Arrgghh!

Catastrophic result for England against South Africa in their first Rugby World Cup game tonight! And the only player with any charisma and that special bit of ooomph, the ever-brilliant Jason Robinson , is out of the tournament and possibly the game forever, with a hamstring injury. Well, I'm off too, after this disastrous performance from the - ahem - reigning champions [sic], and am going to support Scotland instead. Fickle? Moi? Oui. (But Hugo Southwell plays for Scotland, so I think I might be forgiven?) The rest of the family are turning to the land of their (great)grandfathers and pinning their hopes on Ireland.

Well, having partially drowned my sorrows with a couple of glasses of fairly (no, extremely) indifferent Sauvignon Blanc, I'm off to bed with Inspector Rebus - though with some trepidation (and I have very carefully avoided all reviews and spoilers, so please do not enlighten me).

Busy weekend ahead, with an endless round of children's sporting, educational and social activities, several kilos of blackberries to harvest, Small Doyle No 3's first day at the Rugby Club (under 6's squad) on Sunday (hard to believe if you've seen the bridesmaid pics, but she is tremendously keen, so we're off to buy some boots tomorrow), and the second half of the memoirs of a nineteenth-century Russian sea Captain to copy edit (jolly entertaining, actually, apart from the bits about whaling, which was de rigeur in those days, of course, but pretty hard to read from a twenty-first century perspective).