Princess Anne wasn’t there yesterday, to see Scotland win a 4th successive Calcutta Cup. She is patron of Scottish rugby, and a most devoted and enthusiastic one over many years. She wouldn’t have stayed away in favour of toasted cheese by the fire.

Since  I am being so feeble about illustration, please look the Cup up in Wikipedia or somewhere. It’s rather beautiful. It is close to being the oldest sporting trophy in circulation. It was made in Calcutta of silver melted down from rupees remaining to a British regimental rugby club, and has been awarded to England or Scotland, as appropriate, after the annual match ever since.

I went to see it once, taking a tour of Murrayfield while it was here. Somewhere there is a picture of me holding up some of my Calcutta Cup knitting next to the Real Thing. I sought in vain for that picture this morning. Nowadays there is a duplicate cup which lives at the loser’s stadium. When we were being shewn around at Murrayfield we were told that the only perceptible difference is the slightly darker colour of the Real Thing.

I first incorporated it into knitting into a Christening shawl for Kirsty Miles, James’ and Cathy’s daughter. That was for a great triumph, in the year 2000. Scotland had lost every game, even against Italy. England had won all of hers. A former Scotland coach, Ian McGheechan, remarked at the time, “They won the Six Nations. We won the Calcutta Cup. Everybody’s happy.”

And I’ve knit it ever since. You can see last year’s effort in the picture above. I’ll hope to tell you about this year’s tomorrow. But I never expected victories to come so thick and fast. 

Wordle: ALL six British-based scored four today. Theo had three, and we haven’t heard from Roger.  My winning streak is up to 54. My max was 67. So it’s getting scary.