The Bernard Files.: The Blogger is Back!!

Hi Readers,

Well, wasn't it fortunate that I jumped back online last to add another post (albeit a fairly brief and bland one!).
Throughout today I have been looking forward to getting into it again, that year off must have done me the world of good!
Now I'm in a bit of a quandary...do I talk about all/some of the things that have happened to me since last September, or start from today and just move on, or a mixture of both?

Perhaps the latter, because there are quite a few things that have happened, and places I've been that are just too memorable not to revisit.

Firstly, our time spent in Canada was amazing. We were due to stay in Banff for about 7 days, and then Calgary for 2-3 days, but we loved Banff so much we stayed there until the day before we had to fly out to London.
The last night in Canada was spent at the airport hotel, and it was also Grand Final night in the AFL, and who was playing? You guessed it, RICHMOND!!!

We went downstairs to have dinner, and the waiter noticed the accent and we were soon talking about the AFL (I had my Richmond shirt on!) He told me to come back later and he'd put the game on in the bar for me -Winner Winner!
This was especially good as one of my brothers had promised me a seat at the Grand Final, but I had to say no because I knew I was going to be overseas.

Anyway, I set myself up in the bar at 10.30 pm (I was the only one there mind you) and was happily watching the game, well, sort of, as it was tight early. At half time I asked the barman what time he closed. "In 5 minutes" was the reply. "AAARRGHH"!! That only gave me a few minutes to bolt back up to our room and try and get the game on my ipad.

Luckily I had installed an app for the game and paid for a game subscription, so I watched the 2nd half in the dark in our room, with my wife beside me sound asleep.

How hard was it not to cheer when we got in front and it became clear that we were going to win, and this was made harder by the steady stream of messages I was getting from Australia from people wanting to know if I was watching the game!!

And Readers, I'm not ashamed to admit I shed a few tears when we won, it had been so long since we had a good team, let alone win a Grand Final.

I must have been the only Richmond supporter who gave a silent fist punch at the final siren rather than going hysterical with joy!!! All at about 2.00 in the morning!!

After winning this game I was happier than the proverbial pig!!

And I even found a pair of socks at the airport the next morning with Tigers on them!!!

Well Readers, that's probably enough of me gloating about such an historic win, but I've been celebrating it constantly since. My office has lots of Richmond memorabilia, and I've watched the replay of the game around 20 times...and I'm still not sick of it!!!