Rugby World Cup Countdown 2
September 10th 2007 05:21
The Eiffel Tower
Only three sleeps and three more days of work now until Thursday, Rugby World Cup departure day. As time speeds by, vanishing into the past, the nail-bitingly stressful obstacles begin to resolve themselves but the trivia morphs and mulitplies. As I knock one annoying little problem on the head, two more grow in its place, like Hydra, the legendary multi-headed Greek monster.
Big Red, the AWOL travel bag, turned up yesterday after a trip to Italy and a spell in a Brunswick shed. This instantly wiped out one of the nail-bitingly stressful obstacles i.e. its unexplained absence, as well as bowling over trivial concerns about what clothes to take. With Big Red capacity available again, I can take anything; all that left-behind whanau gear, my own black collection, rain and snow contingency clothing. I can probably even cram in one of those Steinlager sideline flags from Athletic Park, Wellington, 199??? to wave in Lyon next weekend.
Where exactly in Lyon I'll be waving that flag, though, is still uncertain. God willing, I will be in Lyon. I have the train ticket from Paris to Lyon and I have a room in a hotel. However, I still don't have a match ticket. Between savage attacks on my nails, I see tragic flashes of myself bravely flying the flag outside the Stade de Lyon, Millenium Stadium, Murrayfield, Parc des Princes and Stade de France or waving it at cafe tellies in the company of crowds of other disappointed ticketless figures in black. Still, there's a kind of consolation in the knowledge that I am not alone in my ticketlessness; that hundreds of other nails are being bitten to the quick; that hundreds of other desperate people are making frantic phone-calls, sending anxious emails and scrabbling feverishly through mail-boxes in search of tickets, news of tickets or ticket rendezvous, as I write.
A scrabble through my email inbox at work today yielded only a million and one little administrivial loose ends that absolutely have to be tied up by Thursday; a dozen others lay waiting in my letter box - overdue parking fines, bills, registrations; the phones dumped more again - people to see, calls to return but no tickets, no news of tickets or ticket rendezvous.
For the ticketed advance guard down in Marseille, it's been a winning weekend. I shared a little of the ambience in phone calls the day before, just before, just after and the day after the match. On TV, that stadium in Marseille looked like great fun - a huge party. The All Blacks had a good start to their World Cup. But it's just the beginning, the tough adversaries are still ahead. There's still plenty of reason for nail-biting.
Tomorrow; will those tickets arrive? will there be news of tickets or a ticket rendezvous?
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