Everyone's a winner (baby)

Up early, despite yesterday's unwise late night, making quiches for lunch. Happily everything was prepared in advance and just had to be assembled and thrown in the oven, then decanted into a box for our picnic. The first football tournament of the year happily turned out to be on a day with no rain. A bit cloudy in the morning, which kept things manageably cool for small boys who insist on playing in polyester tops, but soon the temperatures were soaring as the sun came out to play, and all the grown ups were heading for shade with cool beers.

Conor has stepped up an age class this year - and it really showed. The kids are supposed to be under 9, which I know from last year includes the school year in which you turn nine. Doesn't explain why the Albi team had at least three kids who were taller than all the under 11 teams... Anyway they, playing in a fetching shade of pink, were the team everyone loves to hate - dirty foulers too with none of the usual courtesy of helping pick up the kids they'd knocked down.

Despite the increased competition, Conor's team won their first two pool matches comfortably, with Conor even providing a little assistance despite his usual concentration on grinning and hanging his tongue out like a labrador most of the time. Sadly, the next two pool matches did not go well, and resulted in their deciding match being against the Lavaur first team (Conor was in the second team). A closely fought and largely friendly match ended up 1 all, though with some controversy as Conor's team scored a fantastic and undoubted goal, but most of us thought the other team's goal was actually the wrong side of the post (no nets, so hard to be certain). But, in a fine example of sporting behaviour, the coaches set a good example to the kids and said nothing to the ref (who was about 12) and waited until the end to acknowledge between themselves that the second team had really won.

But, as you can see, there were enough trophies for almost all teams to win one - and all four Lavaur teams went home with some silverware. And also, rather bizarrely, a cosmetics purse and a large shopping bag each - courtesy of our local cosmetics magnate. Conor was delighted (but doesn't realise that I've actually stolen them).

So, a very long day and a pretty boring one when the matches weren't on. By the end of the afternoon we were all very hot and tetchy. I was so bored I even posted to Facebook - something I've not done for years (didn't have the energy for this amount of typing...) But finally the raffles for the large and small hams had been drawn, the trophies were distributed, the mayor had given an overlong speech and the head of Tarn football a much applauded short one, and we were off home for a long-awaited beef wellington dinner (yum) with fancy claret. Finally I have managed to out-protein Mr B who could not finish his beef and had to save some for a cheeky starter tomorrow night.

Like I said, everyone's a winner. (Except Katherine, who was not only bored all day, but also didn't get steak.)