Today I had planed to go to the library and collect the books I need for do my essay on ancient copper-working, however I decided to take I brief nap between my lecture and getting out the books. The next thing I knew my flatmates and several other friends, most of the Welsh, were pilling onto me in the freezing cold trying to drive me into the mud in an attempt to get me to let go of someone’s legs. Had I got completely peculiar and grabbed a total stranger by the legs I may have thanked them for stopping me. However, since they knocked on my door until I opened it and practically dragged me out of bed to get me to play rugby in the first place I would expect them not to jump on me SEEING AS THEY WERE ON MY SIDE. Had they been the opponents then I would have expected it. Had they told me that they wanted the tackle for themselves I would have let them. However, when your own team mates pile-drive you to the ground, not because they don’t want you to take the credit for a tackle, but because the person you are tackling has annoyed them all to the extent they all want to tackle them themselves then perhaps things have got a little to competitive.

On the other hand, it was a nice tackle and he had annoyed me to. He thoroughly deserved to land right on his face in the mud like that. The fact even he also though it was an amazingly cool tackle when everyone piled on like that afterward made it all the better. I have lately taken a real love in watching rugby, simply as Caerdydd is such a good city to see rugby in.  I had forgotten how fun it was to play, and as soon as my back forgives me I am going to get those books and do some more.

And I just realised that I haven’t put any Adam’s jokes in and I can’t be bothered to go back and sneak them into the text.

 And tacking them onto the end would be horribly cheesy and a totally mindless attempt at humor….

Holy_Belgum ! Run, it’s the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, no wait, it’s Shardik!