Rugby end of season

Saturday night was our rugby end of season do. We had booked the private function room at Zizzi's, a nice Italian restaurant in Reading. The theme was pyjama party, so we all had to turn up in our PJ's complete with teddy bear. Our backs coach Taff, resplendent in his pink 'little miss naughty' PJ's is not coaching us next season, and will be sorely missed. We had already given him a farewell, but this was another opportunity to thank him for everything he has done for the team over the last couple of years. I wasn't amongst the awards this time around, but I did get player of the year last year, so can't really complain... At least it meant I didn't have to down a pint!!!
This morning Will & I enjoyed a lovely long sleep-in, our first one in quite a while. Tomorrow is a Bank holiday, so Will has the day off work. I don't have a huge amount planned for my week off. I've got a few errands to do in town, like officially changing my name to Mrs Browne at the bank. I've also got lots of reports to write, & am planning on also spending a lot of time in the garden. Unfortunately the weather isn't meant to be too flash for the week, but we shall wait & see...

Half-term

The last week of school went quickly. It was quite sad saying goodbye to my 5th form class on Friday, for the majority of them it will be their last maths lesson ever. Friday night we had an end of half-term BBQ at Ric's, which ended up being one of those epic Bearwood nights! Lots of eating, drinking, silly dancing, & pretty much just having a great night. Photographic evidence is below. Saturday was speech day, & there were quite a few sore heads amongst the staff! I wasn't too bad, I'm getting quite sensible in my old age, & tend to know when enough is enough... Speech day was OK, just a bit of pomp & ceremony to endure. It was a gorgeous day for it, I escaped at around 3pm & spent a couple of hours in the garden, before heading out to my rugby end of season do in town.

A day at Lords

This week has gone by very fast. All is good, apart from losing our touch game 3-2 on Wednesday night. Without making excuses we had an awful ref, & it didn't help when he sent off our best player in the second half... Oh well, it was only the first proper game of the season, hopefully we'll have plenty of opportunity to make up the points.

Saturday Will was away at a korfball tournament in Oxford all day. I had a nice day, it was bit of a novelty having the house all to myself. I did my tennis activity at school in the morning, then came back & pottered around for a bit. My friend Claire was having a BBQ for her birthday on Monday so I went & hung out there for a bit. It was then home, I cooked myself a nice dinner, then had a lovely long hot bath complete with candles, & the romance playlist on my ipod! It was here that Will found me when he got home at around 11pm!

Today was a big day at Lords; the home of cricket. We were watching the fourth day of the NZ/England test. It was a great day out, & the weather even decided to co-operate. No mean feat considering most of play on Saturday had been washed out. The group of us from school were Will & I, Ric, Jason, Talby & Hugh. Nat Jones was also there with Lee & a group of their mates, & we caught up with them at various times throughout the day. Lords is a lovely place to watch cricket. We were in the Edrich stand 1 row back from the boundary. It is very civilised, everyone is allowed to take in 1 bottle of wine each. The boys had a couple of beers on the train into London, but I decided 9am was a tad too early to start drinking! At the ground we knocked off the 6 bottles of wine before lunch. I then enjoyed the Bacardi I had snuck into the ground, whereas the guys had a few more pints.

The cricket itself was good as well, we saw all 10 of the English wickets fall, but also a lot of runs. The match is pretty much tied up at the moment, so unless something spectacular happens tomorrow, it looks like being a draw. We got home about 9pm, tired, but happy from a great day out.

1 week to go till half-term, bring it on!!!

Glorious weather!

This week has been lovely, with glorious sunshine every single day. It was made even better by the fact that it was a short working week, due to the Bank Holiday on Monday. Most nights I've walked home from school & pottered in the garden for a couple of hours. It is starting to look really good. Will try & take a few pics during the week, by the time I thought to do it tonight it was already a bit dark.

Wednesday was the opening night of the touch rugby season. It was grading matches on Wednesday, but as defending division 1 champions, we were only ever going to be put into the top league, no matter what our result was. As it happened, we won 13-3. We've lost our superstar Carlos Spencer-esque Glen back to his native NZ, but have managed to pick up another kiwi guy Nick, who looks like he'll be a more than able replacement.

