Paddy's day with a difference

Topping last year's St Pats day effort was always going to be a big ask, but this year, I have to say, was no less a day to remember. For a start, this year it fell on a Saturday. My sister-in-law Nicola (gods, that still feels so weird to say!) came up for the weekend and we all jumped the bus up to Kidlington - a villagey-suburbey thing to the north of Oxford - to watch the last games of the 6 Nations Rugby tournament; at a pub owned by an Irishman; who also happens to play rugby for the local team: Gosford Allblacks. How do we know this? Because my workchum Z's blokey, Marc, also plays for the Allblacks. The stage was set for a VERY big drinking day.

(For an irish pub, the 'Six Bells' does amazingly good Thai food - we'll have that again! But I digress. )

So we all-but-cried when Ireland got hussled out of top spot in the Tournament by a determined (and, for mine, decidedly dirty) French team who scored seconds before the final whistle - just not right on Ireland's national day. We had to pull ourselves together in the evening though, to meet the lads down the road at the Woodstock Arms for England Wales. Zenta, Ants and I, plus one other bloke, were - unsurprisingly- the only ones backing Wales... but damn me if the buggers didn't pull one out to win!

Anthony was a huge hit with the rugby lads - one look at his size was enough, but once they worked out he was a kiwi to boot, they were all over him to play. Brian, the team veteran, and a not overly tall chap who likes a pint or five, spent about an hour muttering 'just look at those hands - they could hold a ball alright' to anyone who would listen.

He was almost as funny as the bloke who sat next to me, looked at my chest and said 'I'm sorry, but they're fantastic. Are they paid for?' I'll rant some other time about the tendency for the English - male and female - to treat a woman's breasts as public property... Sigh. Hmmm. Dilemma: do I slap him and get chucked out of my first english pub, or explain it in the only language a chauvinist idiot will understand?

"They're all my own work, actually, although my husband did choose the very clever bra that's helping them out."

"So where's your husband tonight then?"

Hook, line, sinker. I nodded in Anthony's direction, Pissed Lad took one look, muttered 14 kinds of Sorry and spilled his pint in his haste to get away from me. In 2 minutes flat every girl in the room was laughing at him. I think he bought Ants and me a round - although I'd lost count by that stage.

Oh, best bit, the team captain turns out to be an Invercargill lad, a year or two ahead of Ants in school. He was dead impressed that Ants had played u-19s for Southland. My husband may yet don an Allblacks jersey... watch this space!