The menfolk in the family are not happy. The Rugby World Cup kicked off today in
Paris, France, and our All Blacks played the French rugby team and managed to
lose quite convincingly.
I thought France played well, but the fact that we lost such
an important game (after losing an equally important game two weeks ago to the
South Africans) does not go down well with a lot of All Black supporters.
I won’t repeat any of the comments I have heard made!
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| A scrum, at a time when we were actually ahead on the scoreboard |
I enjoy watching rugby and will enjoy watching other World
Cup games that are on when I am awake (the getting up in the wee hours to watch
rugby is not my cup of tea).
Every weekend the last several months I have watched Super
Rugby competition games, and now have been watching the Provincial
Championships (we have a SkySport subscription, so I can watch it all from the
comfort of my armchair).
Rugby is about the only sport I follow, and, strangely, I
don’t really mind which team wins. It is
more important to me that the game is not tainted with cheating or a biased
referee (both of which happen at times).
Do you have a sport that you like to follow?
Cheers,
Margaret 😊
The Freedom Cup is competed for between two of the world’s
greatest rugby nations – New Zealand and the Republic of South Africa.
It originated in 2004 as part of the tenth anniversary of
South Africa’s first democratic election and is played for on an annual basis.
That was the game we watched tonight, with the Springboks playing the All Blacks in Auckland. The intensity of play was exceptional and at times it was difficult to keep up with the fast pace.
It is seldom that we see a referee get cramp and out of breath during a game!
In the end, the All Blacks won by 35 to 20 and we get to
retain the Freedom Cup for another year.
Faf de Klerk, who plays for South Africa, would be one of my
most favourite rugby players ever. What
an amazing career this man has had.
A pity he doesn’t play for New Zealand!
Have a great weekend everyone 😊
Margaret.
I have never known a cat quite like Mittens for being able
to show her emotions clearly on her face.
This is her Expectant Face as she sits patiently waiting for
her dinner to appear.
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It is Monday today and we have dreary weather, with overcast
skies, wind, and the odd bit of rain. It
is the edge of an ex-tropical storm that is making its way down the country.
The weekend was fairly uneventful. I was feeling tired so never achieved very
much, certainly nothing worth writing about!
The weekend's highlight was Saturday evening, when we watched our
local Chiefs rugby team play the Canterbury Crusaders. The match was here in Hamilton but we viewed
it on TV, not joining the 24,000 people who packed out the stadium to capacity.
It was a good game. Both
teams were evenly matched and the score hung in the balance for most of the
game, but in the end we won 34 to 24.
Have a happy day 😊
Margaret.
HEADER PHOTO MAY 2023
My header photo for May 2023 is the Hurunui River in North
Canterbury. One of Canterbury’s braided
rivers, it is 145km long and flows from the Southern Alps down to the Pacific
Ocean. Brown trout and eels can be
fished here, along with seasonal runs of sea-salmon and whitebait.
This photo was taken in early winter, 2012.
When I was an older child, my father took me with him to see
a rugby match. I have two enduring
memories of that match – one was of a crowd of people bigger than I had ever
seen before, and the other was the loud sound of clanking cow bells.
Those cow bells have now been around since the early 1950s,
becoming an iconic representation of the Waikato Rugby mascot, a cow named “Mooloo.”
The Waikato was famous for its dairy farming industry, so it
seemed only proper that their mascot would be a cow – albeit, a two-person
animal with a fancy head.
The cow bell was an obvious follow-on, and a great adjunct
to the noise made by eager rugby fans when their favourite team scored.
Today, the cow bell is still much in existence although the
mascot is not often seen.
I have an ex-Waikato friend living in Christchurch who asked
me to find a bell for him, so he can combat the enthusiasm of his Cantabrian
friends.
I have sent him his bell, with the wish I hope he gets to clang
it many times.
Go Waikato Rugby!
Margaret 😊
Roger Federer would have to be classed as one of the
greatest, if not the greatest, tennis player that the world has ever seen.
I managed to see the final couple of hours of his last
match, playing in the Laver Cup with partner Rafael Nadal against Jack Sock and
Frances Tiafoe.
It was a great game, with Sock and Tiafoe winning at the
very last minute, but all that became irrelevant as the tributes (and tears)
flowed in remembrance of all Roger’s successes and the wish that he will have a
happy retirement.
Last night it was back to rugby again, with the All Blacks
successfully winning against the Australian Wallabies at Mt Eden Stadium in
Auckland. It was a much cleaner game
than the last one, without all the yellow cards and injuries that that game had
seen.
It was a different story with the South African vs Argentina
rugby game that we watched a replay of this morning. There were yellow cards in abundance
(thankfully no major injuries), with Argentina spending most of the game with
someone sitting in the Sin Bin.
South Africa won, but by too small a margin to prevent the
All Blacks winning the National Championship.
There is a break in rugby now, for around a month I believe,
before the next competition begins.
Saturday night will have to revert to being Movie Night for
a few weeks!
Have a sunny day 😊
Margaret.
I do like to watch a good rugby game, so sat up last night to watch the All Blacks play the Australian Wallabies in Melbourne (with the
time difference, it never ended here until midnight).
I’m not sure I would call it a good game though. There were several yellow cards for misdemeanours
and a handful of injuries on both teams.
Then the game ended on a controversial note when the referee
penalised the Wallabies for wasting time (he had previously warned them) and
the All Blacks managed to use the situation to gain the winning try-score.
Notwithstanding being a little tired, I have still had a
productive day today. At the Hardware
Store I purchased more potting mix and some seedlings, then drove across town
to have morning tea with some relations, before coming home again and doing
some work in the garden.
