grimace and bear it

So...remember when I said that this year I would not be sitting in the South Stand for Sevens and getting hit by flying cups of beer and who knows what else?  I am a pushover.  Yes, I admit it.  And for being a pushover I was punished brutally.  A and R came up with a brilliant plan on the Tuesday before Sevens, which was that we would dress under the same theme and sit together.  Brilliant plan with four days for execution.

Since I was less than thrilled to be sitting in the South Stand, but not wanting to be the Yoko Ono that broke up the band, I agreed to go with a theme as long as they came up with it.  What they came up with was Ronald McDonald and friends.  A loves McDonald's.  Loves it.  "I'll be Ronald!!!" she texted to me.  "I'll be the Hamburglar!" R chimed in.  "Does this mean that I'm that hairy, purple thing?" I demanded.  "Hahaha" and "LOL," they replied.  Thanks guys.  Really.

And then I was presented with a dilemma of what to do when you hate the costume idea but are a perfectionist.  I didn't believe that those two clowns lovely ladies were going to pull off credible costumes in four days.  Actually, less than four days because R was going to be doing various activities as a member of the HK women's squad.  I was feeling rather pessimistic about the whole thing until I walked into one of those trendy/cheap clothing stores in CWB and discovered that some people have terrible taste in clothing.

I couldn't believe that people bought these things to wear for real.  Within the first ten minutes of what I thought would be a very long shopping day I was standing at the register with a fluffy purple jumper, purple leggings, a furry purple sweater, and part of SB's Birdie the Early Bird costume.  Ridiculous.

This was the goal

Who would wear this in real life?!

The gang in the South Stands

I managed to spend almost ten hours in the South Stand with various members of my club before fleeing with A for higher and cleaner ground.  At that point SB was driving me crazy; imagine ADHD mixed in with sensory overload and excessive alcohol.  We found A's boyfriend sitting up in the West stand with some of the NZ tens players and Steve Thompson, who looks even bigger in reality.

An hour later I trained my camera lens to spy on the South Stand and saw that only SB and two cross dressing cheerleaders remained from our group.  Fred Flintstone and the cavemen had stumbled off somewhere to pass out and the guy in the black unitard had been removed by security when he tried to cool down by removing the black unitard.  R's mother sent us a picture of her daughter passed out in the seats, the Hamburglar brought low by Pimms.  And that concluded another year of Saturdays in the South Stand.