Football girls, Good Food & Wine Show, Fancy Dress and a new niece!

Phillipa Louise Chambers

You can see there has been lots going on, where should I start? With the most important news then...Ben & Kylie have new jobs....mummy & daddy. On Thursday 12th June Phillipa Louise Chambers was born. I can't remember all the stats, she was born in the afternoon and she's pretty cute. Here's some photos to confirm.

So we'll work backwards from that then, Chalky went to another Fancy Mess party...Retro theme, of course we managed to pull an outfit together with help from Robyn & Nicko's dressing up box.

Today (Sunday 22nd) Sarah & I went to the Food & Wine Show at Darling Harbour, we literally ate our way around the convention centre tasting all kinds of olive oils, breads, dips, apples, wine wine and more wine, and all kinds of other snack treats. There were 2 features for the day, a cooking session to learn how to cook a stuffed spatchcock, mediterranean vegetables and apple pies. I was really looking forward to it, I've never cooked a small bird before, actually I've never cooked a big bird either. And even after the class I still haven't, apparently the fridges weren't doing their job right and we couldn't risk it instead we had some lamb to cook...the lamb was delicious - but I still need to sort out the birds. Another time I guess. The other feature for the day was the Gordon Ramsay session, it wasn't an intimate session, we shared him with 2,500 others and mostly screaming desperate women - it was a little embarrassing but worth it to see him and watch him cook. So now Sarah & I are hoping to win one of the competitions that we entered otherwise we've both signed up for lots of random emails!

Football is still dominating our weekends, last weekend we even played in the rain. Chalky's team won a game this weekend (the first for the year) Mitch has hung up his premiership boots and has now joined the over 35's, this made a difference this weekend. Chalky's contribution was only from the sidelines or putting off the keeper as he's recovering from a blow to the ribs and hamstring. His girls on the other hand won again...Div2:9-1, Div1: 2-0, last weekend the Div2 game was captured on film.

Div 2 backline in action

Jenny (Div 4 helping out) gracefully winning the ball

Nellie super striker making a run

Nellie...shots...scores - please note Grandma keeper!

Nellie gets her hatrick...the keeper is broken. After getting her hatrick this week she scored 5!

Football football and more football.

So football is fair well dominating our time at the moment, Chalky trains the girls on a Wednesday and Bek goes to training (with a different manager) Chalky trains on Thursday, we sometimes have make up games on a Friday, Chalky plays on a Saturday and manages his sides on a Sunday whilst Bek is also playing. On top of that Chalky does the announcing in the Oaks on a Saturday afternoon for the 11 men's teams that have played and then on a Sunday for the 4 girls teams and 2 alternating men's fixtures, all in all it's quite a commitment.

The announcing involves giving the results for all the fixtures including the awards for 'Man' and 'Mug' of the day, both have which have to race down a beer against each other. It's good fun especially when you get some funny stories as to the Mugs, ie blokes missing the game to watch Beauty and the Beast on ice!!! Or getting a girls number in a bar then projectile vomiting all over her ( cos we are a class bunch).

All the women's teams are going well but unfortunately the only team in the club to not have won a game is Chalky's over 35's team, to be fair they've not played too bad and have never lost a game by more than 2 goals but just can't get that elusive win. In good news bad news Chalky tells me he was having a fantastic game the other week until he had to come off with a hamstring injury (not for the first time) .

Anyway here's a clip of Chalky doing the awards on s Sunday afternoon when it's a bit quieter than the Saturday awards. What you don't see on this brief clip is that Bek had to drink a schooner for being honourary 'Man' of the day by virtue of being the only player from her team to come back to the pub, to be fair she's being the only player a few times this season but I've been ordered by her not to keep making her race beers down in the middle of the pub.

It has been a lot of hard work the football season so far & I'll be quite glad when it ends not least for the fact that that's the week when we'll be getting on a plane and coming back to England for a month, Chalky's booked from Aug 28th to Sept 23rd but Bek has still to book as she's got staff travel with Qantas courtesy of Ben who's just been promoted to Captain, this means that Bek will pay 1/4 of what I will yet she is now guaranteed Business Class, imagine my delight!!!

We also met some of the Billy Elliot cast recently - here's Bek with Richard who plays Billy's dad in the show, he grew up in Otley and we ended up drinking with him until the early hours of the morning - chatting mostly about Leeds and Leeds United...