Chips, chocolate and beer go together quite well together, I discovered this afternoon. Surprisingly well, actually. I discovered this very fact as I joined some friends today at the pub. You grab a chip, you grab a bit of chocolate, and you grab a sip of beer. You put it in your mouth, and it all tastes quite good together. It wasn’t something I’d planned gastronomically, but you should never regret anything, I reckon :)

It’s been quite some time since we, as a group of friends, had caught up like this. There are various subsets of the group who see each other regularly, but this was the first time in maybe a couple of years that it’s been all of us together. One of us had left her husband and gained a new one in the meantime. As a group of friends some of us go back thirty years, though my connection only goes back about 15 years, when I moved to Sydney in the mid 90s. And we had a bloody great time.

Curiously enough, for a group which consisted mostly of straight women and gay men, we divided up along gender lines on one thing: as the conversation developed throughout the afternoon, quite a few of the guys kept an eager eye on the AFL grand final. There were a few eager NRL fans in the group, and a few raised on enough AFL to have an interest. For me? I quite liked the spectacle of it all, and as we watched the footy, I also kept an eye of Twitter and tweeted the following.

* In a pub in sydney with abba fans watching melbourne football grand final. #alternatereality

* Watching #aflgf in sydney. We are all going for st kilda because we dont know where collingwood is. Seriously. And eddie. (to which I received the following response…@JamesOBrienAU we just said the same thing about having no idea about where Collingwood is geographically! and @JamesOBrienAU but going for Collingwood in spite of Eddie (<3 Jolly + Daisy + Mick Malthouse) – rest of the fam does not agree.

* Following @latrioli and @sallyloane this afternoon who are both tweeting footy albeit different codes.
(to which I received the following response… sallyloane @JamesOBrienAU Let me guess neither of them was the league!!)

* The bathurst super cheap auto race lacks a little of the magic of the hardie ferodo 1000 dont you think? (in response to an ad on the tele)

* If this was in sydney we would have left the stadium by now and would already be at the pub #aflgf (in response to the one-sided nature of the result all the way through)

And finally a re-tweet…

RT @WT11 RT @MichaelByrnes: Sarah Murdoch has just congratulated St. Kilda on their stunning win. #afl

As a game it was all a bit one-sided, wasn’t it?

In the large room of the pub where we watched it, there was only a murmur of interest in the game. As I looked around the room, there were quite a few groups of young blokes all on the turps who you thought SHOULD have been interested in the game, but who generally only looked toward the television screen only when the conversation died down or it was time to go the bar to order more drinks.

As a collective, however, the pub had pretty much decided we were going for St Kilda. Mostly, because of the genuine animosity most people feel towards Eddie Maguire. And secondly, because of our lack of geographic knowledge about Melbourne.

“Where’s Collingwood?”, I asked around my group of friends at one point. I’ve never seen so many blank faces in my life. Very amusing to realise none of us had any idea.

After the footy, we continued with a few beers. As the afternoon came towards its natural conclusion, a few of us decided to continue on for a bite to eat. I recommended Snakebean as a great place, with reasonably cheap prices. The recommendation was much appreciated by my friends from the Manly area who spent a bit of time bemoaning their culinary options.