Sporting a memory

When I saw this FB “Memory” (above) today, I had two thoughts. First, that this was exactly one week after I’d shifted into my house in Hamilton, an anniversary I didn’t mention this year because I was in Fiji (so… belated Happy Fourth Houseversay to me!). But the bigger thing that struck me about it is that it was only four months after Nigel died. The reason I went to the match is that my brother-in-law organised it, which makes this an example of what I was talking about the other day, about how he has encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone, even when I wasn’t necessarily enthused.

The night was really good, though I can see in my eyes that I wasn’t exactly bouncing with joy. Of course. The result of the match was, um, “an incomplete success” for New Zealand—yeah, that’s it. But a good night all the same.

Actually, it may surprise people who know me ub real life, but that wasn’t my first rodeo, er, sporting event in New Zealand. I went to two Boxing Day One Day International cricket matches at Eden Park in Auckland. The second, against England, was particularly memorable because of the “Barmy Army”, as England fans were known (my brother-in-law, a friend of his, and a friend of Nigel and me were there, too, but Nigel didn’t go and was the chauffeur instead).

I also was given tickets to a Warriors rugby league game at Go Media Mt Smart Stadium (then still called Ericsson Stadium) in the late 90s or very early 2000s. The Mad Butcher himself gave me the tickets. My brother-in-law went with me to that, and we also went to a North Harbour National Provincial Rugby match at North Harbour stadium in Albany.

I’ve never seen the All Blacks play in person, nor the Waikato Chiefs (based here in Hamilton), though of the two, the All Blacks are much more interesting to me, a former Aucklander (kind of a local joke, that…).

There was another thought I had when I looked at the photo of me: Nigel would’ve been so glad I went to the cricket that night, and that his brother made it happen. And that, in turn, led me to think about how Nigel had been encouraging me to do stuff outside my comfort zone throughout our whole life together, so his brother and sisters doing the same is apparently a family trait. Just another reason I was so very lucky to meet Nigel and marry into the family.

I never posted anything about that night here on this blog, nor did I post anything about my move at the time. That's because I didn't have the Internet up and running when I first shifted into this house (it took awhile…), and I had to use expensive (and slow) tethering to my phone to use my MacBook Pro, so I used that set-up mostly for email, and not much at all, for the first few days in particular. So, this post also documents a night I never talked about here at the time. I like that.