Sheffield - city of Steel, ...and curry, BBQ's, beer......

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The Easter Bank Holiday weekend saw us blessed with fine weather, and the even finer offer from Mr Matich for us to come up and visit him at his new digs up in Sheffield.

The Sheffield convention for not putting any street names up hampered my car’s efforts to find Adam’s house, but the Sat Nav in the other motor proved infuriatingly accurate!! All assembled, we were bowled over by the quality of Adam’s pad. Decking seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see and it looked like it would be perfect for some prime sun-bathing and barbecueing!! Top work Mr Match!!

After catching up on the sun-deck over a few tinnies, we headed out for a top curry. For us southerners, the prices seemed music to our ears, as many beers, starters, naans and curries were enjoyed for less than £15 a head!! Winner!! It was cracking to catch up with everyone again, especially Adam and Joe who many of us hadn’t seen in an age.

After the meal we pressed on to a few pubs, caught a gig in one of them, and then I think we managed to end up in a drum ‘n’ bass bar which was a bit random, but had Joe jumping for joy!

Back at Adam’s house in the early hours, poor Danny Moss was minding his own business wandering up the stairs when Randy pounced on him and was soon followed by Nug and then Matich in a good old fashioned bundle. Oblivious to poor Moss’ shouts of “MY KNEE, MY KNEE, GUYS GET OFF MY KNEE”, which apparently went on for about 10 minutes and woke the rest of the house up, I just had time to fire off a few snaps before leaping on top and joining the melee! Suffice to say, Dan’s knee survived, but no thanks to us!

Saturday morning saw Joe drilling the kitchen detail into a well oiled machine and producing an enormous fry-up fit for kings. Fully fuelled thank to the awesome work led by the boy Jordan, we headed off to Adam’s local park, which apparently was about a half hour walk away. After an entire 16 or so minutes walking, and one slight wrong turn, the natives were getting restless and Adam had a job preventing a full-scale mutiny!! He rose to the task manfully and got us to the park, but it may well have been 31 minutes of walking rendering everyone’s complaints entirely justified!!

Armed with a kwik-cricket set and a football, as well of plenty of tinnies, we set about a fantastic afternoon of drinking and sports which was an absolute blast. Non-strikers sipping on drinks in between balls, some of the worst wicket keeping ever and some lusty blows hit by most, we had a lot of fun. Not sure who won the cricket, I’m sure Joe is confident that it was his team, but I think special mention has to go to Nug for his disdainful front-front slaps over cover. A cricketing star was born!!

After the cricket wound down, we embarked in a low-pace game of “sexy football”, where the aim was not to win, but just to try and score the sexiest goals. This went against Joe’s very nature so he soon decided to take a sun-bathing based rest, and Moss’ frail ankles seemed to be protesting as well, so it was down to a game of 3-on-3, with the winner probably being the beautiful game of football itself, with very few tackles, lots of “gay” flicks, and Nug attaching the ball to his toe with some sort of Superglue!!

We got taxis back to Adam’s and went shopping for supplies for the Barbie. Joe did us proud with his homemade burgers, and dark-horse Matich pulled out all the stops with his potato salad and his rice dish which both left us all gawping at Chef Matich in amazement. Where had this culinary skill come from!!

The BBQ was fantastic on the sundeck, and we passed the last hours of daylight drinking beer, bantering each other and trying to digest the monstrous amount of food we had eaten!!

For our Saturday night entertainment, the hostess with the mostess had sorted us all out with gig tickets at a venue called The Plug, and we headed down there via a pub or two to watch a band called “The Enemy”. They put on a pretty damn good show, and we stayed until closing time at the after-gig rock club, dominating the dancefloor in our own inimitable way, and at one point starting up a massive conga which was pretty surreal!!

I think it was Saturday night that we all got home, and someone suggested it would be a great idea if we all stripped down to our boxers in the freezing cold and went and sat out on the decking. It can’t have made a great impression on Adam’s neighbours, but it seemed like a good idea at the time!!

When it was time for us to head back south on Sunday, everyone had had a top weekend, what with BBQ’s, beer, footy, cricket, curry and a gig what more could we ask for!! Only problem for Adam is that we may be asking to do it all again very soon!!!

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Photos

MY KNEE, MY KNEE, GUYS GET OFF MY KNEE!!
Apparently Danny Moss is down there somewhere in a bit of pain!!