It is World Cup Cricket time in the UK at the moment and we (me and my 3 children) had tickets to the SA v Pakistan game. It was my birthday present to myself and what made it special was having all 3 of my kids come along with me. As it turned out it was another poor SA performance but it was a still a nice day because watching cricket for a day generally beats doing anything else. And watching cricket at Lord’s Cricket ground is also always special.

What made the defeat hard to swallow was the ridiculous amount of support for the Pakistan team at the ground. It felt like it was a home game for Pakistan. Besides an SA supporter sitting next to us, we were surrounded by Pakistan supporters who cheered every run, jumped up and signaled 4 or 6 every time they hit a boundary and constantly were chanting “Pakistan, Pakistan”. They even played some Pakistan song over the loudspeakers on a regular basis which got the whole crowd singing along. Really did feel a little biased towards Pakistan and unfortunately the SA cricket team contributed with their poor performance to the celebrating Pakistani’s.

The other three all went their own ways yesterday (none of them wanted to come to cricket). H went to All Souls Church, O went to listen to hear her Dad at St Simon Zelotes (https://www.stsimonzelotes.com/) where he was guest preaching and K toured across London and visited the V&A Museum of Childhood Victoria and Albert Museum and Freud Museum (https://www.freud.org.uk/) which apparently is in his home.

We then all had a birthday celebratory dinner together at the flat afterwards. I figured given we are likely to be eating out a lot over the next few weeks we should rather have a home cooked meal on our last night in London.

We fly later today to the US. Besides me, everyone else had trouble checking in for the flight. I eventually managed to sort out H & C (they are on the same booking) and got them checked in. We also discovered that the other 4 of them didn’t have ticket numbers in their bookings and on calling BA it turned out that their tickets had actually never been issued! Helen had already spent about an hour trying to solve S&K’s ticket issue so we have no idea why it wasn’t resolved the first time. M&O though had exactly the same issue. O spent an hour sorting out their tickets on the phone to BA and then S spent about the same time doing that as well. We finally got them resolved at about 8pm last night but we still struggled to get everyone checked in. O managed to check in but M couldn’t and S&K couldn’t at all either. I decided to move the car pick up earlier so we could resolve at Heathrow but then suddenly this AM we discovered that BA must have checked S&K in (because they were checked in) and then I managed after multiple attempts to get M checked in. You just have to wonder at the BA systems!

Until tomorrow (when we will hopefully be in the US) …

P, M (because he stayed with me until I was ready to leave the cricket), S (because he left after C), C (because she came to cricket), H (because she was the only one to give me a gift yesterday), O (because she spent an hour on the phone with BA), K (sorry … she did navigate herself around London yesterday but someone has to be last!)