I have awesome people

[liv]

So I have ended up with a bit of extra leave for the end of the academic year, so I took a couple of days at the beginning of the week to extend the bank holiday weekend.

It was so good to come home at midnight on Friday and actually relax, knowing I wouldn't have to leave again on Sunday afternoon. jack caused a low-key barbecue to happen on Saturday, just putting out the word on social media and buying some basic supplies. It was actually a really good ratio of reward to effort; loads of people I like turned up, and people from various social circles got on well with eachother, and it the house got a bit full when it was too rainy to be in the garden but generally it was highly enjoyable. And loads of kids, OSOs' younger two plus two more of the same age who were staying with them for the weekend, and alextfish and woodpijn's girls and two more slightly older children belonging to someone I'm tangentially connected to.

Anyway, ghoti set up a tent in the garden and she and her kids and their out of town visitors camped there overnight, so that was awesome. Sunday we mostly spent in the Carlton with the parents of the visiting children, and in the evening ghoti came back to ours for pancakes and games and sleeping in a real bed indoors. We had a nice quiet, mainly domestic day on Monday, including a bit of gaming with OSOs and their littles.

And on our glorious days off, jack and I went to Brighton on the train, via lunch in the hidden gastro pub in St Pancras station, the Betjeman Arms (I can never spell his name, and looking it up in Wikipedia I learn that he was in a triad relationship for over 30 years, anyway). We met up with P'tite Soeur at a tea shop where she's working part time, and wandered across the centre of the city in the sunshine playing Pokémon while she was closing up. Brighton has lots of Magnemites and Voltorbs, which jack explained in terms of Brighton being a mecca for bi mons just as it is for humans.

We took P'tite Soeur out for dinner at another gastropub, with the slightly odd name of the Independent. And watched the sun set and ate tasty food and chatted, and it was just lovely. After we slept in my sister's lovely garret spare bedroom, she made us pancakes for breakfast and then we headed on to my brother Screwy's place across town. So we spent the afternoon chatting, and P'tite Soeur joined us when she'd finished the day's baking and made us an exciting curry, and then to my surprise my elusive other brother Thuggish Poet turned up too, for some complicated reason involving cricket and banjos. So that's the first time in absolute years that all four of us have been together other than for Passover!

So anyway, that did me a lot of good, and required very little planning beyond putting in a request at work for a couple of days off.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

Yay, that sounds awesome

[hatam_soferet]

That sounds completely lovely! I'm glad the weather was nice enough for the camping-in-the-garden.

[ephemera]

That sounds like a lovely weekend ;)