On Thursday night we started the weekend (since Thurs is the new Friday) out in Soho, first for pizza at Iccos then over at Barrio Central for Marina's birthday celebration which had a fairly relaxed and easy going atmosphere. Good to see everyone again - Paul, Carol, Sam, Duncs, and later on Loz and Kat came through. Not bad for a Thursday evening!

Then on Friday it was a fairly early start out at Liverpool Street and met up with the work crowd before heading up to Norwich for Jason's wedding. A couple of hours journey on the train, so was fairly quick getting there. Once there we dropped our bags at the Stracey Hotel, quickly changed into our suits and all jumped in taxis over to Christ Church for the ceremony at midday.

Weddings here in the UK work slightly differently to what I'm used to, where we weren't invited to the afternoon luncheon, but were to the evening's reception. So instead we found The Compleat Angler along the high street next to the river, and chilled out there for lunch and a few afternoon refreshments. Later on we headed back to the hotel, checked into our rooms and met up again downstairs on the hotel bar balcony in the sun for a few sundowners. From there, we caught a taxi over to Dunston Hall which was about 20 minutes drive away.

The venue was Dunston Hall - a beautiful red brick country house hotel set in 150 acres of wooded Norfolk parkland, and very much a wedding oriented venue. We were out in the gardens in front of the hotel in a rather large marquee, where the others had had their afternoon dinner earlier, while we were slumming it over at the pub.

It was a bit awkward at first, especially not knowing anyone there, but things picked up as the night went on, and even with a few breaks in the music for some traditional Chinese rituals, the night was alright I guess - not as much fun as some of the other weddings I've been to. As a late evening snack, they fired up the hog roast and all helped outselves to some pork and crackling sandwiches, which went down like a treat. And as the night went on, so the rational logic went down, and there became an inside joke to steal the pig's head from the hog roast and take it back to the hotel.

This went from a fairly funny idea to a massive operation of getting the head from the roast, sneaking it back in the taxi, meeting back at John's hotel room, using the complimentary soap for the eyes, stealing Pay's room key card, unscrewing the light bulbs in the hallway and finally getting into Pay's room.

Unfortunately he woke up as we sneaked it, so in a hurried panic we left it on the bedside table instead of next to him on the pillow before fleeing his room back to our own, so almost a successful operation from what started out as a joke. Still a hilarious end to the evening!

Yesterday's train was early afternoon, so after checking out in the morning and a slow walk around Norwich, we all made our way back to London. I just chilled out in the afternoon, not that interested in getting up to much. Yet this morning was rather action packed with me and Paul heading out down to Swinley Forest on our bikes for a few hours around the tracks out there.

At last we found the 'expert mountain biking' section and got to make full use of some of the purpose build tracks, which were good fun - especially the Labyrinth. Then on the way back home to the train station, I got caught up in an insane downpour, which felt more like a tropical storm, so an hour's train ride while thoroughly drenched wasn't all that much fun. At least the morning's ride was fairly downpour-free. And so that concludes a fun three day weekend!