Getting there

Like last time, the day of the move dawned bright and early, and I had collected the van by 0800. Drew and I then worked like Trojans and loaded the van with all the large stuff, before we walked down to sign the lease and take possession of the keys.

Once we had access, we drove round and got everything unloaded into the house before we drove back and left the van for Julie and Glenys to load whilst Drew and I went off to have some lunch.

We then drove round to Glenys's house, assisting with the unloading of the van, before we headed off to Big Yellow and completely emptied the storage unit that we had there.

We had decided that rather than fill the house up, we would load all of the boxes into the garage and bring them into the house as and when we had space. Doing this meant that we were finished and had the van back at the hire place whilst it was still light and got to bed at a decent hour.

Thursday was taken up with blitzing the old house from top to bottom, with it being finished on Friday morning just before the estate agent did the walk round and took the keys from us. The garden was cleared, with a couple of trips to the dump,  and I was back home early evening, in time to go and collect Maggie and have dinner ready for when Alec arrived from Hull, ready for the weekend.

Saturday was another lovely, but cold, day, and we were on the 0920 train to London, having our first pint at Waterloo by 1030, before heading to the Barmy Arms in Twickenham to meet with everyone.

My plan this year was that we would arrive at the stadium in plenty of time for the kick off, but as with just about every year, this plan went to rat shit with the introduction of beer. With the kick off at 1500, we didn't actually leave the pub until fifteen minutes before the kick-off, and by the time we'd bought food, got to the ground, found our seats, we'd missed the first twenty minutes of the game. Worse than that, the Navy were winning 19-5!

At this point, Maggie was worried! However, in the last twenty minutes of the first half, the Army scored two more tries, both of which were converted, and it was 19-19 at half time.

During the second half, the Army were completely dominant, the Navy only scoring one converted try, leaving the final score 43-26 in the Army's favour, much to Maggie's relief.

So the large group of us, with the addition of the two young ladies who adopted us, headed back to the Barmy Arms to carry on drinking, before making our way along the tow path to Richmond, via the White Swan, finishing up in The Old Ship.

I don't think that we had as much to drink as last year, and we were definitely home earlier, and again I felt surprisingly good on Sunday morning, but I think that all the alcohol must have left my body overnight on Sunday, as when I went to work on Monday, I felt rubbish, and still feel full of cold.

So stay tuned for the story of why "I think we're gonna need a bigger house" which will follow soon!