Twickenham

For an early Christmas present Sarah got me a ticket to watch England versus Argentina at Twickenham. It was never destined to be a classic as both teams are attritional and lack a certain amount of flair and when you thrown in a large number of injured England players, a blustery swirling wind, a greasy pitch and ball and heavy showers this merely highlighted the problems that both teams had. The first half was particularly bland with a large number of aimless kicks and handling errors while in the second half England at least tried to be more inventive and run the ball but every mistake was greeted with a huge punt down field meaning you had to start again from close to your line. In the end England grabbed the decisive try and it proved to be enough. One of the annoying things were that people just grabbed any old seat so when the latecomers arrived they just milled around in front and blocked the view. It is also fair to say Twickenham part of London is not overly attractive.

I then went down to stay with James and Sarah in Andover and I have to say that the Test Valley (or at least the bit that I saw) was particularly attractive.