After a couple of evenings of watching the Paralympics at home, Una and I headed through to Trafalgar Square to BT London Live, but didn't realise they weren't showing any sport until after 8pm only, so decided on dinner first. And since Byron Burger happened to be nearby, that seemed the most logical option for food!

After dinner we made our way back down to Trafalgar Square to BT Live to watch the athletics which was being broadcast live. The excitement of the night was watching Oscar Pistorius in the 100m and unfortunately, after all the exciting build up, he landed up coming 4th only. Not quite the result we pictured.

On Friday evening after work I made my way out to Greenwich and met up with Gav, Jane, Ben and others for a braai over at their place. The weather was good enough to be able to braai and have a few drinks outside until late when we decided to move the party inside. Good to catch up with Gav and the others again.

On Saturday the amazing weather was still with us, so hopped on my bike and headed out and around Richmond Park for a while. That evening, it was Will's birthday celebrations and had organised drinks upstairs at The Nell of Old Drury near to The Stand in town. It was also the Mayor's Thames Festival on over the weekend, so we decided to walk from Waterloo via the Southbank to get to the pub and check out what was happening at the festival. It would've been quite good to have had more time, but will save it for another year. Once we had walked through all the festivies, it was over onto The Strand and then up to The Nell pub to meet up with Will and everyone else who had made it through.

Yesterday was unfortunately the last day of the Paralympics and London 2012 as well. I had managed on Thursday last week to get some tickets to the wheelchair rugby finals, and earlier on the week Una and I had decided to splash out and buy ourselves tickets to the closing ceremony. We figured the Olympics and Paralympics are a once in a lifetime opportunity, especially being in your hometime, so why not go for it and treat ourselves to the closing ceremony. So yesterday turned out to be a massive day, with the wheelchair rugby (originally called murderball) on from midday, then the closing ceremony later that evening.

We were a bit late getting to the park and into the Basketball Arena, so unfortunately we missed the first half of the first game between the United States and Japan. It was the bronze medal match to play for 3rd place, and the USA took on Japan by 53 points to 43. We were also really high up the stands (i.e. cheap seats), so wasn't easy to follow to keep track of the score. So after that game, we managed to move further down to a couple of empty seats and watch the final from there, between Canada and Australia. Neither of us knew the rules particularly well, so we were learning them as the game went on. But in the final, Australia managed to hold Canada back, and took the gold by 66 points to 51. After the game they had the victory celebration and awarded the medals to the three countries, at which point the Aussies decided to empty a large coolerbox of iced water onto their coach. I guess there's no lake or dam to throw him into, but a bucket of water over your head will do just fine!

After the wheelchair rugby had finished, everyone had to leave the park, whether you had tickets to the closing ceremony or not, you had to re-enter later to validate those tickets. So while we waited, we headed over to Westfield to grab something to eat and a brief walk around there. After not all that long, when the park gates were once again open, we made our way back and into the athletics stadium. It was bizarre to see the rest of the park closed, the only accessible paths were those into the stadium. Still, that's all we were there for. Since we were in the stadium so early, it was fairly empty at first and started to fill up as the time went on to a sold out stadium of 80,000 people.

The spectacular finale, described as a "festival of flame", featured rock band Coldplay with a cast of around 1,200 and had a peak television audience of 7.7 million people who tuned in. The ceremony also included appearances by Rihanna and Jay-Z as well as the parade of athletes and the passing of the Paralympic flag to the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro. The theme of the night was to recognise the role festivals have played in the history of Britain, from Stonehenge to the Bonfire in Kent and the carnival culture in the West Country, as well as the marking the seasons.

Between the entire cast, the music as well as the fireworks, it made for the most spectacular night which I had hoped to carry on until the early hours of this morning! Just brilliant, and can't believe it's been six weeks since Bradley Wiggins opened the 2012 London Olympics. Sad to see it all come to an end, but glad I was able to experience something like that in my home town!

After the ceremony, there was a massive crowd who had left the stadium but still inside the park and were congregating around a band that were playing. It turned out to be the No Limit Street Band, an 8 piece brass band playing high energy, full tilt, flat out covers of party songs and other well known tunes. They were just brilliant, and no matter how hard the staff tried to hint that it was time to stop playing, the crowd were having none of it and continued to jump around and dance to the music of the band. Everytime a staff member said 'one more song', they promised just one more, and that went on for a good number of songs, until eventually they had to stop and so did the party. We probably only got home after 2 this morning, so struggling a bit through today, but last night made it all worth it!