5 course tasting menu

 Last Thursday we went to Mereworth Vineyard for a meal and some paired win.  What a beautiful day. 

Wedding!

 I went to a friend's wedding reception on Saturday night, and it was lovely.  

Skunk Anansie

 Shaheen messaged me a couple of days ago and asked if I was free to meet up in London on Monday.  I was in London anyway and haven't seen him in a little while so said yes.  He kept everything secret, but eventually I worked it out.  Skunk Anansie was playing at the Water Rats!  A tiny venue just off Kings Cross Station.  It was amazing, she was once again superb. Great night!  We're off to see Dodgy on Thursday too!

Twickenham on Saturday

 Along with around 50 other TJs members we popped along to see the harlequins play at Twickenham.  It was along day 2h each way but we had a good time and was good to see everyone again after the season finished a couple of weeks ago.

Sunday roast

 We met one of the other rugby families out for a roast on Sunday.  The Rock Inn, Chiddingstone.  It was great fun.

A whole chicken, 3 ribs of beef and a shoulder of lamb

Hook the ring on the bulls nose game

Pizzas again

 We had friends over on Friday night for some more pizza.  Another success. 

Christmas eve fun

We had friends from the rugby club over on Christmas eve, original plan was to find somewhere for us all to eat but due to it being so close to Christmas were unable to find a table for us and the kids, 12 in total.  I ended up offering to cook some beef.

The return of afternoon o'booze

 I've got the afternoon off today and heading into London to meet up with 3 friends for a mini pub crawl around the West End.  If all goes to plan i'll get myself a cheeky Chinese in China Town before heading back.  I'm working from home this morning so the return train ticket is only £13 rather than the usual £34.30.  Not bad.  Although will barely touch the sides on the additional price of a pint of beer / glass of wine in central London

Wish me luck...

Hastings beer festival

We had an afternoon off from the kids on Saturday, some friends took the kids to a joint birthday party whilst we headed down to Hastings for the afternoon for a beer festival meeting up with friends who moved there a couple of years ago. 

Animal friends

 Both soaking up the last of the sun before we get properly into Autumn.

Impromptu bbq

 We had an impromptu bbq on Saturday night and I got the fire pit out

Old Lloyd's buddies

 It was my friend Markus' 50th birthday party on Sunday.  He held it at his rowing club.  My old boss Quentin was there too (not in photo) plus one of the good guys at Lloyd's Patrick.

It was good to see them.

Glad I could help

 I had a message from a my best friend from Uni this morning asking for help with excel.  It's about the 3rd or 4th time i've helped him out.

I really don't mind, as it's usually nothing complicated.  These days I generally don't get to play around with excel so much when I go to a new company, processes are usually well established so I just have to go through the motions and update the data.  Everything in theory flops out at the other end wth limited interaction.

It's nice to use parts of my brain that don't get used very often.  

Double booked

With Royal Ascot earlier in the day we had to shoot back to Tonbridge for our friends Stuart and Lesley's joint birthday parties.  A combined age of 100!  They were supposed to do a 40th / 50th 5 years ago but Covid put a stop to that. 

Anyway, we made it, but didn't have time to get changed.  We walked past my pub and got a good laugh from the landlord Jon!  I like to do my bit and makes sure everybody is happy.

Board game night

 We popped over to some friends house last night and had dinner followed by playing a few board games. 

A french version of Treasure Island (they're french / Belgium) and High Society. Good fun.

Last night's game

 We completed the latest chapter in the campaign and are now level 14.

Dropping off a magnum of champagne to my friend Andrew who house / dog and cat sat for us whilst we were away.

Another BBQ

 We had another BBQ round a friends on Sunday

Thank you magnum for Wayne who let us borrow his car to France

Arthur relaxing and enjoying an ice-cream

Off to France tomorrow

 We're taking the week off next week and are driving to Sezanne, about 20 min from Epernay (Champagne).  We're going with a couple of other families so there will be 12 of us.  The same families we went to Camber Sands with last year.  I'm swapping cars with a friend for the week as I don't fancy charging the car whilst abroad. Should be a fun trip though..

40th round a friends

 One of our friends had her 40th birthday at their house on Saturday, loads of the Tonbridge lot turned up.  It was good fun.

Fantasy football update

 I'm just outside the top 20k fantasy football players this year with 2 game weeks to go.  That's out of 11.5m players (i'm sure the vast majority of accounts are now dormant), even given that, it's been a bloody good season for me.

I'm top of all my groups except for 1 and have no realistic prospect of winning the whole thing but still very pleased.  I'm 154 pts clear in my Tonbridge group with 2 games left so no realistic chance of me losing, but it comes with a £20 entry fee for prize money and also a trophy.  I've won it 3 times out of 6 (about to be 4th time winning out of 7).  Usually we'll all meet up for the fa cup final or for the final week of the season but we have a 40th birthday party and i'm away in France  for the final game so struggling to find a date where we can meet.  The winner has to pay for drinks out of the winnings so they're usually out of pocket especially after getting the trophy engraved.

I've suggested some alternate meets but not much joy (one response).  Sod it. Just pay up.