That for the second time since the Princess was born, Mr. Waffle and I went away alone together at the weekend. We were separated from our progeny for just under 24 hours while my sister and Mr. Waffle’s parents did Trojan babysitting work. It’s not a very interesting post this but I felt it should be recorded for posterity.
We stayed in a (small) country house type place and all of the guests assembled in the drawing room before dinner. Among them were two older Americans and they were charming, interesting and delightful people and, I thought, really, if people are ambassadors for their country, then these people surely must do it better than anyone. I also thought, my God Americans are very well preserved. They looked fantastic and were well into their 70s. Apparently they still like to ski too.
Other guests were less thrilling. In large part this was because there had been a rugby match earlier in the day and they discussed it throw by throw and scrum by scrum. When I left the country five years ago, rugby was a minority interest. This is, alas, no longer the case. It seems to have come with the boom. Perhaps, if I am lucky, the recession might diminish the national interest in rugby as well as the national income.