There are tigers under my bed, originally uploaded by benaston.

, originally uploaded by benaston.

Our trip to Bombay was short and sweet (ish). We’d never planned to stay long, and after a day, we’d had our fill of it. Although everything is written as Mumbai, everyone here seems to be calling it Bombay. So I am too, it’s more colonial, if nothing else.

Getting here was pretty good. After a nice BA flight which was empty enough to allow us the luxury of sleeping in our own row of seats, we landed in Bombay in the middle of the night. We stayed in a suburb close to the airport, Juhu Beach where Oprah who was also in town, has a pad. The hotel, Juhu Residence Boutique Hotel was good, but I’m not sure what Oprah sees in the place. Juhu doesn’t really seem to have much going for it apart from two cultural highlights – Cinnabon (that was where Bombay was sweet) and Dominoes, which we indulged in dutifully.

I don’t feel that we got to see that much of Bombay – we took a taxi to the Gateway of India and walked the streets around Colaba and bought some clothes, but got bored of being hassled pretty quickly. We took a pit stop at Leopolds which apparently features heavily in the Bombay-based book Shantaram – the autobiography of an escaped Australian convict who makes a colourful life for himself in Bombay. As luck would have it, the author, Gregory David Roberts was there signing books so we bought his enormous encyclopaedic book for Rebecca to amuse herself with for our trip.

And then all we had time for was the taxi back to the hotel via Chapatti Beach which took a couple of hours. That was painful. And noisy. Then some dodgey street food at Juhu beach and it was time for bed.

Apparently, if you don’t like Bombay, you don’t ‘get’ it. That’s according to Lonely Planet so it must be true. So I have to concede, I don’t ‘get’ it. At least if ‘getting it’ is anything much other than lots of traffic, honking, and odd smells.

What I do ‘get’ though is the bottom shower; this has been the real highlight for me – far more efficient than a bidet, and very useful when your diet requires regular use of the toilet.

Next stop Udaipur.

Sometimes the transition from Summer to Autumn can be a bit difficult, so usually the best thing to do is to go to Spain and take a trip to Seville. It’s warm there, there’s ice cream and all the creature comforts, like Boris bikes.

Pica.

Cow Club Oct ’11, originally uploaded by benaston.

I joined London’s first Cow Club because I like mmmeat.

The concept is pretty simple; get a crowd of mmmeat eaters together, buy a cow, get someone to chop it up, and get it delivered to your door for a bargain £10/kg.

OK, so on the face of it, it might not be a bargain, but this was no ordinary cow.

The Cow Club mmmeat was locally sourced; a Sussex Bullock, native to the South East. These beauties are exclusively grass fed which means they taste better and are healthier too – with lower overall fat content & higher Omega 3 fat ratio. Not only that, but when you compare it to the competition, it stacks up pretty well financially too. After 20 months of chomping on delicious grass, the happy cow trotted just three miles up the road to a small family run abbattoir, hung around for 28 days, and was then transformed into a selection of  delicious mmmeat pieces.

Game.

Un petite truc pour tous les gens qui toujours dit a moi, ‘tu peut pas connaitre la francais’. Voici, un screenshot de MSN Messenger ou quelq’un francais a dit, je suis comprehensible et drole; c’est magique! Buuuut!

Donc, je peux.

Inspector Corbett stole my bicycle, originally uploaded by benaston.

I’ve had bikes stolen a few times. I’m all to familiar with the sinking feeling you get when you realise that either your bike has grown wings and flown away or someone has taken it from you and forgotten to tell you.

But whilst I’m familiar with bikes going walkies, yesterday was the first time that I had my bike stolen by a policeman. And no ordinary policeman, a policewoman, an Inspector; Inspector Corbett, Helen Corbett.

It’s a bit of a sad story. Yesterday I went to Wimbledon to watch a spot of tennis. I thought I’d ride my bike down and lock it up on a roadsign. Little did I know that Inspector Helen Corbett would decide to apply her anti-terrorist training to the situation and after positively identifying my bike as a potential bomb threat, decide it would be best if she broke my lock, take my bike away and park ‘the potential bomb threat’ next to the police station, so that in the event that it blew up, as many policemen and policewomen could be killed as possible.

Luckily Inspector Helen Corbett left a helpful sign up next to the place where she’d stolen my bike which informed me that my ‘unattended’ (no mention of the fact that it wasn’t so much unattended as it was locked up) bicycle had been removed to Wimbledon Police Station. So after a long walk, and a chat with a Policeman who told me it wasn’t his fault, it was Inspector Helen Corbett’s fault because she was scared of the IRA bombs, I got my bike bomb back.

Boombtastic.

