I should have known it was going to be an interesting day when before lunchtime on the interview trail, note pad in hand, camera, phone and several passes around my neck, a teenager in the South Stand looked at me through bleary eyes and said: “What are you doing in here, you cougar."
On a cool damp squib of a Saturday I was showing as much flesh as the average Amish. And I’m not yet 50 Shades of Grey hair.
It took me until the next Sevens to tell this one to my media centre colleagues, who are still laughing.
It pays not to take yourself too seriously if you’re a woman writing about rugby. God knows, no one else does a lot of the time (Which is probably also why I write the more left-field/off-field side of it).
I like having a name more commonly associated with a man. It’s fun disarming people when you meet them, like Scottish players who have read with amusement what you’ve written the week before and assumed you were also a tall, Scottish, rugby-playing chap. (Correct on almost two counts.)
Women also sometimes assume you’re a man. I suppose it puts the “bi” into by-line.