On Thursday evening Claire and Michael arrived over for a long weekend in London, and started off with dinner at Uns' place. They were on their own on the Friday sightseeing and walking around, then Friday evening we met up with the rest of the crowd - Brian, Lorraine, Donners, Emma, Mark, Deidre, Noel as well as Simon - at Ping by Earls Court for pizza, drinks and table tennis. It's a kitchen, bar and games room concept inspired by the popular game of Ping Pong. As expected, it was more beer pong than actual table tennis, and certainly good fun!

On Saturday I was off to Twickenham with Gav, Jane and Farouk for the England vs South Africa game, the fourth and last in our tour of the home nations. I landed up getting there a fair bit before them, so decided to brave and queue in the rain for a pre-match boerie roll. Definitely worth the wait for it!

Once the others arrived, we made our way into the stadium and found our seats. We were on the lower tier so at least out of the rain and miserable weather. The game was alright, and after a few strange decisions at the end by England go to for posts instead of a try, SA came out victorious by 16 points to their 15. Apparently, in England 12 plus 3 equals 17 :)

After the game we headed towards the station, with the crowd singing Shosholoza, and onto a bus into Richmond. Jane had some friends coming out to join and after trying the Pig's Ears Craft Beer Cellar pub which had no free seats, we made our way over to the White Cross pub by the river for a couple of drinks and landed up having dinner there too.

Yesterday we had organised for everyone to meet up at Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park and have a wonder walk through there. I hadn't been there in years so was expecting it to still be much the same as last time which I wasn't overly impressed with back then. However, over the past few years, they've clearly grown in size and put a fair amount of effort into it all as it's now massive with full on fairgrounds, stalls, bands, mulled wine and traditional German Christmas-market food stands!

We met up with Brian, Lorraine, Mark and Deidre for a while and walked around with them until they had to leave to head off to the airport to catch their flight back home. Once gone, Claire, Michael, Una and myself made our way into town in search of some food, other than a currywurst or bratwurst which I had had earlier on the day.

We decided on Mother Mash which is just off Carnaby Street and it's fairly simple as well as super tasty food. We went there via Piccadilly Circus and walked up Regent Street which is looking fantastic at the moment with the Christmas Lights decorated all the way up. From Regent Street it was over to Mother Mash for tasty bangers and mash. After eating, it was back to Uns' place to grab their bags then wave then goodbye as the left to the airport to head back home. That draws to the end a good sporty and festive weekend!