11th May 2013 - London

Roy and I have just returned from the Twickenham Sevens Tournament in London where we had been invited to assist with the major preparations, largely on culinary intake, for the Zimbabwe national sevens team. The team coach, Ivantoo Stillplay, had made us most welcome and requested all players speak English in our presence or be dropped. The only white player in the squad, Simon Mann, on tour leave from Chikurubi Prison in central Harare & now fluent in Swahili, kept perusing the crowd for any sign of his once collaborator & now confirmed traitor, Mark 'Mywords' Thatcher, who has taken up his mother's recently vacated room at the Ritz.

The teams cook & assistant coach

Kawasaki Hondo enjoys a snack before the match

On inspection of the players in the showers prior to the game, we noted that many had backsides most overweight Hottentots would prize. The opinion that the majority of the side were unfit became evident when flying winger, Kawasaki Hondo, regurgitated last night's bean soup over the masseur perched on the deadball line after his first 'length of the field' sprint with legs moving faster than Singer sewing machines in a Beijing sweat shop. The team spent the first half against the kiltless Scots thinking more about their next curry tiffin than playing the game of sevens. Team cook, Jamie Oliver nCake, kept bellowing instructions from the sidelines but the only overlap that came to mind for the back line was clearly focused on the next broad bean roti at half-time.

Dwarte leaves the field

Dwarte Moreira, the renowned grenadilla vendor from downtown Lisbon, scored a wonderful solo try running the length of the Twickenham ground quicker than a gazelle on angel dust, only to be stretchered off having ruptured both his groin muscles & leaving his balls isolated down by his ankles. Zimbabwe's most revered player, Morgan Robert Moo-Gayab, a preferred ballot counter from the rural Chirundu area, equalled the French maestro Jean Baptiste Sugmeeorv's record of missing seventeen consecutive conversions before half-time.

The first time we hooked up with the Kenyan team was at an impromptu prayer meeting called by traveling shangaan & champion spear thrower, Billy 'the Spear' nThroat, as guests at a Maasai reed dance on the outskirts of the Amboseli National Park.

Billy "The Spear" in action

The shangaan Billy was sponsored by Kenyan Airways, a company yet to be formed at the time due to a parliamentary delay on its proposed 50 million Kwatcha bailout for its first year of operations, and had been hired because of his belief that divine intervention would pull them through. His position went as quickly as the hapless team who exited the tournament in the first round to be ferried back to Nairobi on Kenyan Airways' inaugural flight in a refurbished Brittania turbo prop. Kenya's game with the Kiwis made the latter look more like roasted goats than fleet footed sevens players in the first half, only for Kenya to capitulate a 17- nil lead at half-time to lose by a whopping 31-17. The coach has apparently banned all curry tiffins at half-time for future sevens tours.