Christmassy Knightsbridge!

We decided to get into the Christmas spirit by popping over to Knightsbridge which is quite near us to check out the Christmas decorations! We popped into Harrods and saw the Diana and Dodi memorial with her wine glass from the night and the engagement ring Dodi gave her. There was a soprano singing in the stairwell which was very cool! We could have spent hours in there really!

Blackrock Masters

James spoilt me with tickets to see the Blackrock Masters in the Royal Albert Hall on Friday night. I was very impressed by the Royal Albert Hall itself, even if we were sitting up in the rafters! :)

The games kicked off with a singles match - Pat Cash and Greg Rudeski. Good game but poor Pat Cash felt the strain in the end. Greg won in the end but it was tight enough.

Mansour Bahrami was the star of the night with trick shots and jokes. He had the whole place laughing!

We bumped into Peter Fleming also... despite the cheesy grin below, he was a long string of misery really!

Just look at their faces!!

The weather was ok on Sunday so I cruelly forced the lads into seeing a bit of the city. They loved every minute of it.





Not sure what the theme of Johnny's performance in these is exactly:


And finally, a sheepish Jer rejoins us after getting lost on the Tube. I know, hard to believe!

The Lads - Saturday

Rock and Roll!

When in London...

Yes, Elmer did bring his robe with him...

The weather was poor so we did the obvious thing - went for pints on a boat..

Gav was starving so he ordered nachos... the results were dissappointing.



Elmer sure did love the Tube! In fact...



Anyway, on to the good stuff!






Eh, good times had by all...

There may or may not have been an incident involving me going home early and the lads not being able to get in... but it's not important who had 47 missed calls from whom, and who was stuck outside for however long...

The Lads - Friday night

Carnage.

Jer, Elmer and Gav came over to visit two weekends ago, with Eakins and Enright in the melting pot also... do do do!






Gav took exception to a garbage truck and decided to confront it like some sort of surreal matador:



A draw was declared and we all made it home in one piece, most importantly, getting into the flat without incident...

Festival of José 2008

Johnny Wine turned the big <snip> the other week, bringing us down to Clapham for a night out south of the river. Not ideal, I know, but we made the best of things...

We tried to persuade Charlie Boorman to join us 'by any means' (see what I did there?) but he declined. A shame - I had even refrained from launching into a set-piece rant about his ludicrous tv show... a different model car doesn't count as a new 'form of transport' you clown! To be fair though, he seemed like a good bloke.



Here's Jose and his entourage:

There was a ceasefire in effect for the night...

Ivor, Johnny, and housemates Shane and Niall

Present but not pictured were Locky (l) and Lenny (r)...

Guns and Ximi share a jimbrace

Do do do!!!

Yes, there was a Jagerbomb or two for the night that was in it...

Housewarming update!!

Some new images have been released by the PR people...

Pretty suave...

PEMBROKE

Thames walk

I went on a solo walk today (as James is home at a wedding) to enjoy a beautiful sunny day - 22 degrees and blue skies in fact!! You'd never think it was October!

It is tens minutes from our place so great and handy!

Here are some photos...

Housewarming!

Better late than never but we finally threw a housewarming bash - the reason for the delay was of course the difficulty of finding a date suitable for all of our vast London circle...
[Translation: Ivor had a whole pile of weddings and stags and this was the only weekend he was around...]

Laura came up trumps with delicious Rocky Road chocolate thingys, the pizza delivery lad threw in a bottle of red for us saving the family business with our order, and we finally got to polish off the QUMAS Company of the Year 2006 champagne! Johnny wore his eclectic ROSSLARE TO PEMBROKE jumper in case there were any quiet moments that needed filling...

We had a pint in the Colton across the road to give our guests the full flavour of life in Queen's Club Gardens, before we headed into town. For reasons still unknown to all but Angela, we ended up in a certain well-known London establishment, generally frequented by males without their partners... We did see Kian from Westlife in there which excited the girls, but we quickly moved on to a venue more appropriate for our group!

Great night though!

Jim, Conor, Sarah, Ivor, Laura, Johnny, Angela, Flor and special guest star Cherry!

You ain't seen this, right...

This entire post won't make any sense unless you are familiar with Gideon Soames from The Fast Show:

Royal Day Out!

