Zoo, cricket and more greyness

Had a nice day in the end yesterday.

Lunch was Nando's, a personal favourite of ours. W2B converted me to it (what with it being South African and everything) and now I've become a bit of an evangelist. Its just so nice to have a (semi) fast food place that doesn't leave you with that super-size me, my cholesterol is getting dangerously high feeling. Plus, since Sid came along (along with his alien friend Zoton) I've rediscovered my taste for spicy food. Peri-peri is the perfect kind of spicy too. Its got that instant zing but doesn't leave your mouth tasting like a Calcutta back alley for the rest of the day.

Said I was a bit of an evangelist.

Then it was off to the zoo. Now I know the tree-huggers amongst you are gonna be up in arms about this, but it really is a nice zoo. They seem to have quite an ecological approach to things. The animals all seem happy, clean and well cared for. They've got elephants and lions and tigers and chimps... it really is good. Our favourites were the orangutans and the otters. The orangutans where really funny. There were two quite young babies there. The mothers (or what we assumed to be the mothers, they're such an affectionate group of animals) where doing rolly-pollies with them. It was so sweet to watch. The otters were just insane. They're like a mad hybrid of cats and dogs. You could just watch them for ours. One was running around with a stone that it wanted to play with. It had it tucked under its front paw. Every now and again it would stop, flip over onto its back and juggle with it. Suppose you had to be there, but we thought it was brilliant.

We got back around four o'clock which was just in time for the climax of the fourth test. I know lots of people hate cricket, but I've always loved it. This Ashes test has been incredible. Virtually every match has gone down to the wire and this one was no exception. We won in the end, but it was still excrutiating to watch. Thought it was gonna be one of those typical English heroic failures but no, for once we managed to hang in and win.

There's something honourable about Cricket. Its not the through-and-through gentleman's sport that it used to be. There's lots of sledging and you can lip-read quite a few expletives. But the approach to it still seems to be one of the few where real sportsmanship lives on. Warne in particular, who you could tell was relishing the drama of the occasion and itching to destroy our tail enders, was incredibly generous as soon as the final runs were hit. There's a real feeling of respect for the other team, whether you win or lose, that just doesn't exist in other sports.

Think today's gonna be a lazy one. Its even more grey than yesterday, with accompanying drizzle and the odd bit of heavy rain. The builders are here - bless 'em - even though its a bank holiday. So there's a fair bit of noise as they continue knocking bits off our house. They won't be here all day though. Suppose we should straighten the place up, but its a bit of a pointless exercise. Maybe I'll just finish Harry Potter (hey - I was delayed, I was reading Orcs) or play XBox. Unless w2b has other ideas...