Lawn ornament

Up, and after completing a report for Cindy on the play-testing of her game ALCHEMY, I joined her and her close friends for a leaving party at her flat in the Royal Crescent. Later we took a stroll around the lawn that nestles in the crook of the Crescent, separated by a Ha ha from the Royal Victoria Park.

With most of her belongings packed, including her marvellous photographic portrait wall, the flat was looking rather bare and sad, so we were all happy to emerge into a somewhat diminished late afternoon sunshine for a constitutional along the Ha ha.

Apparently, there had been a Royal Wedding earlier in the day but patriotic fervour for a street party in the Crescent appeared heavily restrained. There were only a few residents established on the lawn.

The mood was reflective; everyone was sad that Cindy had finally realised her decision to leave the refined and genteel precincts of Bath and settle afresh in the sophisticated fleshpots of London but we were all confident that she would quickly establish herself in the local writers' and artists' communities.

Contemplative mood notwithstanding, the banter was good; on falling to one knee at one point in order to adjust my height in the associated group photograph, this innocent act was greeted with much hilarity as a marriage proposal.

Cindy recognised immediately that it implied no such commitment, and was at most a desperate attempt by a Welshman whose visa had expired to retain his right to remain in England through a marriage of inconvenience.

She quickly dismissed it as such; a sensible move given the Church of England's recent tightening of their scrutiny of sham marriages conducted for immigration purposes.

The party wound up shortly afterwards and I made my way through crowds that had imbibed deeply of the general atmosphere of post-wedding bonhomie to my car for the trip to Twickenham and a visit to my family.