This weekend has been lovely, with a LOT of time spent outside in the garden. We have done lots of digging, planting & weeding, all in the gorgeous sunshine. We've also put together a really nice set of wooden garden furniture which we bought for half-price at the end of last summer. My friend Nicola was visiting for the weekend, so it was lovely to catch up with her. I last saw her at our wedding. Saturday night we had a BBQ round at Scotties, as it was his birthday on Friday. It was a really nice night, & great to able to wear a t-shirt outside till late evening. The BBQ season is always good fun at Bearwood, with everyone within a few minutes walk of each other.

Today we both enjoyed a nice lie-in, as funnily enough, I didn't get a huge amount of sleep last weekend on tour! This was then followed by another long day outside. Nicola was staying for dinner so I cooked the orange chicken casserole from the trusty old Edmunds cookbook which we enjoyed outside on our new garden furniture. Our second major wedding purchase has been a gorgeous set of Le Creuset pans which arrived on Saturday. It includes 2 saucepans, a casserole, & a non-stick frying pan, so I enjoyed cooking with them for the first time. I think Will was a bit worried by how excited I was getting about these new pans, but they truly are beautiful!!!

No other news, the rest of the week is also meant to be lovely. It's sports day Wednesday afternoon, & it has rained the last couple of years, so fingers crossed...

Farewells & Tour

On Friday night I farewelled my mum & dad & my nana. It was lovely having them around while they were here, & very hard to say goodbye... They flew out from Heathrow just after 9pm, then at 10:15pm I flew to Ireland for my rugby tour, giving me very little time to feel sad! There were 5 of us on the late flight, with the other 18 tourists managing to wrangle the day off work (or suddenly 'coming down' with something!) & flying out earlier in the day.

It was nearly 1am by the time we rocked up to our accommodation. We were playing the Kinsale 7's, & were staying in some lovely holiday cottages on the sea, about 20 minutes from the town centre.

Despite it being late & us new arrivals being pretty much dead on our feet, we were given our tour kit each & bombarded with instructions. The theme for the Reading Ladies tour 08 was 'Prison Break', & our kit included a polo shirt, a black & white rugby jersey, & a swag bag with several items in it that we had to keep on our person all times (unless actually playing) or else we would be fined.

I won't say too much about the trip, because obviously the old adage "what goes on tour, stays on tour" holds, but it was a great weekend, very well organised by our 4 prison wardens. For those that weren't always willing to co-operate there was 'solitary confinement' & the 'stroppy knickers' both of which I managed to avoid!

My tour name was MacKenzie, who was apparently the only convict from NZ that the committee could find. They put our wanted posters up at the rugby club, & also the pub in town which we adopted as our base for the weekend. The rugby took place on Saturday & Sunday, but was almost incidental to the tour. To say our team didn't exactly take it seriously was bit of an understatement! I didn't even survive more than a few minutes. I managed to pull something in my back during the warm-up before the first game (& yes I did get fined for injuring myself in the warm-up!). The physio on my team did a bit of work & managed to get me moving a bit, & I tried a few minutes on the field, but it wasn't right. I wasn't too bothered, 7's isn't exactly a game for front-row forwards!!!

Here are a few more pics from the weekend... In case you're wondering, the letters on our tour shirts spell "The great escape Kinsale" & whenever the wardens played the great escape music we had to line up in order.

After the days playing was over, we would have a few (more) drinks at the club, then head into town. On Sunday afternoon our wardens had organised a treasure hunt around Kinsale. We were split into teams, chained to each other, given a set of clues, & set off to hunt down some keys. My team rocked, we finished way before the other team, with all our keys found, unlike the others who couldn't find half theirs! We celebrated with some lovely fish & chips down on the waterfront.So there you go, I survived my first tour with Reading ladies. It was a great was to spend a long weekend, with plenty of antics. One of the funniest sights was a guys team from Manchester who were staying at the same place as us. They decided to go into town in togas on the last night, & were snapped having an impromptu game of touch. We had a lot to do with them over the weekend, they were a good laugh, & would come & support us during our games.We arrived back in Reading mid afternoon today, & I met Will in town for a spot of shopping. We purchased a lovely cutlery set from John Lewis using some of our wedding vouchers, so thank you to everyone reading this who contributed! We have a few ideas for the rest of the vouchers. We want to get some really nice things that will last us a long time.

No more news, & this is long enough anyway... Back to school tomorrow, but at least it is a nice short week thanks to the bank holiday today.