Simon Butcher

Surprisingly this year there was a plan. Well, we had a plan (A didn't know about the plan), which was to meet up with Joe and Liz, who unfortunately couldn't show because their son fell ill.

Further disappointment came in the form of the closure of the Cornish Pasty place on Covent Garden, which Tom had recommended years ago and was forming part of our tradition, despite us getting sick of seeing the same street performer do the same act year after year. The pasties and the grog were brilliant and will be missed; particularly as the other franchises don't have the same charm (or grog).

Maybe I stood out somehow on Friday in particular, because people were gravitating towards me to sign me up to all manner of crap (and I'm too friendly to tell them to bog-off and keep walking, clearly). One was for training people to save African animals from poaching. This resonated with me because of recent news on the extinction of the Western Black Rhinos, but they're not getting my money for this half-baked idea.

Their idea was to train and then pay poachers to protect the animals. How is that going to help those trying to feed their families when poaching brings in more money than some crappy charity job? To me this isn't the solution, and while the education is clearly a large part of the solution (to many of the world's problems), trying to arrange to convert poachers into rangers has no future in my mind, purely because there is no incentive, financial or otherwise.

Amongst other things, we finally visited Brick Lane and Old Spitalfields Market, and discovered a few more interesting areas tucked away from the main roads. Gastronomical highlights (beyond Dinner, of course) were a great soup dumpling place called Dumplings' Legend, and a suitable place that was able to satisfy our cravings for pulled pork sandwiches (Bodean's) after our recent visit to Montréal; All dangerous stuff, really.

At least the weather was drastically better than our last visit!