Happenstance....

.......is a word I've never written down before.  Or ever used now I  come to think of it.

Happenstance found me squeezed on a stool outside Atmos, with Rousseaux to my right and Kilcoo Shaun to my left.  Jean-Marc had dragged the big screen onto the terrace for the Leinster/Toulouse final.  I'd gone out looking for Mireille Sabatier, who, if she knows there's to be a crowd of men around, will do all she can to be in the middle of them.
She wasn't and I was.  Meredith brought us demis and I peered myopically at the screen which simultaneously showed a bunch of red and blue men and the reflection of people moving around behind me.
Rousseaux went in for a pit stop and Roussel leaned over and said he'd put 50 bucks on the match being a tie at full time.  

The score was 9-6 to Toulouse when I gave up and left.

Emma drove us up into the mountains where Madeleine was being goal keeper in the county women's final.  We sat on the wooden terraced benches, ate camembert sandwiches, drank bottles of Heineken, stamped loudly and shouted until we were hoarse.  

I half watched the game and half watched the daylight slip and fade across the steep wooded hillsides.  Madeleine saved a whole lot of goals and their number 8 scored a whole lot of goals which resulted in them lifting the county cup as the sun slipped away.

Meanwhile in White Hart Lane, Toulouse and Leinster were balancing on 15-15 at 80 minutes and Roussel won 900 euros.