Priten brings home The Ashes!

Priten is back in the UK for a few weeks and brought with him the famous Ashes Urn – or at least a decent copy – to celebrate England’s stunning, historic, crushing victory over the old enemy. He went to both the Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney tests in what was a landmark series – our first win on Aussie soil since 1986. I was sooo envious, but it was very exciting to see Priten’s facebook updates and photos ‘live’ from the actual venues.

Priten stayed with us a couple of days after landing as Tara had to be in Newcastle, and then on Saturday evening we all went to Mohit and Anju’s parents’ Anniversary / Birthday celebrations in East Ham. We caught up with loads of family, including Bhavisha & Alpesh and also saw Kee Gohil, who’d spent the early part of the day with Kevin discussing plans for www.CarPriceChecker.co.uk (small world eh??). From there we headed into the West End for Madvhi’s birthday party at a bar near Regents Street, and eventually got home about 3am after Tara had very kindly picked us up from The Strand in the small hours…!

Last weekend we went to Samantha’s 40th Birthday Party in Barking – a very enjoyable 70’s night in a function room at the Spotted Dog pub. Rakesh and Priten sported big Afro wigs, and I had a very fetching blond mop. It was a great night, and from there we headed to Kings Cross for Manish’s regular Saturday night MUAK spot at Egg on York Way (only a short walk from Camden Square where I shared a flat with Lee and Phil). It’s a huge maze-like club with loads of different rooms / bars / dancefloors and drinks were typical Central London prices – at least we got in free via the GuestList (thanks Zaki/Manish!). I drove, and Smeeta and I got home at about 3.30am. The boys were out all night…!

On Monday Priten came over to Campbell Cottage with Rakesh and Puja – I made some very acceptable Mushroom Risotto and we all sat around the dining room table chatting til midnight or so. We cracked open a couple of bottles of red wine and plenty of stories came out (most of which cannot be repeated here!). I’ve not laughed so much in months: it was a very funny evening – thanks guys and gals!!

Night out with the ‘fro bros: Priten, me, Raks and Kit

Priten, Raks and Puja join us for supper

Smeeta, Bhavisha and Alpesh at family gathering in East Ham

Priten and Tara

We’ve waited a long time for this…!!

Whist Drive 2011

This year’s Ruston Whist Drive was held on New Years Day, at Jennifer’s house in Shoreham. Our plans would have gone rather more smoothly if I hadn’t got the date wrong (DOH!) but thankfully we were able to re-arrange (apologies Tara!) and Smeeta and I arrived halfway through the game, which was better than nothing! In fact this enabled me to put in a short but stellar performance taking over Jenni’s hand: I won each of my five rounds, including two 10s…! Not enough to finish in the top three but a worthy performance from the reigning Champ 🙂

Sadly Terry and Jackie couldn’t be there due to illness, and David was feeling decidely rough, but it was great fun and I was pleased to be able to hand over the trophy to Clive, the 2011 Champion. Honourable mentions go to Jon and Emma in 2nd and 3rd places. It was great to catch up with everyone and many thanks to Jennifer for hosting. It was also fascinating to look at the tournament archives and remember all of the winners stretching right back to the 80s…! I look forward to many more.

Smeeta and I then went to visit Charlotte and Alien in PortSlade on Saturday night / Sunday, and from there we headed up to Chelmsford to spend the Bank Holiday with Tara.

The tension mounts…

Congrats to 2011 Champion, Clive