Well the tournament was today. The boys hit their original target of £400 of sponsors, upped it to £600 and, hit that and went up again to £635 and finally upped it to £650. This made them the team that had raised the most (and John raised a good chunk of that himself) HOWEVER we then find out that Accenture (the contracting company that most of the team work for) are willing to match any sponsership that the team raised so the guys have raised a huge amount as a team.
The tournament itself was good fun - the first game was pretty evenly matched and quite rightly resulted in a 0-0 draw. The second match was different - they so should have won but Jubril was denied goals three times by the skin of the goal keepers teeth but again it resulted in a draw. But in game three, disaster struck. The other team was winning with two or three goals and they were about 10 minutes from the end of the game when Richard decided to take one for the team and dislocated his knee to save them futher embarrassment. Poor thing ended up going off in an ambulance in much pain so, after a quick conflab, the boys decided that it was't fair to continue when one for their number was off to casualty. They did however quite rightly get participation medals and, though a disappointing (and painful for poor Richard) end, I think they all enjoyed themselves.
I didn't take many photos as I was filming but here are what I took:
Well it was my birthday today and, after a snuggle with the dogs and JJ first thing, we set off far to early for JJ's tastes to go and meet Mum, Dad and K for the day. They had recently been to a sculpture park and really enjoyed it so I decided that I quite fancied it too so we were going to the Hannah Peshar Sculpture Gardens. The weather was beautiful - it has been unseasonably warm this year and it was more like July than April.
When we arrived at the gardens (after a very winding and picturesque route) we realised that it didn't open for another hour and a half so we headed off to Cranleigh for a second breakfast. Mum and the others weren't far behind us so we took over a coffee shop with our noisy raucous ways and John and I had a delicious breakky while th others looked on in envy. Once we had eaten and exchanged pressies, we headed back to the gardens, only to find out that they were open by appointment only until May! Luckily another group had made an appointment so the owner was there and was happy for us to go round too.
The gardens themselves were gorgeous with the blue bells in full bloom and primoses peeking out from every crevice (and thank goodness we managed to persuade mum NOT to roll naked in the blue bells) and the sculptures just added an additional beauty to the place. We were all particularly partial to the angel stood at the top of the slope and the croissant shaped "Moon Swing", the bobbing fountains that were activated by movement and the superman garb stood in a tree. I think JJ was quite inspired by the sculpture that he dubbed "Beef Curtains". We also agreed that the many torsos scattered around the place were very uninspiring as was "infinity", which was instantly dubbed "Turds on sticks".
I could write all day about the pieces but it is possibly easier to just have a look at the pictures that I took below.
Having wandered round the gardens for about 3 hours we decided to head off for a pub lunch - the first place that we stopped at hadn't had its vegetable delivery for the day so we went on to another place whos name completely escapes me but it was ideal. It had a large and uncrowded garden at the back and, as it wasn't on a busy road anyway, all you could really hear was bird song and the mumble of other customers. Mum and Dad has fillet steak which I am told was gorgeous, K had rump steak, I had a cheeseburger which was way too big but delicious and JJ had eggs benedict which he hadn't had before but he really liked. We then chased it with treacle tart (cos it would be rude not to) and were bloated beyond belief.
Having stuffed ourselves we headed to Guildford to hire some row boats and go messing baout on the river but it was 1/2 hour before they closed so they weren't hiring out at that time. Instead we headed to Mums and, after wandering around the garden and admiring the neighbours new chickens, K, JJ and I decided to go to see Blades of Glory.
This was a very funny film and I think better than the hilarious Talledega Nights, but whereas we came out of Talledega Nights saying "And what about that bit when...." and "o and you remember when...", with this film I found that I didn't.
Having droppped K home we then headed home ourselves only to find that Sherbs Houdini impression had confused the pet visitor as he shut the back door wen he left for the first visit but for the second found that Sherb had let them out into the back garden.
After a quick check of the email we headed upstairs relatively early so JJ could get his beauty sleep in preperation for the big day tomorrow.
Added this to digg in the hope that we will get more sponsors so the boys hit their targets. We can only HOPE! (Did you see what I did there?)AND I up the ante and promise not only photos but possibly video!
New year's eve 2009, I was 6 months pregnant and getting ready to go to a party when I had a major stroke, paralyzing my left side. Luckily, largely due to my then boyfriend's quick thinking the baby and I were fine. Now, I have a second child but only one working hand, making it doubly hard to knock their heads together!
