Weekends are great, even when they lead to Monday mornings

[liv]

Last weekend I went to atreic and emperor's party. It was a truly excellent party; the hosts have a particular knack for coaxing many of my favourite Cambridge people to the Midlands so that I can hang out with them with minimal effort! And there was a BBQ with pleasant veggie options (admittedly mostly provided by jack, but I was not at all complaining about his tasty marinated Quorn and halloumi kebabs). And lots of interesting, tasty alcohol, including some home-made cider (courtesy of antinomy). I was particularly glad for a chance to chat to rmc28 and ghoti. There was even a large, silly game of Apples to Apples, which is one of my favourite party activities.

jack and I stayed over at Brooklands Grange, a hotel I picked randomly off the internet on the grounds that it was cheap and relatively conveniently located. It turned out to be adequate but nothing special, though it does have absolutely lovely exposed oak beams to lift it from the purely generic. Booking a hotel for the night had the advantage of making it possible to stay until the late-night half-asleep conversations stage of the party, and also to spend a very pleasant Sunday afternoon in Birmingham (or, to be honest, mostly in the Warehouse café) with loreid and kathrid.

This weekend I went down to Brighton for P'tite Soeur's 27^th birthday. I distinctly remember what it felt like to regard 27 as the epitome of middle age, so I am a little confused by it being the age of my baby sister. Seriously, the party was great, with loads of very interesting and lovely people present. It took place in the Bath Arms, which is more authentic than you'd expect for the middle of the Brighton Lanes. It would probably be a great place to go with two or three friends; for a party of 30 it was a bit awkward because it's one of those places that are divided into small nooks and cubicles. So it was relatively non-noisy for a busy pub on a Saturday night, but it was a bit tricky to interact with the other guests or even to circulate between tables. They do good food if you don't mind paying Lanes prices, and real ale, but surprisingly nothing I like to drink, so I ended up staying completely sober.

That was probably a good thing in the circumstances because I had foolishly agreed to leave first thing on Sunday morning and go to London. In some ways it might have been a better plan to stay in Brighton and hang out with my sibs, particularly because the Brighton festival is underway at the moment. But I really wanted to see hadassah and there are limited weekends when she's in the country but not massively busy with college work. Although we hadn't originally intended to do things this way, jack decided to join us for lunch before heading home; this had the slight downside that driving into central London is kind of painful! We did see a huge and amusing rally of Minis coming past us in the opposite direction.

I'd planned on lunch in Chinatown as it's relatively cheap and convenient for the West End shopping we had slated for the afternoon and because hadassah was pining for East Asian cuisine. The problem is I wasn't really able to find anywhere vegetarian (other than some non-Asian places on the edge of Soho); I'm not sure if this is because Chinatown cuisine is from a part of China where veggie food isn't really the thing, or because most of the establishments there don't really have much of a presence on the Anglophone internet. Also because Google has come up with this annoying "enhancement" that searching for "vegetarian restaurant" brings up every single business that mentions the word vegetarian anywhere in its menu, even if it's a steakhouse that will grudgingly allow you to eat egg and chips if you inexplicably don't appreciate MEAT. I mean, yeah, searching within menus is clever, but if I'm looking for vegetarian restaurants I'd prefer to have some way to distinguish those specifically.

In the end I resorted to kake's excellent Randomness Guide, which pointed us to Leong's Legend as a veggie-friendly, not too pretentious dim sum place. There was a reasonable selection of vegetable-based items, as long as you were prepared not to enquire too closely how exactly they were cooked. It was, by my barbarian standards, very Chinese dim sum; most of it was stuff none of us had eaten before, and some of it was more interesting than tasty, but hey, that's pretty much what I wanted from a cheap lunch in Chinatown, and the tasty things were very tasty. The only slight mishap was that the item listed as "garlic and chive dumplings" turned out to be prawn dumplings with garlic and chive flavouring. I wouldn't be too bothered for myself (I discovered my ordering mistake, and was happy to just put that dish aside) but I feel bad about offending my friends' dietary principles.

Then jack left us alone to indulge our (well, hadassah's really) girly instincts with an afternoon of hardcore dress shopping. We basically walked the length of Oxford Street and looked at what is available in terms of party dresses. It was a bit as I feared: mid-range party dresses are all hopelessly shapeless and / or frilly, and slightly grander party dresses are all strapless or asymmetric. We had some limited success in Debenhams, particularly their home-grown Début range. It's definitely the sort of thing I like, classic full-length ballgown-style dresses including some with at least straps, plain materials in deep jewel colours. Just everything we looked at is a bit bland. It was at about the £100 to £150 price mark, but all synthetic material, and designs that look good and suit me, but not particularly special. A bit, well, bridesmaid-y, not something that will really stand out. This red dress is close to the idea I have in my head, and there was a shiny purple one too, albeit strapless, but at least it has a shaped bodice.

I think the main thing I learned was that material that wraps around the body and gathers at the side can work equally well for emphasising my waist and flattering my hips as an outfit with a distinct waist. Also I am drawn to a designer called KaliKo, although they didn't have anything specific in the kind of style I'm looking for. Next steps: make a serious attack on vintage places along with friends like khalinche and blue_mai who are knowledgeable about them. Try moving up into the next price bracket, boutiques and unique designers rather than high street chains. If I do make it to Sweden next month, make sure to do the rounds of NK and especially Kriss, where I have previously found outfits I really am excited about, made out of natural materials including real silk, for about £200. And continue poking around on the internet, and building up ideas in case I decide to go for a custom-made thing.

Anyway, hadassah is truly an excellent companion when it comes to dress shopping! She was prepared to be strict with me when I got distracted by shiny but irrelevant stuff, and honest when I picked out something aesthetically pretty but wrong for me, and encouraging and enthusiastic when I found something that worked well. Plus she prevented me from giving up in despair after going through six shops and not finding anything remotely suitable! So she thoroughly earned her treat of afternoon tea at Brown's hotel. Although afternoon tea wouldn't really be my own first choice of a memorable meal out, they certainly did a good job of it. The sandwiches and petits fours were interesting and tasty, the scones and cakes were substantial and appropriate, the service was friendly and helpful without being obsequious. Anyway it was lovely to have a couple of hours to talk about more interesting topics than clothes, and recover from all the too-slow walking that is necessitated by shopping!

I have had some minor successes at work, looks as if I'm going to end up with some interesting small management responsibilities next term. And I've finished with teaching until October, so although I'll miss the students that gives me space to concentrate on other aspects of my job, and more flexibility in how I work than is possible during term.