A few months ago, I purchased a small bag of gourmet
potatoes at the supermarket because they contained some purple spuds – I have
been trying to find purple spuds (often called Maori Potatoes) for a while now
but they are hard to come by.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I forgot about the
bag and when I “discovered” it again all the potatoes had sprouted.
I have now taken the purple ones and planted them into a large
pot, and with a little luck we may just get some potatoes off them.
I have not grown potatoes in a container before, and my
intention is to cover them with potting mix in stages as they grow larger.
I heard the first shining cuckoo of the season this
afternoon, so spring has definitely arrived.
Every day is a good day if you want it to be 😊
Margaret.
Buckets of rain, streakers, a capacity crowd, and the All
Blacks finally decisively win a test match.
We lost the series with Ireland and then last week against the Argentinian
Pumas we lost 25 – 18. Playing them
again this week we won 53 – 3. Our national
rugby team has been having one of the worst seasons of their history, so it is
nice to see them play like we expect them to play (rugby is our national game,
and we put a lot of pressure on our teams to perform well).
The bonus for us was the game was being played at our local
stadium here at Hamilton. The rain set
in late afternoon and has been steady since then and occasionally heavy as
well. If the temperature had been colder
we might not have had play interrupted by a couple of naked streakers on the
field!
Now we have the South Africa versus Australia game to watch
live. I’m expecting it will be another
good game – it will need to be to keep me awake as it doesn’t finish (in the live broadcast we receive) until
nearly midnight!
Cheers everyone 😊
Margaret.
Sorry to all you Irish rugby fans out there, but we were
quite happy to watch the All Blacks win their game last night.
At one time there was so much yelling and jumping up and
down in our seats, that poor Millie Cat fled outside. Not Mittens, though. She slept through all the excitement,
snuggled into a fluffy blanket on my bed.
We stayed up and watched the England vs Australia rugby match as
well. There seemed to be a lot more ‘scrapping’
in this game, which was a shame to see as it always drags the game down.
Australia came through in the end, but it was a close thing
for most of the game.
We have thick fog again this morning – neighbours, other
than the ones immediately beside us, have almost disappeared under the heavy white
blanket.
It is meant to turn into rain later in the morning, but the
forecast is for a sunny afternoon. We shall
see.
Whatever you are doing this weekend, stay safe and enjoy
yourself.
Margaret 😊
A few of us gathered together last night to watch the Super
Rugby Pacific final. The Crusaders (from
Canterbury) beat the Blues (from Auckland) by 21 points to 7.
Being a supporter of neither team, it was a change to be an
impartial viewer and simply enjoy two evenly matched teams battling it out
against each other.
Other than the game, things have been rather quiet around
here for the last couple of days. We have
had a mix of heavy rain, thick fog, and weak sunshine, but no more thunder.
Today has dawned clear and sunny, so I'm hoping it will be a
nice day even if the ground is still wet underfoot.
The mice the cats keep bringing in have been more lively
than my computer mouse. It has been
giving me lots of grief lately (I use the inbuilt mouse) and I have to keep
plugging in the external mouse. One of
those little irritating things in life.
I read this morning that Space may be full of Vampires but
we wouldn’t know because all our telescopes contain mirrors (and, of course,
vampires are invisible in mirrors!).
Have an awesome day 😊
Margaret.
What a way to spend a morning!
For just over 4 hours, Son and I watched a live tennis quarterfinal
played out in the French Open at Roland-Garros stadium in Paris.
I am not a big tennis follower, but this game had me sitting
on the edge of my chair as it was so exciting.
World ranking #1, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal (ranked
#5 in the world), both played an excellent game, and were so evenly matched
that it was impossible to pick who might win.
In the end, it was Rafael Nadal who took the honours from
this fiercely fought match, and his smile says it all.
This will be the fifteenth time that Rafael Nadal has
reached a semi-final at Roland-Garros. He
already has ten French Open wins under his belt – I wonder if he will end up
making it eleven?
We have very blustery weather here today and had some
exceptionally heavy rain during the night.
But it is not cold and we are quite snug here at home.
Hope everyone is having a great week 😊
Margaret.
HEADER PHOTO FOR JUNE 2022
A sunny June day at the foot of Mount Maunganui near
Tauranga.
The stone jetty in the middle foreground is all that remains of a
structure built in 1888-1889 to cater for picnickers arriving from Tauranga – it
was needed so that the long dresses of the ladies would no longer get wet when disembarking!
It has been rather a lazy weekend, but I did get some
parsley planted and some of my pots weeded.
Last evening, we had a thunderstorm bearing down on us, but
at the last moment it veered away – we heard lots of thunder, saw several
lightning flashes, but never had any rain.
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| Threatening thunder clouds |
The cats were not disturbed by the storm, nor have they been
worried by all the fireworks going off each evening. I think they are getting older and it is all
a bit of a “ho-hum-here-we-go-again” for them.
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| Millie and Mittens |
This morning we were up early to watch Wales play rugby against South Africa. It was such a good game, and I felt sorry for Wales when a spectator raced onto the field and prevented them from scoring.
Final Score: South Africa 23 and Wales 18
Soon afterwards, we watched a replay of the All Blacks
against Italy. That was not so
inspiring, but we still managed to win convincingly.
It was the referee I felt sorry for this time, when he was hit in the face with the ball during play. It must have hurt, but he continued on doing his job.
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| Final Score: New Zealand 47 and Italy 9 |
Then, this afternoon, it was time for another replay. This time France playing Argentina in Paris.
This was a really intense game, with both sides evenly
matched. The game was fast, and a bit
frenetic at times – a couple of yellow cards were issued when all the
testosterone on the field got a bit out of hand!
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| Final Score: France 29 and Argentina 20 |
Today was a great day if you are a rugby fan!
Tomorrow I will have to knuckle under again and get back to
doing some housework and cooking 😊
Cheers, Margaret.
