A Perfect Saturday

Today was one of those amazing yet, regrettably, infrequent perfect days when everything seems to go right despite there being a multitude of opportunities for it not to do so. Sara and I woke quite early this morning despite it being a Saturday and took advantage of not having the children around and indulged in a little passion! A lovely start to the day. I made breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast after having made tea and hoisted the St. George's flag - after all we were going to Wembley to see our National Team play Slovakia in a friendly later that day. Sara and Mary went off to ballet, shopping and the cinema and Tom and I set off for London to watch the match. Although kick-off wasn't until 5.15 p.m. we decided to set off early, park at my Dorking office and catch the train and tube up to London and Wembley. I had checked the Internet for any rail travel problems and found out that there were going to be delays because of engineering works around Wimbledon. I decided it would be better, therefore, to travel into London Victoria and catch the Victoria Line to Green Park and then the Jubilee Line out to Wembley Park. The first bit of good news on arriving at Dorking Station was to find that Tom's Travelcard ticket would only cost £1! Mine was £10.20 but with free parking too it meant a much better deal than catching a train from Surbiton to Waterloo - my original intention. On arriving at Victoria, I found out that the Victoria Line was not running which meant a rather "circuitous" route using the Circle Line to Baker Street. However that had a silver lining too as at Baker Street we met Alex Pearce's father (Alex being a Southampton player who had been on loan from Reading) and he told us some of the "dressing room" stories from our club which I dare not repeat here. We found that he too was going to the Wembley Gold Club. On arrival at Wembley Park, Tom said he was hungry so we had lunch at MacDonald's. We sat outside and chatted to a Norwich City fan about the prospects for our respective teams in the Championship League. After buying a couple of scarves outside, we entered the Stadium by the main entrance together with a large number of well dressed folk and I realised that we probably looked a little out of place with our England replica kit and Saints bench coats. However, we needn't have worried, the staff treated us "royally" with our Gold Club Tickets (courtesy of Anthony) and we found many other family groups wearing England kit - indeed, there were a number of staff offering to paint our faces with England flag templates! There was quite a contrast between the expensive restaurants and seafood bars (champagne at £169.00 per bottle!!) and the burger outlets - although those are incredibly expensive too by normal league club standards. After looking round and getting our programmes we decided to go off and sit in our seats. That was the next shock - the steward told us they were probably the second best seats in the Stadium and I thought he was exaggerating until I discovered that they were on the halfway line, halfway up and padded with armrests and a drinks holder! But that was not all, we were actually sitting next to the Royal Box and, in fact, sitting next to where the Queen would sit for a Cup Final! Due to health and safety reasons, there is no fence between either. The atmosphere was electric and we watched the teams warm up. We stood for the National Anthems after the teams came on (teh Slovakian one being quite long and very much like a Dvorak piece of music) ; during our National Anthem the crowd formed a huge St. George's Cross - see picture. Because it was a friendly, there were many substitutions and we were able to see the cream of English football playing - David James, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Ashley Cole, Peter Crouch, Stuart Downing and, of course David Beckham and Wayne Rooney. Emile Heskey opened the scoring for England in the 8th minute but was substituted by Crouch shortly afterwards. In the second half goals came from Rooney (x2) and Frank Lampard to bring the score to 4-0 before the final whistle. Unfortunately, Tom and I missed Rooney's second goal as this went into the back of the net on in extra time as we were leaving via the escalators. We arrived at Wembley Park Station to find a massive crowd had already left ahead of us. Crowd control was excellent with lines of police horses and we actually found ourselves on a Metropolitan Line tube train within 25 minutes of leaving the Stadium. Our connections at Baker Street and Embankment were timely and we were sitting on the 8.20 p.m. train to Dorking at Victoria Station at 8.10 p.m. It was a slow stopping train but we were back in Dorking at 9.15 p.m. and home in Winterslow at a little before 11 pm.. Tom slept in the car on the way home still clothed in his match scarf and new white England Bronx hat. Sara was, not surprisingly, continuing here "Desperate Housewives" fest on the TV. What a perfect day - travel arrangements excellent, timings superb, wonderful stadium and seats, excellent result - all in all a wonderful day out. Quite a strong contrast to our trip to Blackpool last Saturday! Now to bed quite late with an hour lost too!