weekend roundup

Last weekend was excellent. Sometimes, living in London, complacency can hit and you can miss out. This is where house guests come in handy. They do stuff. They inpire you to do stuff too. Especially fun when you can split up at Portabello market so as you can check out foodie shops, foodie market stalls and wine shops while they peek at the clothes on the stalls. Of course temptations run rampant. In my head I'd emptied my wallet about 10 times at both the cheese stall and one of the wine shops. But in the end I only bought some homemade cookies. They were ace. But it was very cold. So lunch was munched with an Italian theme and aside from shrieking harpies in the corner an excellent day was had. As were a few gin and tonics and a couple of pints.

Saturday was a mixture of rugby and Peterborough. Rugby is a wonderful sport and Saturday's match was incredible, with Scotland's victory still bringing a smile to my face. Peterborough is a total and utter shithole. It's also a lot farther from London than you'd think. Fortunately, the company of friends helped dull the pain of place. The party I attended had a couple of strange ones, including someone I shared a name with and thankfully nothing else. I nicknamed him "product of cousins".

Sunday was a hangover followed by the most awful pub service in the universe. After waiting 2 hours our eagerly awaited Sunday roasts were cold and inedible. Fortunately there were irate, hungover women with me, so they complained and got the food struck from the bill. I'm terrible at confrontations like that, so I went outside to call my mum. Yes, I'm a big wuss. But it's a sad day that the local pub was dreadful while the big chain pub (an O'Neill's) was showing the Ireland-Wales match while serving brilliant food that came with free Guinness. So my hangover was beaten back by sausage baguettes and 3 pints. And table football.

A seemingly endless drive home, fighting to stay awake so as I could keep the driver awake and I cooked toad-in-the-hole for my folks. It was pretty good.