Finally the last of our catch up posts! With the weather getting colder and the winter creeping up on us, we are not likely to be embarking on too many more of these expeditions.

We are always haunted everytime we go on our touist adventures! Blue skies again! We strolled through St James' Park admiring Buckingham Palace to the left and Whitehall to the right.

It was the last day Buckingham Palace had its state rooms open to the public so we took the tour around inside. Very impressive but I'm afraid no pictures allowed!

After our tour of the state rooms we walked through the Queen's gardens and then walked home via Hype Park. I am currently reading Diana's book so was interested to visit her official memorial.

Below are a few of the pictures we took during the day.

Portobello Road...

We also squeezed in a trip to Notting Hill for the famous Portobello Road market. This was more Sarah's baby than mine, as it was all antiques, clothes, and other bric-à-brac...

The day after we were there, we saw the new Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse sketch show, featuring a superb piece that captures the vibe of Notting Hill nicely for me...

Ho Chi Minh's doughnuts

Another catch-up post of another weekend of touristry! This time it was the painfully clichéd open-top bus tour, but it was really good fun! The weather was superb, the guides were entertaining, and they even threw in a river 'cruise' from London Bridge to Westminster.

We learnt lots about our new city, from plagues to fires to Henry VIII's wives. But what really blew me away was the blue plaque on a building on Regent Street commemorating the hotel where Ho Chi Minh worked as a pastry chef prior to ejecting the French and the Americans from Vietnam!

Regent St Festival

Going back a few weeks now and shame on me for not keeping up with my blogs posts! A girl that I work with recommended that we go to the Regent St Festival. Since we had not yet been in that neck of the woods, we said we would go along. They had closed off the lower part of Regent St, from Oxford Circus down to Picadilly Circus, which was good to see it so pedestrianised. Turned out it was a festival to celebrate British life but we were only concerned with looking for somewhere to eat!

Here are some photos of the festival and some more of when we strolled on further down towards Whitehall and Westminster featuring the first appearance of Jim’s Almaty champions hoody!

A September Saturday

As a proud new member of the South Counties Hockey Umpires Association, I set off for the splendidly-named Purley Walcountians Hockey Club for my first umpiring assignment of the season on Saturday morning. It was a gorgeous day, even East Croydon station looked well in the sunshine.

I reached Purley on schedule, but to my alarm, I couldn't find a place to validate my Oyster card. On consulting the two station attendants, they told me that my Oyster card wasn't valid all the way out here... I wondered aloud what to do, and one of the lads said "You need to think carefully about what you think is the most appropriate course of action..." Fortunately, this was delivered with a nudge and a wink, and it was clear that my error would not be punished. Indeed, I ended up mediating a football argument between the two boys while I waited for my lift from the station!

After a minute or two, the captain of Purley arrived to collect me. Terribly nice chap. I don't think I've ever heard the word 'quite' used as a response to a remark so many times...

The game itself went well, feedback to the Philly Shine of London was very positive (in fact as I write, I have just been appointed to a league game next Saturday!). After, I was fed and watered while having further posh conversations with my host and various other hockey hangers on - the usual types; the alcoholic alicadoo, the 'club men' collecting subs, and of course various short-haired lesbians...

There was an amusing moment as my host was describing to me an incident during the match involving the Indian forward - the poor chap desperately trying to avoid sounding un-PC... "He was the, er, Asiany sort of chap..."

I was spirited back to the station and this time I purchased a legitimate ticket for the short trip back to the comfort, if you'll pardon the imminent pun, of Zone 2. There was one twist in the tale - I had to change in Clapham Junction, the 16-platform behemoth of a station south of the river, opposite Fulham.

To minimise the chaos, there are helpful signs on the wall where you can look up your destination station, and it tells you what platforms to aim for. Somewhat dissappointingly, the platforms for West Brompton were 15, 16, and 2!
Cue a predectable farce as I made for 15/16, just missed the train, then legged it all the way to platform 2, missed another one, before taking the next train to Victoria in disgust and connecting with the District line. I did have a great view of Battersea Power Station - correction, the iconic Battersea Power Station...

And what of my better half?

Sarah and Angela spent the afternoon shopping on Kensington High Street, before adjourning to a champagne bar. They needed somewhere to put the Nine West bags down for a while... It's a good job pay-day only comes once a month!