Frozen rugby, Christmas shopping, and Car Park Stalkers
When we left the house at 9:30 this morning, the frost was thick on the ground, and the car kept flashing “RISK OF ICE” messages on the dashboard. It was -3C, so yeahno shitrisk of ice indeed. We checked email before pulling away from the house, wrapped up like eskimos.“Rugby is ON this morning”Damn and blast.
We arrived at the rugby ground with Miss 10, and walked half a mile across the pitches to find the rest of her team. En route several small children ran in the opposite direction, shouting to their parents “It's CANCELLED!”. We carried on.
There seemed to be a distinct lack of any players on the pitches from the local team. It turned out they had cancelled, but the visiting teams hadn't been informed in time. Wonderful. What followed was an hour of “making the best of it”with the kids running around playing touch rugby on the deep frozen ground.
While watching, we got talking to the grandfather of one of our team, and he did that spectacular thing that old people seem so adept attold us the most mysoginistic, sexist, ignorant anecdote he could possibly have invented. He then laughed uproariously at his own story, and enjoyed it so much he told us it again. Idiot.
After an hour the coaches called it a day, and we ran back to the car. The free resulting hour gave us an opporunity to go Christmas shopping in the nearby town, so we grabbed it with both hands. Miss 10 got changed in the back of the car, and borrowed her Mum's coat. We nailed four presents in twenty minutes, before returning home in time for tea and medals.
Therein lies a story though.
When we arrived back at the multi-storey car park to go home, while walking towards the car I became aware of a blue car driven by a single asian guy travelling along slowly behind us. Surely he couldn't be waiting to take our parking place? The car park has many floors above this onewho would be that stupid? He would, it turns out.
We deliberately took our time getting into the carpacking bags away, getting into our seats, taking off coats, doing seat-belts upand all the while he sat waiting. Five or six cars approached, and passed him while he sat in the middle of the car park, waiting for our space. I couldn't believe it. He could have driven another hundred yards, and discovered spaces littered throughout the car-park but no. Idiot.