Except, there’s still the issue of the broken lock. And apparently, when the Police steal things (like your locked bike), they can’t give you a crime reference number for your stolen bike and broken lock, they can only give you a piece of paper with Inspector Corbett’s name on. And that meant I then wasted ages trying to find out who Inspector Corbett was on Google.

So please Inspector Helen Corbett, can you give me a new bicycle lock, like the one you broke, so it doesn’t get stolen by the other people who steal bicycles? I’d like this one please

Thanks.

Following ze recent Mexico wedding jaunt we thought we’d continue our international summer wedding tour with a trip to Austria via Munchen so I could drive really fast in a BMW on ze autobahn. Just across ze border and down ze road from Salzburg, nestling next to a lake, (named after Ursula’s teddy beer*) where the hills are alive with the sound of music, is Zell am Moos.

It was my first euro-wedding experience; a cornucopia of beer, sausage and cold meats. What made this one even more brilliant was the delightful fusion of euro tradition; The Swedes instigated everyone racing to kiss the bride (or groom) when the other spouse was otherwise engaged spending a penny. The Austrians drank lots, which may explain why they didn’t quite get around to in getting everyone on board with their tradition of stealing away the bride to a local pub, to sing and drink while the groom has to find her. And as for the British contingent, well, we just smiled politely.

She’s a lovely Persson. Ursula.

*may be a misunderstanding, but it’s definitely something like that

The thing about the Isle of Skye is that it’s a long way away. I’ll almost go so far as to say it’s too far away. On the upside, there are nice things like whisky, mountains, and cows.

Nice.

It had been 6 long months since ‘30 miles of hurt‘; a walk so painful it made me seriously consider hanging up my boots, binning my poles and bidding farewell to my glucose tablets.  Rather than chasing mountain goats (Mark & Alex) up and down mountains, it occured to me that due to my emerging rotundness, and ever incresasing semblance to a hippo, a sedentary life recounting the heroic walks of old, might be more appropriate for me.

But times have changed. Wounds have healed. And this hippo is getting fatter.

So it was decided by common consent that we should stretch our legs. The Lake District was too boring; Snowdonia too far;  the logical choice was Scotland. OK, so it might be an hour or two past Wales but we wanted to conduct an experiment to see how easy it would be to get lost in the mountains in the snow in November.

Fuelled on a mean (almost vindictive) diet of Ryvita and Nutella for breakfast and lashings and lashings of Bean Feast for dinner, we completed three short highland strolls from our base in Fort William: Ring of Steall, Ben Nevis and Aonach Eagach.

Two died. They will be missed. Thankfully they were just phones. By some small miracle, we didn’t even need to be airlifted (although I did get stuck on an icy ledge for half an hour). So in conclusion, we are pleased to announce our experiment a success; the Highlands of Scotland are a place not only to get cold, and get lost, but are also very hippo friendly.

Och Aye.

Tomato harvest, originally uploaded by benaston.

It’s harvest time at Aston Villa. After 4 months of watering love, the tomatoes are in full bloom. Chutney in Putney coming right up.

On a chutney fact-finding mission I embarked on today, I discovered chutney comes from the hindustan word chutni. Right now that’s about all I know about it. Come Saturday though, you’ll be able to call me chutnigella, as I’ll be totally sumptuous with the tomatoes and knock up something truly simple yet make it look really difficult.

Dahl-licious.

At Wemberleeeeeey!

English Oath of Allegiance, originally uploaded by benaston.

Today I swapped my Canadian wife for a British one. The Canadian model was ok, but the British version is a definite upgrade.

Result.

Amy Williams wins Olympic Gold for Team GB, originally uploaded by benaston.

Seeing as we’ve had so much snow in 2010, it’s probably only good and proper that we should start taking an interest in the Winter Olympics. And naturally, it was only a matter of time before that snow translated into a medal in the skeleton.

Bear in mind that we tend to win loads of medals at the Winter Olympics, so this is hardly a big deal, barely even mentioning actually. But Amy Williams, for putting us in 16th place in the medal table by sliding down a hill on a tray, thank you.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Steak Smorgasbord, originally uploaded by benaston.

Following a slightly disastrous foray into the wilds of Clapham Common in search of steak, we went hunting, found a cow and asked it if it wouldn’t mind sharing a couple of fillet steaks with us.

The cow was very accommodating and so it was that we returned to Aston Villa with some fat steaks pictured above.

The cow was delish.

Boys 1 – 0 Girls, originally uploaded by benaston.

Can point out please, that the boys won the first match in the boys v girls weekly games tournament.

Could it have been that the boys finally had the strength in numbers required to topple the girls?

Or should we discount that, because the rules clearly dictate that due to limited gamesmanship skill, Laurence can only count as half?

Watev. Hurrah.