Winter sees all of our greens around house, slow down. That means less work for yours truly on weekends so Tress and I have been getting out more.

On Saturday, after a leisurely walk with the little fellow and a quick pottering around t he house, we went to Springvale again. A couple of Malaysian Malay food joints have come up in recent years and we’d only been there once before this winter. This time, we went to a Malay joint with lontong (a type of wrapped rice staple) that is served in a rich creamy coconut broth with lots of vege. It’s called Lontong Sayur Lodeh. They also had a classic nasi lemak, which Tress had. They were both very good. We also packed some food to go with us, seeing we weren’t going to do any cooking that weekend.

Later that arvo, we did our usual oval walk with the little fellow again before putting up our legs for the night. The “dream time” game between the Bombers and the Tigers were on but we caught a movie on Netflix instead, to start the evening. We did eventually switch to that game which was a bit of a fizzer. The Tigers have been undergoing an attrition and with loads of players unavailable through injury, they have been pretty ordinary. There was also the A League soccer “grand final” on and since Melbourne Victory was playing, we watched that for a bit too.

When both games were over, I saw that it would be another hour and a half before the FA Cup final came on. Such is the woe of living so far from where the best soccer is played, I hardly watch any game anymore, even when a match like the FA Cup final (with Man Utd playing Man City) will be on Paramount Plus, which we have. We went to bed, thinking the very dominant City team will surely prevail. United, with all its recent woes, would be lucky to lose by a respectable margin. So I thought.

When we woke up on Sunday morning, I was very pleasantly surprised – United won, with two young goalscorers carrying the day. Garnacho and Mainoo will surely represent the future of any resurgence that United fans have any hope for.

At St Alf’s later that day, the atmosphere was a bit subdue. It was a first Sunday post Peter MacPherson. Mark Simon was to be the stand in vicar, until a permanent replacement can be found. As soon as the service was over, we went home, attended to the little fellow, then ducked out to catch the train to Marvel Stadium. There, we soaked in a wonderful win by the Hawks, which gave yours truly a second reason to be grinning from ear to ear. A weekend with both my teams chalking up wonderful wins has been as rare as hen’s teeth and so I savoured it.

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We caught up with Jason and Mel on Friday night at the Rogues’ Squire at Wheelers Hill. Jason had teed it up, and he had been saying, for a few weeks now, that he wanted to catch up. We finally did, and found out why he had wanted to. It made me smile – another reason to be grinning – so it has been a wonderful weekend.