{"id":209,"date":"2011-02-07T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-02-06T19:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/?p=209"},"modified":"2011-02-06T20:49:32","modified_gmt":"2011-02-06T07:49:32","slug":"a-night-of-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/?p=209","title":{"rendered":"A Night of Win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtenay Place, the night of the Sevens<\/a> rugby final, is a scene of post-apocalyptic debauchery. Hooting groups of drunkards fumble out of taxis and stagger around, their group costumes<\/a> the worse for wear after three days.\u00c2\u00a0 Unwilling to sacrifice a parking place in Mount Victoria, Winona and Will have watched the madness through the safety of bus windows – but they have to get out sometime to return to their flat.<\/p>\n

“Oooo, look at that,” says Winona, as she steps on the sidewalk. A well-set-up young man wearing a coonskin cap, tall furry boots, and the remains of a fake fur loincloth is sprinting away from two groups of women who are chasing him. “D’you think the sexy nuns or the sexy MAF workers will get him first?”<\/p>\n

Will is shaking his head. “It gets crazier every year.”<\/p>\n

Winona turns up her collar and nestles closer to Will. It’s raining and windy. They’re sharing the sidewalk with\u00c2\u00a0 a homeless man wrapped in a blanket and a group of yodeling men wearing dirndls. “Well, New Zealand did win the Sevens. Oh, look, a whole crew dressed up like Tintin! I loved the Tintin books…”\u00c2\u00a0 And she smiles.<\/p>\n

To Will, her smile silences the yodels and shines through the rain. He grips her elbow. “Win. I – d’you want to get married?”<\/p>\n

“Married?” She stops.<\/p>\n

“I should’ve waited ’till Valentine’s Day, eh?”<\/p>\n

“No, no – I mean, yes! Yes, let’s get married, no, you shouldn’t have waited…” They collapse together, laughing giddily.<\/p>\n

A cranky woman brushes by them as they reel together. “Tch! Is everyone drunk tonight?”<\/p>\n

“Yes!” they both yell, in unison, laughing even more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtenay Place, the night of the Sevens rugby final, is a scene of post-apocalyptic debauchery. Hooting groups of drunkards fumble out of taxis and stagger around, their group costumes the worse for wear after three days.\u00c2\u00a0 Unwilling to sacrifice a parking place in Mount Victoria, Winona and Will have watched the madness through the safety […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[43,83,14,15],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shortfic","tag-romance","tag-the-sevens","tag-will","tag-winona"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}