I only have about half an hour before I need to head off and catch my train to Paris, so looks like this update will be a quick one.

I have been based in London for the last 2 weeks and have been exploring the city, chilling out and catching up with Mates. It has been incredibly relaxing and generally pretty great. London has certainly pulled out some brilliant weather too!

The first week in London was a pretty quiet one. I spent my time chilling out and recharging my batteries after a fairly full on 5 weeks. I visited a few sights but mainly just wandered the streets and did a lot of people watching.

I spent my first weekend in England in Tickhill, a small village in South Yorkshire. It's the village where I lived for 2 and a half years a while back and I still love it! The weather was fantastic while I was there and I managed to catch up with the majority of people of wanted too. It certainly helped to hang out in the pubs. In a small town, news travels like wild fire and it had gone around the village, that I was in town, in about an hour. It was very impressive!

The weekend was great. It consisted of a lot of drinking and shooting the breeze with some seriously brilliant people. Tickhill Cricket Club had a match on the Sunday, against the 'Old England XI'. An invitational group of former English caps. By the time, Joan and I arrived at the ground, the game was fairly close (although the Visitors did eventually win) and the spectators were pretty wasted. It was an entertaining last innings, especially when the fielders joined us for a few wines between overs.

After the cricket, a rather brave decision was made to head to the pub. As expected, not a lot of people lasted too long but I found a few mates to talk too and managed to get home in my previsouly usual fashion, an hour and a half after time. Where does the time go eh?

Monday morning was a long, long morning and thankfully all I had to do was board a bus then a train. I think it was all I was capable of!

Back in London, I spent my days exploring the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, the Natural history Museum and wandering the streets around Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square etc. I explored Bond Street and Oxford Street prior to Meeting up with Emma (ABB Emma) and George the night before heading to Tickhill, so shopping was well covered.

I meet up with Andrew and Ben last Friday night and we went to Hyde Park for a very promising concert. Pearl Jam, Ben Harper and Gomez, among others, were all playing that night, so we meet up early and ate some lunch (my first Sushi in 6/7 weeks! Man, it was good!), and wandered a bit. The concert was HUGE! There were so many people! Way bigger than I was expecting it to be really but I keep forgetting, just how many people live in and around London. It's a busy place.

Ben Harper played a good set but since changes to the backing band, he no longers plays his old stuff, which was a little disappointing. However, he is an incredible musician and he always manages to complete a stellar preformance. Gomez were playing on another stage, just after Ben Harper but since we had grabbed ourselves an awesome position in the crowd, we decided to wait where we were for Pearl Jam. Not sure if that was a good plan or not, when PJ came on there was a massive surge from the crowd and then when they started playing, there was more crushing and madness, so we bailed on our primo spots and headed a bit further back. Just after this, PJ asked everyone to stop crushing each other. So, it was a good idea to move really. Oh god! Just realised how old I sound!

PJ played a blinder, it was absolutely incredible and totally worth the loss of my shoe. Andrew and I went out for a drink with a couple of other people after the concert and then headed back to the Hotel, where we were staying. Breakfast at Borough market in the morning and then a well deserved coffee in Leicester Square after that. All round brilliant weekend... again.

Now back to normality, yesterday Dave, Kylie and I explored Spittalfields Market. It is a cool market, quite different to Borough. After that we headed back home to watch the England vs Germany match. The game didn't quite go to plan for the English and they really did get beaten convincingly. Which would make it a great time to head to France. I get to avoid the inevitable post-match analysis of England's loss.

So thats about it from me. Am off to Paris now and then Strasbourg for a couple of days before catching up with Bec in Zurich.

Caz