WoW!!!

What a weekend the Pig and Bear have just had.

They've been to Twickenham to see England play Italy in the six nations and then on to Leeds to see Leicester Tigers play Leeds.

It all started early on Saturday morning when they were driven down to London. This in itself was a treat for two reasons. First the very generous chap who was taking us all out for the day has a very nice Mercedes. The Pig and the Bear aren't really into cars (unless of course it's a big truck with tinted windows etc in the case of the Pig or a formula one car in the case of the Bear) but in this case they made an exception as the car had Tvs in the back of the seats for the passengers in the back to watch.

Sorry the photo of them watching TV is a bit blurry - the car was moving and they were wriggling quite a lot.

The next highlight was witnessing a bit of serious road rage on London's North Circular. We were driving along when we had to pull out to get past two cars rather badly pulled over in the inside lane - sniffing an "axibump" the Pig was on full alert. We didn't see any damage to the vehicles but we did see one fella punch the other - who quickly bounced off the floor to his feet to commence the fight back - as we disappeared off up the road we left them slugging it out.

Needless to say had we been going anywhere else other than Twickenham the Pig would have made much more of a fuss about either stopping or turning around to get a better view.

So on to better things - Twickenham where 15 fellas slug it out with 15 other fellas.

Here's the Pig outside the stadium.

Twickenham has to be their next favourite place after Welford Road (home of the Leicester Tigers). The Pig was particularly taken with the pre-match show involving abseiling marines, whilst Balloon was interested to see what would happen if one of the ropes broke.

Balloon of course had to be kept well under control. We don't let him drink beer for obvious reasons - but that doesn't stop him trying.

You can see how he had to be grabbed by both legs to stop him taking a swig!

So Pigs and Bears were finally got under control and England went on to achieve a fine victory over Italy (though the boys were upset that Italian prop Martin Castrogiovani who plays for Tigers got a yellow card for being naughty).

The following day their weekend was made complete with a trip to Leeds to see Tigers play Leeds in the league. This wasn't so much fun as it was absolutely persisting down with rain - and Pigs and Bears don't like getting wet, so they had to spend most of the game well trussed up in a ruck-sack. Even so you could still here them cheering Tigers on. Nice to know they do somethings without falling out.

Their stories about cars with TVs, road rage punch ups, Twickenham and Leeds certainly made Little Brown and Rodney very envious - but sadly not quite enough to encourage them to leave the house next time.

Another "who-dunnit?" - this time Lewis set in Oxford.

Balloon Bear didn't get the murderer, but he did identify both murder victims before they "got the good news".

As no-one else identified the killer BB decided this was something of a triumph

We suspect Balloon Bear may have been moonlighting as a model for one of the Daily Telegraph's cartoonists...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/cartoon/?cartoon=8304101&cc=8306265

Last week saw the last episode of Midsomer Murders, a TV who-dunnit which has been the source of much enjoyment and angst amongst the boys over the years.

It all started some time ago when we were all sat watching an episode. Before the opening credits had even finished (always a waste of time for Pigs and Bears who can't read them anyway) Balloon Bear pointed at a character on the TV saying "he did it". Annoyingly it turned out he was right.

From then on every episode became a competition to see who could identify the murderer - the Pig, two Bears and Rodney all trying to super sleuth their way to success.

In fact it clearly had more to do with petty prejudices and sheer luck than any detective work - indeed we had to introduce a rule of no accusations until there had been a murder after some nasty scenes when accused characters became the first victim thus ruling the accusing Bear, Pig or Rhino out of the competition.

So the rules are (for those of you who may want to play in the future) - no accusations until there has been a murder - all accusations to be made within a half hour of the first murder - no taking account of any plot / clues / or form whatsoever (though there have been a number of occasions when the Pig has identified the Policeman as the killer which really doesn't work so we had to introduce a sub clause into the rules to allow him to take advice on this and change his call) - no changing your call once you have made an accusation and no changing should your accused become the (inevitable) second victim.

The fun is straight after the first "Mudder" when there is a flurry of pointing and gestures from the boys indicating who they know for sure has done it (yes, yes, yes - at least three and often four of them are disappointed come the end of the programme). They each spend the rest of the show up until the arrest (and sometimes after) going nuts every time their accused appears.

So - last week was the last ever Midsomer Murder (or was it?????). Balloon quickly made his call (as so often it's usually the first character he sees after the murder) - and uncannily he was right again. His triumph made all the more sweet by the fact the Pig's accused was the second murder victim (much happy dancing and taunting to that as you might guess).

He even made me take a picture of him in front of the TV as the murderer was led away.

You might want to turn away now in case you don't want to know who did it...