Southampton hosts London Stella fan club

Weekend welcomed Kev and Karol to stay in preparation for Kerry's surprise meal on Saturday. Kev wanted to see the largest passenger boat in the world which had docked into Southampton for the weekend. Unfortunately, everyone else in the South did too with driving taking as long as walking into town making roundabouts into priority battlefields.

After a few weeks of planning it was great to see Kerry's reaction at Paul, Sarah, Steve, Sam, Viv and Trev waiting for us in the restaurant = Priceless! Good to see another style change for Paul. After Pirate Paul, Trucker Paul, we were treated to Two-Tone Paul with cool mod hat and pin-stripe jacket. For some though he was the usual target for unfair and unjust mockery who has influenced thousands with What Pirate magazine. Expect a new title for newsagent stands very soon as Paul models the Peckham dodgy dealer look, with Mickey Pierce from Only Fools and Horses as inspiration. After the excitement calmed down and we'd ordered, more food arrived than physical space on our table. A lesson we never seem to learn when we go to Ocean Dragon.

Through Kerry's wishes we went back to ours for a party stopping off at the off-licence along the way with £55 of booze, red bull and ice. Trev suggested I'd quickly speak to our Polish neighbours to explain the potential noise and left a hand written note to warn them after no response. We since haven't seen them to give them a sheepish look yet! The other neighbour, ninja-nan is half-deaf and old so didn't bother with her. Our paranoia turned the volume down until by 3am we switched it off. Surprisingly our modest home was spared of any breakages with only Steve's arse leaving a denim-blue on our Benetton white wallpaper.

Not content with all they consumed the night before our hoteled friends were waiting for us in a strange pub we'd never heard of deep in the old town. If it wasn't for playing pool, their sleep deprived attention might have dwindled into gibbering idiots. Unfortunately, this came later when we all wanted food and headed back up to Bedford Place for more appropriate pubs. Some of them couldn't be arsed with walking so had to be taxied in our car including Trev who persistently wanted the volume up to max and cut some shapes to those waiting at the Asda bus queue. We ended up in the Giddy Bridge after passing the cooler places in light of everyone's condition and finally got some food. Trev skipped this bit with a long 40 wink sleep where as Steve had gone into moley-eyed mode until he received his chilli. With every mouthful of food he chewed he murmured like a baby 'yum yum yum' without realising he was doing it.

It wasn't long until the others wanted to crash at the hotel so we hired a DVD and watched The Brothers Grimm which turned out to be ok. Storyline was a little muddled at first and lost some definition but the unique ideas shone through for a good bit of entertainment.

The only thing to cheer us from the bank holiday being over was the return of Lost last night. Channel 4 and E4 spoilt us with 3 episodes but still didn't learn from last time with over running and advert breaks after 4 minutes!

Haven’t sorted out the photos for Saturday night so used Simon Pegg’s photo from Mission Impossible 3. No doubt he's the comedy relief to the sci-fi high priest Reverend Tom.