London Travels

It was a familiar Monday evening homecoming after spending a weekend away. I spent the usual 30 minutes cleaning away stuff in the kitchen so I could prepare my food. I shall have to be give Andy another lesson in "tidying stuff away when you're finished with it" and a reminder on how to wipe surfaces down.

I had a lovely weekend down in London with Fliss. Friday night was spent at her flat where she prepared a fantastic Lamb roast. We watched the Shawshank Redemption with one of her flatmates while enjoys a rather splendid red wine.

We spent Saturday morning engaging in a little bit of shopping. I was trying to find some cheap army boots while Fliss was looking for some material for drapes for her colony at Maelstrom. I failed in my mission to find boots but did get some new shirts and trousers.

The afternoon was spent travelling to her Godparent's where her father was staying for part of his visit from Australia. There was a party in the evening in honour of Juan which saw a collection of relatives and old friends in attendance. The air was soggy with nostalgia :-)

I was asked on more than one occasion how I first met Fliss. The phrase "cross country pantomime" was oft-repeated. I have also been invited to attend the wedding one of her cousins which may be a mark of some integration :-)

After the party had finished and the guests headed home someone suggested we play a few hands of bridge. I partnered up with Sue who successfully talked me through my bidding and prevented me from making too many silly mistakes. I played and made both of my contracts (with spare tricks no less despite poor hands). She was kind enough to say I obviously knew what I was doing but I was just rusty having not played for a long while. It would be nice if I could find 3 other people up in Manchester who want to play on a semi-regular basis to keep my hand in.

We skipped the walk on Hampstead Heath the next day in favour of a lie in. We then headed over to more Godparents for lunch. The hospitality consisted of seeing how much wine and second helpings they could offer me before I exploded. Apparently there is a technique of saying no I need to master. Apparently folding after the fourth "I couldn't possibly eat another thing" isn't good enough. They even offered to open a fourth bottle of white wine when we finished the last drops at the end of the meal despite everyone else having switched to red wine. Needless to say I didn't need to eat much that evening.

The evening was taken up with a visit to the cinema to watch "300". It's a fun if terribly bad film. I mean this in the sense that it's a perfectly entertaining special FX film that follows Sin City's comic-to-screen style approach to film making. The plot, "Persians invade, the Greeks fight them at a narrow gap for 3 days then die", is a pretty concise summary of the battle of Thermopylae. The films characterisation of the principle antagonists is pretty one dimensional so as to be irrelevant to the film. In summary while entertaining enough it certainly isn't the definitive film on the subject.

I returned to Manchester this morning to a small mountain of work at the office. Hopefully I can clear a load of it in time for Maelstrom this coming weekend.