Beautiful weather for this bank holiday weekend! Matt and I got up quite early yesterday and Matt boiled two dozen eggs. Then we headed out to do some more of our eastend River Thames walk, walking from Tower Bridge to Surrey Quays City Farm in Rotherhithe. It was quite hot and sunny by lunchtime, and after a couple of half pints to take the edge off the day, we took the Jubilee Line from Canada Water all the way up to Baker Street, to join a big contingent for an afternoon in Regent's Park.
There was an initial battle between two rival camps, as those two matriarchs Abbie and Kate established different sitting spots along the Broad Walk, and refused to budge, with frantic phone calls made back and forth between their minions till finally we joined together and found a mutually convenient spot, pausing only to "borrow" a spare red ball from a group of hapless cricketers who, alas, never got it back.
There was Kate and her housemate Natalia, Abbie and her friends Jane and Rosie, James G, Mark H, Alex, Kal and Sal, Steve W and Steve C, Helen C and Kamena. We played frisbee and rounders. Rounders was particularly fun, with us all playing properly but kind of unprofessionally, cans of beer and fags in hand as we whacked our balls and scampered round the bases.
Mark did some backflips, and Steve W did Crouching Batty style Bagawa, and Steve C and myself started chucking eggs around at one point...
Afterwards, we headed over to Kal's place to watch TV and eat lovely curry.
Alex, Matt and I joined various Poles for a surprise Regent's Park party for Kornelia, to celebrate her recent promotion, another step on her way to becoming the Queen of Oxford Street! We also celebrated Michal's new job, and Agata's recent successful examination results. It was marvellously sunny September sunshine for lazing around, before we headed off to gay bingo in the evening...
Matt and I took the day off today and visited Highgate Cemetery! It's an amazing place, like a living incarnation of a Dungeons and Dragons cemetery ... all toppled stone angels, romantic Victorians sepulchres, ivy grown catacombs, trees, grass, and nature generally claiming back the dead from the stones and structures of the living. It is clearly managed and allowed to become artfully overgrown, but it is so beautiful and wild at times. You can clamber in between the paths, all over forgotten graves almost completely overgrown by vegetation.
This is also the resting place of Karl Marx, who is buried under a highly amusing huge thick column with an enormous sculpture of his fat head on it. Some good quotes on the column: 'The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it!'
Very hot and sunny day again today. We got up and Abbie rounded up me, Matt, Jim, Michal, Steve and Daniel to go to Clissold Park to sit around listening to the Beatles and playing frisbee. Though not before we had a quick pre-park cava cocktail and kir royale session.
Very hot and sunny day today. Almost a continuation of Spain for Matt and myself. We got up, took some clothes to religious, mad-muttering-Lord-Help-Us, cool book collection charity shop on Blackstock Road, bought some food and drink and a cold box, made sandwiches, got tapes and tape player together, got a rug, books, water-spray, and took ourselves to Clissold Park with Jim, Steve and Daniel. Lay out in sun roasting happily and listening to Beatles and Johnny Cash. Alex joined us around 17.30, having got up from clubbing the night before. Left park to go to Tom P's house in Kilburn to see cool Jap horror UFO film!
