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livTurned out I had less time and less internet access over the weekend than I planned, so I missed the last three days of posting, and also missed the Dreamwidth-versary. Happy belated birthday, Dreamwidth, here's to many more years.
The weekend was planned around celebratingjack's mother's graduation from the Open University. So I travelled up to London on Friday evening, managed to meet jack at the station, and repaired to a somewhat horrible chain hotel that had the advantage of being very conveniently located. We wandered a very little bit around the area before finding an intriguing vegan Japanese restaurant, Itadaki Zen. This fed us some pleasantly adventurous food, including some very gelatinous desserts. It's a bit pricey but not bad by the standards of a nice restaurant in the middle of London, and it felt very good to be able to eat food nothing like what we're used to without having to worry about it.
Saturday we wandered around some more, out towards Clerkenwell and Farringdon, which turned out to be much more pleasant than I expected from that part of town. I felt very foolish when I turned a corner and was surprised to run into a May 1st demo, as I'd entirely forgotten the significance of the date. We acquired lunch in a particularly good patisserie by the name of Sweet, and ate said lunch in a park under the lilacs, and then bought a bouquet for the graduand at a ludicrously upmarket florist. And then managed to join up withjack's uncle and aunt and headed to the Barbican for the ceremony.
I metjack's dad for the first time, though so briefly it hardly counted as a meeting. The ceremony itself dragged on a bit, as these things inevitably do, but it had just the right mixture of pomp (there was a brass band and the usual formal robes) with exuberance (lots of screaming children and other fans in the audience). It was very heartening to watch the procession of OU graduates who are so diverse in every respect, particularly age.
When we attempted to leave after the ceremony, there was a really terrifyingly intense downpour. All the local Tube lines were shut, and we were never going to get a taxi in competition with hundreds of other people pouring out of the Barbican. So we decided to just accept getting wet and kept going until we found a pub where we could drinkjack's mum's health. Then we went out to dinner at an uninspiring but pleasant pizza place.
Sunday we attempted to go to the Tate Modern. This was a bit awkward because of all the Tube line closures as well as the inherent difficulties in moving a group of five people about with any efficiency. But in the end we managed to get to London Bridge and walk along the Thames path to the museum, the only problems being that we got slightly damp in the process, and thatjack and I had only half an hour to dash around the museum before we had to leave in order to make it to our lunch meeting.
We were just a bit late meeting![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
blue_mai at Diwana Bhel Poori, where we had the usual excellent lunch and some very fun conversation. Then I went to Leytonstone for more excellent conversation (and lots and lots and lots of teeeeeeeea) with doseybat. We ended up in the Pembury which contained large numbers of fascinating people to talk to (also tasty food and beer, as usual). This made me a very, very happy extrovert, and I was very bouncy at everybody, notably purplecthulu. Also managed to see Thuggish Poet briefly on the way to somewhere else.
nanaya and alextiefling very kindly offered us crash space, which meant we could carry on chatting after closing time and late into the night. And we had a lovely lovely day at their place on Monday, when they fed us tasty food and we had long rambling conversations and played a really thrilling game of Settlers.
So yes, I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got back yesterday evening, but that was such a perfectly wonderful weekend. Thanks to everybody who made an effort to fit in with my logistics so I could see so many of my favourite people!
The weekend was planned around celebrating
jack's mother's graduation from the Open University. So I travelled up to London on Friday evening, managed to meet jack at the station, and repaired to a somewhat horrible chain hotel that had the advantage of being very conveniently located. We wandered a very little bit around the area before finding an intriguing vegan Japanese restaurant, Itadaki Zen. This fed us some pleasantly adventurous food, including some very gelatinous desserts. It's a bit pricey but not bad by the standards of a nice restaurant in the middle of London, and it felt very good to be able to eat food nothing like what we're used to without having to worry about it. Saturday we wandered around some more, out towards Clerkenwell and Farringdon, which turned out to be much more pleasant than I expected from that part of town. I felt very foolish when I turned a corner and was surprised to run into a May 1st demo, as I'd entirely forgotten the significance of the date. We acquired lunch in a particularly good patisserie by the name of Sweet, and ate said lunch in a park under the lilacs, and then bought a bouquet for the graduand at a ludicrously upmarket florist. And then managed to join up with
jack's uncle and aunt and headed to the Barbican for the ceremony. I met
jack's dad for the first time, though so briefly it hardly counted as a meeting. The ceremony itself dragged on a bit, as these things inevitably do, but it had just the right mixture of pomp (there was a brass band and the usual formal robes) with exuberance (lots of screaming children and other fans in the audience). It was very heartening to watch the procession of OU graduates who are so diverse in every respect, particularly age. When we attempted to leave after the ceremony, there was a really terrifyingly intense downpour. All the local Tube lines were shut, and we were never going to get a taxi in competition with hundreds of other people pouring out of the Barbican. So we decided to just accept getting wet and kept going until we found a pub where we could drink
jack's mum's health. Then we went out to dinner at an uninspiring but pleasant pizza place. Sunday we attempted to go to the Tate Modern. This was a bit awkward because of all the Tube line closures as well as the inherent difficulties in moving a group of five people about with any efficiency. But in the end we managed to get to London Bridge and walk along the Thames path to the museum, the only problems being that we got slightly damp in the process, and that
jack and I had only half an hour to dash around the museum before we had to leave in order to make it to our lunch meeting.We were just a bit late meeting
blue_mai at Diwana Bhel Poori, where we had the usual excellent lunch and some very fun conversation. Then I went to Leytonstone for more excellent conversation (and lots and lots and lots of teeeeeeeea) with doseybat. We ended up in the Pembury which contained large numbers of fascinating people to talk to (also tasty food and beer, as usual). This made me a very, very happy extrovert, and I was very bouncy at everybody, notably purplecthulu. Also managed to see Thuggish Poet briefly on the way to somewhere else.nanaya and alextiefling very kindly offered us crash space, which meant we could carry on chatting after closing time and late into the night. And we had a lovely lovely day at their place on Monday, when they fed us tasty food and we had long rambling conversations and played a really thrilling game of Settlers. So yes, I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got back yesterday evening, but that was such a perfectly wonderful weekend. Thanks to everybody who made an effort to fit in with my logistics so I could see so many of my favourite people!
