Thanks to the Brimmer family, we were rescued from ash-cloud holiday failure and instead went for a week of walking and exploring in the Lake District.
I spent a fair amount of the time trying to write my best-man’s speech in my head.
We spent quite a lot of time on the telephone to a call-centre in India, trying to book our tickets back to London… because nothing is ever simple.
This week, we were planning on going on holiday.
Unfortunately, due to Icelandic ash-clouds, we were grounded.
Spent a very long time on the telephone trying to sort it all out, then gave up.
No yoga-holiday in the sunshine for us.
Took a photo of a spider.
It was Easter, we spent the time drinking tea and resting.
My brother, Simon, is getting married in a few weeks. His stag weekend just… happened.
This picture is quite early in the evening, though it shows how the young man was getting on.
In other news:
- BBC life is almost as highly amusing as the stag weekend
- the not-insignificant amount of money that I found in the street wasn’t claimed by anyone… and so I got it
- Ben Smith, of BBC website fame, left the BBC
- I grew a beard, but have just shaved it off again
- I decided I should probably get an iPad
- Et cetera
This week, the best thing that happened the only thing I can remember was that Katy, my aunt, came to stay for a bit. We had a great time walking around Hackney. We made brownies.
This week:
- I made a very delicious apple and lemon cake for mother’s day, and my mother came over and we ate some of it.
- And so on…
This week:
- I found a not-insignificant amount of cash blowing around in the street, and picked it up. I took it to the nearest police station, and handed it over. Everyone I have told says that I did the right thing, but that I’m significantly unlikely to see it again, as the police are all corrupt and they’ll miraculously ‘find’ it within the four weeks allowed before I can claim it. It’d be alright if some of the people who told me this weren’t in a good position to know what they’re talking about. We’ll find out in four weeks.
- Work was, and continues to be, interesting.
- I saw the author of Information is Beautiful do a talk, and it was interesting, but left me with a strange feeling… I bought the book and the feeling grew… I’ll write something about it sometime soon.
- I made a new kind of bread. Bread rolls, done by using cutting out circles of dough rolled out flat… a bit like making biscuits. It’s brilliant.
- I ran over something in the street and managed to do a healthy amount of damage to my Brompton… actually, about the same amount of damage as would be paid for by the money I found in the street…re
(One of the weird things about these weekly reports is that I’m going by exact week, which means every seven days from January 1st. The first one was on a Thursday, so that means my week is Thursday to Thursday… which feels slightly odd.
When I sit down on the Thursday or Friday (and sometimes slightly later) to write the report, I have to think back over the week in a way that makes me realise just how arbitrary it is to break our time up into slots of seven labelled days. Anyway.)
This week’s activities centre around Oxford. (I see a pattern emerging, by the way: I write about whatever happened at the weekend, and skip over the week… even though the weekend sits in an odd position in the seven days. Anyway.)
By the way… as I write this, I am sitting on a tube train. I’ve just been to the pub, which is probably the reason why I’m slightly more chatty and tangential than usual. I have just arrived at Bond Street. The carriage is filling up with odder than average people. Some of them a lot more odd than average… including the man sitting next to me, who has just got up and left, who was obviously disturbed. Anyway.
Oxford, then. Jen went to see her friend Lou, who is about to have her second baby. A load of their friends gathered to make a plaster-cast of Lou’s torso… which they also did just before she had her first baby. I wonder what she does with the casts? I wonder if the first and second casts are different?
I went and joined her later, with Jed and Bex, at a pub called The Kite. Jed was playing with his band - about 6 or 7 folk musicians - that evening. They play traditional-sounding stuff, but they mix in covers of tracks by people like Snoop Dogg and others in a folk style. All very good.
Jen played some violin (very well) and I picked up a guitar and played (a bit) for the final third of the evening, which was brilliant. Good to know that the musical part of my brain hasn’t entirely evapourated.