Anna-Marie, Daz, Andy, me, Andy W sat waiting for midnight to arrive

It was then time to find a place on the floor next to the Opera House which would be our base for the next 10 hours. We met up with another group of friends from England; Andy, Hilary and Simon - I had got them tickets for the cricket as well so we would be spending the next week watching England lose with them. They were with some other friends they knew, also from England, so it turned out that there were 11 of us sat in what could only be described as a refugee camp. There was the usual mixture of professional ‘waiters’ with the blankets, food hampers, pillows, books, playing cards etc etc, and then us who were totally unprepared for sitting on a concrete surface in quite chilly weather actually, for ten hours. Fortunately, a massive temporary bar was available to sell us a huge range of cheap drinks, and there were no queues…{insert large dose of sarcasm} I was dismayed to find that this ‘bar’ didn’t stock cider, so my options were; drinking cheap wine all day which would result in me not even seeing midnight, or drinking light beers – which was bloomin awful stuff that went flat as soon as the can was opened. Luckily we had entertainment in the form of Andy W who amused us with renditions of an extensive range of Barmy Army songs, along with a group of Brazilians who he and Simon had taught to chant ‘Leeds, Leeds, Leeds’ on request.

We managed to make it through the bleak hours of 4 to 8pm when we had been there long enough for our bums to be hurting, and we still had another 4 hours to go...