A while back I had booked us a Groupon deal for dinner at Rodizio Preto in Battersea for all you can eat meat buffet, which no doubt we were looking forward to! So after work on Thursday I headed out to Battersea and met up with Will, Si and Noel and decided to a quick pre-beer before our meal. Over the road was Le Pot Lyonnais, a nice looking French pub so we popped in there for a quick one before making our way over to Rodizio Preto.

With it being 'all you can eat meat' we certainly weren't too generous on the salad front, rather saving ourselves for the meat, especially the delicious peppered steak. So good! After a decent meal there, we popped across the road back to Le Pot Lyonnais for another one before all making our way home.

On Friday it was the Hammersmith fireworks display in Bishops Park and I'd organised to meet up with Seamus as well as Noel who was going with his ex-housemates. I had planned on a fairly quiet night and snapping a few pictures of the fireworks, which was all good except I left the tripod attachment at home so a camera with a tripod stand is rather useless without the attachment :(

The fireworks were actually quite good, with the entire display being in sync with the music from the various James Bond films. I got a few pictures, but nothing spectacular, hopefully next year I'll remember to bring everything with me! After the fireworks there was a bit of talk about heading to the Durell Arms for a couple, and with my arm fairly easily bent we headed off down there for just one or two. Noel's housemates later joined us and after a few rounds (more than initially planned) we continued back at their house for a bit of a house party until we all decided to call it a night and hopped in a cab back up to Putney

On Saturday I had planned to meet Carol nice and early in Regent Street for the the Regent Street Motorshow. It's now an annual show, with the street closed to regular traffic and showcases over 300 cars spanning 125 years of motoring from the earliest 19th Century veterans to the 21st Century cars of the future. The main focus of the show is the Veteran Motoring section with over 100 magnificent machines from pre-1905 era showing the earliest in pioneering motoring ahead of the traditional London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, which was held yesterday, leaving about 7am from London and finishing up down in Brighton. Since Friday was always going to be a quiet one, I figured an early start to the motorshow was best but instead I landed up waking up a few minutes before our planned meet up time in town. Damn! So after a quick apologetic phone call to Caz explaining how I wouldn't quite be there at 11, I started the manic process of getting ready - and really not feeling great at all :( All self inflicted I guess! But after a shower and some decent coffee from Tried & True, I was good to go and made my way into town

The car show was awesome, even though I'm not much of a petrol head when it comes to cars and engines, I do enjoy a good motorshow every now and then, so was awesome to walk around cars that were quiet a bit over 100 years old, and still in working order! I heard a couple of the guys saying that had only just bought the car, some the night before, and would be quite interesting to know what they would've paid for some of those machines!

After a while walking around there, I headed off back home and later on out to Clapham Junction to The Duck to meet up with Una and some of her friends who were over in London from Ireland for a weekend. They had been out and about in town to Harrods and Oxford Street, and now chilling out in the pub after a pretty full on day shopping and sightseeing. Noel joined us a bit later on as well, and after a couple there at The Duck we decided to move on down the road to the Northcote for a quick one before popping over the road for dinner at Nandos, which always goes down so well. It's been a while since I had last had Nandos, but what was even more surprising (and upsetting) was that most of the others with us had never even had Nandos once before. Very sad indeed!

Yesterday was just an awful miserable day over here, with no real interest in wanting to head outside at all. So instead I spent it at home in front of the TV going over my photos and sorting through them. Not a job that just takes a few minutes, but also meant I didn't have to leave the house? well, for the most part of it... until Keith got hold of me. He was over the weekend for his friend Brett's wedding which is where he had been since Friday. So once the wedding festivities were over, I headed out into town and met up with him and Charlie at The Fire Station pub near to Waterloo. They had just finished their drinks, so instead of staying there we decided to head around the corner to Cubana for some food and a couple of Sunday evening cocktails - always tastier on a school night, especially when they're half price.

After a decent bit of food, we decided to change venue for one more quick one before calling it a night, and heading down The Cut but most of the pubs there were closed, I guess being a Sunday evening. The only one that seemed open was The Windmill Tavern which we thought we'd give a try and see what they were like. It was actually fairly decent inside compared to what we first imagined it to be like, with some decent music playing inside although wasn't exceptionally busy. We stayed for a couple there, was good to catch up again with Keithy who I probably hadn't seen since the Olympics. He had an insanely early flight at 6am this morning and had to get to Gatwick by 4am, so we didn't stay out too long to allow him some time to get back to Charlie's place and organise getting to the airport at that time. And hopefully a bit of sleep too! But good to see him in London town again!