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Quite a busy few days, actually.

It started on Thursday, which feels like an age ago now. Drinks and nibs at the Glassblower, which I’d not been to for… oh, I don’t know, probably five years. Not since the fateful night when we all went there for Lorraine’s birthday, but she went to the Glasshouse Stores and assumed we’d all stood her up.

And then didn’t talk to us for three weeks.

I guess that’s why I’ve never been back. Anyhoo, it’s a nice place, and the upstairs is large and airy, which is as well, as it filled out nicely as the night went on, and I got to chat with loads of people I’d not seen in ages. Will, Spencer, Gordon… Not sure what time I left, but I vaguely remember a taxi, and I did have a pounding head on Friday morning, so I’m assuming it was good fun, although as usual I’ll be blaming the vintage of the wine, as I wasn’t the only one feeling green.

So, Friday passed without incident, fortunately, although I did buy a new camera. A lovely Canon EOS 350D. I will blame Gordon as he has been gushing about it on page and on his site, but I have played with one a fair bit - at the launch and briefly in the office - so will accept at least part of the blame. My old camera is coming up for its third birthday, and I wanted to upgrade before our trip next week, which is now all booked.

Rather excitingly, we will be following the route of just one train: the EC53, which starts in Venice at 09h00 each morning, and ends its run in Budapest two minutes shy of 12 hours later at 20h58. On the way, of course, it crosses the Italian, Slovenian, Croatian and Hungarian borders, and stops off in Ljubljana and Zagreb, where we’ll be bedding for a few nights, but it sounds like a fantastic route. I only hope the Slovenian border guards aren’t as fierce as I’ve read.

The camera will be arriving on Tuesday, but I wish I’d had it with me today. I went out for a walk, late afternoon - across the fields behind us, across the river, through the woods and on and on and on until there were no roads and you couldn’t hear anything but the singing of birds and a bit of leaf russle. All around was teeming with wildlife. At one point a fox, well fed and as big as a decent-sized house dog, came out from the undergrowth and just stood in the middle of the path; stock still, staring at me. I stood still and stared back, and we stayed like that, just looking at each other for two or three minutes until it drifted off into the bushes again.

If I saw one rabbit I saw thirty. They bounced up and down in the long grass, and stood proud with their ears sticking straight up in the air, and watched as I went by. I think the summer around here is going to be very nice, and full of wildlife. It’s started already in our garden. Apart from the foxes and rabbits, there are two birds (long tailed tits, if the Internet is to be believed) which are having a running battle with their reflections in the shed windows. They have spent the whole of the last two days fluttering beside the glass and pecking at their reflected beaks.

Anyhow, I digress…

So, Friday. After the camera buying incident, I met up with Sal outside Borders on Charring Cross Road and we went to Rupert Street Bar to meet Paul, Trevor, Jon, Andy, Rob and, later on in the evening, Dave and his friend whose name I didn’t catch.

It’s another place I’ve not been in for ages, although not for such a good reason as the one that has kept me out of the Glasshouse. It was pleasant enough, although very crowded, and we spent most of our time perched half on and half off of a step. I was glad when we moved on to Kettners to eat, and Sal came with us, despite reminding us all that she really must get home. I was glad she didn’t, though - it’s ages since we’ve properly been out anywhere.

We all ate more than we should, but it was Paul and Rob’s birthdays, so it didn’t really matter, and we managed to disastrously time leaving with chuck out time from the theatres, so found ourselves drowning in a sea of well-dressed watchers as we made it back out onto the street.

I’m told that Kettners is where Oscar Wilde used to take rent boys.

We got home lateish, and slept in later, then I worked most of Saturday while Paul moved around the furniture so we could accommodate a party on Saturday evening. As ever, though, most people spent most of their time in the kitchen, so the lounge looked rather arena-like with all the furniture pushed to the walls, and nothing going on in the middle.

It was kind of a birthday-come-housewarming, so there was the obligatory showing around, which had been preceded by the obligatory tidying up of the rooms not usually seen. As ever with a party, we ended up buying too much food, and are now left with a fridge full of sausage rolls and pork pies and, more usefully, a rack full of wine as everyone, of course, bought a bottle with them.

Still, everyone seemed to have a good time and the last few drifted off at about 02h30, which felt shockingly decent, and at least didn’t disturb the neighbours. All in all, it went very well, and we didn’t need to rent one of these to get the party started. At such short notice I’m sure they’d already all be fully booked.

So, as I say, a few busy days, and already the details are sufficiently obscured in my mind not to be able to write anything more than this sketchy outline about them. I really ought to make sure I write these entries day by day by day.

But I know that won’t happen.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 24th, 2005 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.