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Last night there was something of a standoff here in Harpin’ Manor. On ‘normal’ weekends, my flagging the date and time of the latest Leinster & Ireland match (usually by way of a note on the fridge) informs/warns the rest of the family that his is the two-hour block where Dad is going to be screaming at the main TV for the duration and be sure to find something else to do.
But more often than not, and indeed on most weekends this season, said match has been on a Saturday, and given I’m the only real rugby fan in the house, I suppose you’d forgive the others for assuming it was the same this week.
So it turns out the four of us have been actively going about our lives all week with three of us under the assumption that Friday evening would be spent binge-watching the new episodes of Stranger Things, while my plans involved a different type of Dragons, with absolutely no dungeons.
Things came to a head when we sat down to dinner as I rocked up to the table wearing my Leinster jersey.
“Dad, why did you change into that????” asked one of the kids.
Given I’m unashamedly one of those nerdy dads who not only implements household systems like putting regular notes on the fridge, but also gets extremely smug when the opportunity arises to point out that people didn’t follow it, my reply was dripping with sarcasm.
“Because of the match”
“What match?”
“The match you’d know about if you looked at the fridge.”
My hubris came from the fact that I assumed this was a one v one conversation that I would easily win as the other two would remain neutral, if possibly rolling their eyes that dad is referring to another one of his nerdy systems again. But in actual fact, I had talked myself into a perilous 1 v 3 situation.
“But what about our Stranger Things marathon?”
“Was that tonight?”
HARPIN' ON RUGBY 