We live near the Butts Park Arena, not far from the middle of Coventry. Every year they hold a big firework display. We get a good view from the front of the house so we watched the display for a few minutes. There is a row of houses blocking part of the view but we saw enough to appreciate that it was a spectacular display.

We drove up to Lymm in Cheshire to a hamster show. We took Theo, Gel, Alysia and Psyche with us, to enter into the 'pets' category. Psyche's original owners were there as stewards, and were happy to see him again.

Theo did well in the judging. He was the only one of our hamsters to do anything, coming 2nd out of about 8 animals. None of our others came anywhere.

We entered Theo and Alysia into the hamster races. Each heat consisted of 2 hamsters racing through sets of tubes with the winner being the first to emerge at the other end. Theo was in the first race and ran to the halfway point before turning around and running back to the start again. The hamster he was 'racing' against never left the first length of tube so Theo was through to the next round.

Alysia won her first race - it seems a bit unfair pitting a speedy roborovski hamster against a slower syrian but Alysia kept running backwards and forwards whereas the syrian plodded on towards the finish. It was almost like the hare and the tortoise but speed won in the end.

Unfortunately this meant that Theo and Alysia were against each other in the second round. Alysia repeated her trick of running half way then coming back again while Theo waddled to the end almost without stopping. He continued in this fashion through the remainder of the races, eventually winning the final and being awarded a '1st Place' rosette.