Part 1 of 2. Swing low...

Wow, two weeks have flown bye since I last got on here, its been an amazing time. These weeks will be ones I remember with a big smile when looking back on my late twenties.

Part 1.

My uncle got me a ticket for England France at Twickenham – my first time there – and I had a cool day on the M4, on trains, in a flat, a pub and in Twickenham. I met up with a friend in London, left the car at his, then got a train to Richmond where I was meeting my uncle, cousins and a gaggle of other hangers on for a beer and food before the off. The train was particularly exciting. Im always amazed in London at the quality of people watching on offer, and it was spiked up this time by the fact that there was, perhaps in prelude to the forcomming rugby, some good quality scrumaging requiredin order to get on the hideously over packed train.

This was an interesting social situation.

The first train arrived and was seriously full, a few people crammed on in front of me, but I didn’t have anywhere near the motivation required to brake the social rules of stranger touching, yet alone stranger pushing extremely hard that would be required to win myself an uncomfortable place on the train. By the time the second had arrived id finished my sandwich and was more up for it. I first had to make some attempt at holding back the cocks trying to push in front of me, together with whom we wrote off any chance that a few locals had who were trying to get off from somewhere back in the heart of the carriage. My time to push arrived sooner than id hoped. I put all inhibitions aside this time, and ignored the protests of the people who had quickly forgotten the fact that they had just done a ‘me’ and pushed on themselves, and uncomfortably forced myself inside the automatic doors just before they closed. I’m now stood inside with probably 5 people in the space that might under usual circumstances be called my own personal.

In the ground I was in the new stand, at the front of the top of three tiers. I caught up with my cousin who has just come back from a 6 month post-uni trip round the world. He’d had a great time, as did I, when we even unexpectedly beat the French in a thrilling second half.

Later on i quickly stopped at my friends for a tea, then started the trek back across the M4 - a trip made more frustrating knowing that id be comming the other way again the next morning on the way to Gatwick.

It’s a shame that we later lost to the Welsh, which I watched wearing a crappy Guinness hat in a bar in Wan Chai, Hong Kong.