Cowboy night!

On Friday night my rugby team had their Christmas party at Old Orleans, a restaurant in Reading. As you can tell from above, the theme was 'cowboys'. It also doubled as a leaving party for Annie, our fantastic Aussie GAP student who is returning home at Christmas. That is her with me above in the college common room, from where Willem kindly gave us a lift to the train station. It was a brilliant night with good food, great company, and the odd bevvie or two... It was Annie's choice where we continued the partying after the meal, & not surprisingly she chose the Walkabout, the chain of themed Australian pubs in the UK! And before you ask, yes that is a colander on Annie's head below... It's a long story dating back to our rugby tour to Ireland last April...

I got home at about 1:30am, which wasn't a bad effort considering we started the evening at half 5! Not surprisingly, Saturday was a very quiet day. I enjoyed the All-Blacks win over the poms, but still didn't think we played very well. Far too many mistakes for my liking... On Friday night Will left for Norwich with his University korfball team that he coaches. He returned home early this morning with the news that his team had made it through to the Uni nationals for the first time ever. That's the last 16 teams in the country, so he was pretty stoked! Today we went to visit his parents & had a lovely lunch. Pheasant casserole! I had never eaten pheasant before, it was very good. Ironically we had spent the morning admiring a beautiful male pheasant who was eating bird seed off our deck area! After catching up with his parent we travelled a further 15 minutes or so & also visited his brother & family. It was pretty manic with their 3 young kids, but great to see them, as we hadn't caught up with them for several months.

One & a half weeks till the Christmas holidays & counting! Tomorrow night we are off to a Kooks concert in London with the Abery's, Annabel & Willem, so am looking forward to that.