Weekly Round-up 4 Jan 16

So, a week ago it was still 2015 – Monday 28th December in fact. I’d returned to London the day before having spent a few days in Wales visiting some of my family for Christmas. I’ll catch you up on that before moving on to the last week…

Possibly my briefest Wales Christmas visit ever but far from the worst (that was last year when I was quite unwell throughout and felt thoroughly unwelcome owing to an ongoing petulance from Dad’s girlfriend).

Crimbo Highlights this year were: a good gin-fuelled chat with my ageing father; completing in only a few hours a mini impossipuzzle jigsaw with candy sticks;

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an excellent buffet supplied by my sister-in-law, Sian; a moderately late Christmas-day evening with my eldest brother and family which ended with a tumultuous game of ‘Shout’, dancing on the X-Box Kinetic (I won!) and a try of a VR headset (floating over Mars and then being snarled at by a dinosaur).

On boxing day highlights were a visit to see my lovely brother, Andrew-Paul. I was delighted that my eldest brother and grandfather both joined in visiting him too, albeit relatively briefly. The determination my now terribly frail nearly-91-year-old grandfather demonstrated in getting himself up the steep front-door steps in spite of obvious pain was deeply impressive.

Had some lovely lunch there (lasagne avec and sans meat) and played with the children for a bit – cool wooden games and some balloons to make dogs out of. Hurrah.

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Back in London then and having Pierre to stay for a week was nice. He arrived in the evening on Sunday 27th. On 28th I headed to my usual Ku Bar and was joined by L1. Somehow we made the night a bit of a messy one – perhaps a little too much to drink at Ku (back in London excitement to blame) followed by a lovely dinner in Clapham, ping-pong (yes, really) at The Four Thieves and then The Two Brewers.

I lost my spectacles and William nearly lost more than that. Being a sleepy little thing he nearly always falls asleep post 11pm. This is something of a problem when out in a pub/club – the security staff tend to assume he’s just had far too much to drink (on this occasion they may have been correct) and so when he decided to sit, legs up, on the stage during a performance and belligerently contest that this was perfectly normal and so be moving in spite of being ordered to by the act, our night came unceremonious end. Probably for the best anyway…

I worked on Tuesday and in the evening went promptly for 18:05 to meet Pierre and L1 to see and hear the WWII blitz memorial air-raid siren ringing over the City of London. Alas we screwed up and stood outside St Paul’s where it was not able to be heard. So instead we headed to the recently refurbished New Bloomsbury Set (a strange bar I’m yet to decide whether or not I like, in spite of half a dozen visits) and then on to dinner at the Holborn Dining rooms. L1 was giddy because you can hear (and indeed feel!) the underground trains passing when you use the facilities which are located in the basement. My food wasn’t great – had a cottage pie which was dry and flavourless. Ate about a quarter of it and they took it away without noticing. Wine was delightful however and it was a jolly way to finish that evening off. Walked through Temple and onwards home for an early night since we were still feeling the pain from the heavy day before.

On Wednesday had a inadvertently long lunch at Café Boheme in Soho with Simon from my brunch group and with Marty and Andreas who was over visiting from Vienna. An enjoyable meal until the duty manager made a fuss about the noise level in a really unnecessary, prudish and rude way. One can only assume he had a hangover as he was frightfully sensitive. He’d perhaps be better suited to a library as a workplace though I suspect he’d fail to cut the mustard at that either.

After work Thierry and Andrew had kindly invited me, Pierre and William around to theirs at Victoria for a spot of informal dinner. Ashamed to say that by the time I’d arrived in Victoria I was really quite merry owing to lunch. A lovely dinner of beef bourguignon was followed by an absolutely enormous and thoroughly delicious cake and some cheese. I was ready to pop by 2am when I finally looked at my watch and realised I’d kept Andrew up way past his usual bed time.

Thursday was a struggle. Three days of fairly heavy evenings had all but wiped me out for the week. I am still not fully recovered from my winter cold and fear the additional battering my immune system receives on an evening out these days isn’t overly sensible.

Nonetheless I managed to get a fair amount done at work before clocking off and getting myself ready for New Year’s Eve celebrations at The National Liberal Club. We were joined on our table by some lovely people – lawyers I gather – who provided very interesting and humorous conversation while we eagerly awaited the fireworks. More balloons provided light entertainment – they have the ones that you’re meant to blow up and not tie, thus letting them go spluttering off into the air making all sorts of daft noise and somewhat surprisingly for such a ‘mature’ crowd, eliciting awe and delight as they eventually landed on some unsuspecting diner’s pudding.

Fireworks this year were magnificent. Better than last year (not that they were bad last year, of course – we’re just dealing in relative degrees of amazing here). Afterwards we graced the dance floor where the NLC had obliged with a jazz band who were first-rate.Walked home with William having a feather in his hair and helium balloons strapped tied to his wrists.

On Friday, to work off the previous night’s excesses I took Pierre up to Hampstead where we flew my kite. Pierre hadn’t flown a kite before, nor had he observed the splendid view from Parliament Hill. He took to it a little slowly, being very cautious about the amount of mud underfoot, but as soon as he had the string in his hands he forgot about his smart new-looking trainers and was soon gleefully running down the hill to valiantly save the kite from embarrassingly early descent. Splendidly camp. Swung by Camden market and found a Shogi board. Pierre seemed aghast at the bohemian atmosphere of Camden.

On Saturday Pierre, L1 and I took the boat down to Greenwich and lunched at the Trafalgar (the pub where Gladstone used to take his cabinet, by boat). We played a game after-ward, which William had given me for Christmas – it’s called ‘Hive’ and is very addictive. A little tricky to work out and certainly more practice needed but lots of potential. Visited Nigel in the Tolly for an hour or so before heading back to Borough. All thoroughly shattered.

Sunday was a damp squib. a) It was really wet and miserable out b) I’d introduced William to Mini-Metro for Mac OS. It’s apparent he’s got a new obsession – he played it all day even delaying lunch into what was quite a late roast beef dinner. I made a mess of the dinner when I tried to roast sprouts in with the beef and root vegetables and had put far too much water in the bottom of the pot. It was very nearly boiled rather than roasted beef.

We watched some nonsense program on TV called ‘Take Me Out’ – I think it’s one of the saddest spectacles but it has a certain ‘can’t stop watching’ car-crash-style about it.

Very pleased to have a visit from Colm in the evening as he’d just arrived back from Asia (via Paris) and we hadn’t caught up in a while. Had a good chat which included my current predicament with my lodger which has been getting very stressful. Looking forward to getting myself to Asia this year – a plan which has spent far too long on my ‘to do list’.

All afternoon my fever got worse. I eventually took to bed very early but awoke several times throughout the night either freezing cold and shivering or stiflingly sweltering. Tried several different configurations of blankets, window open and heater on or off to little avail. Fear I looked quite grim by the time I’d arrived this morning in work – not least because I nearly threw up several times en route owing to exerting myself too hard on the bike. My thoughtful colleague Nobu seemed genuinely quite concerned that I should go home since, as he put it, I looked awful. Awfully nice that someone should notice and show concern when I’m looking decidedly under-par, I suppose.

Headed to meet Willy-T later but first a brief visit to Ku to see Colm and gang with the ‘first day back blues killer’ drink much needed.

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