SUNDAY The old expat 'hand' was bristling with curiosity: 'You've been around since 1978 and never been to the Sevens? Most unusual.' I keep wondering about that.
I have never played rugby. I don't even know the rules properly. Yet weeks beforehand, keen white men gallop up bellowing, 'Going to the Sevens then?' with the flushed enthusiasm of Biggs Minor of the Lower Remove.
Nobody would approach you with the same spirit about whether you might be going to the Ballet Russe. There has always been the hint that there may be something wrong with your red corpuscle count if you are not going to the Sevens. The memsahibs keep up a gung-ho united front too: I expect a white feather from one of them at any moment.
Perhaps a little curiosity will not be out of place in these gweilo run-down years.
MONDAY I have decided to get into the spirit of this rugby week. I can't actually go to the Sevens - I have no guanxi (connections) in the rugby world and I didn't queue overnight for a ticket in So Kon Po behind youngsters half my age in sleeping bags with Vegemite and biscuits.
To kick off then, this morning I went to Harry Ramsden's chippie for their $99 rugby 'challenge' breakfast. The dining room was as empty as the Titanic's probably was with a 15-degree list. I can understand why. Only solitary gluttons can wobble their way through three fried eggs, two slices of black pudding, two tomatoes, two rashers of bacon, four sausages, a puddle of baked beans and five slices of toast.
The Sevens players will not be eating there. Their meals are paid for at the Furama Kempinski hotel. Breakfast is a buffet at the rotating La Ronda. It only moves a foot or so a minute but I must warn that players - valued for their strength rather than their double-digit IQs - returning from the loo to find their table and mates have disappeared may become traumatised, lost and miss practice.