Saturday, evening

The day started earlier than one might want, with a relocation to the sofa away from the irrepressibly snoring Mr B. L, the youngest host was somewhat shocked to see me there at something beginning with 7, but recovered quickly to give me an extremely detailed review of the show he is watching with his brother (Voltron). Including Keith.

Later, breakfast, hanging out, spontaneous muffins (my godson has the baking gift: did everything wrong but they were still perfect!), breaking my toe on the middle shower, shopping, prep for the party.

The main reason for this trip is the annual party in Holland Park of our pal Sue. Always a great chance to see a load of folk in one trip, and the kids get to go a bit feral. The kid highlight this year was getting the aerobe frisbee out of a tall tree with a football (only J and CarbBoy could throw high enough). The grown up highlight was the presence of our Oz pal Stu who lives in NZ but is in Europe for a while.

So the usual excessive consumption of food, Italian wine and - for us - soaking up all that company. TallGirl is now part-kid, part-grown up so hung around with us more than normal (mainly feeding a lame pigeon) so we had to be careful what we said; notably a conversation around the word for part of an insect which she had misremembered as something that turned out to be quite rude.

Later, we all escaped the park before it closed. I may have bid a fond pre-taxi farewell to some random passers-by who weren’t even with us, and it turns out that next year we are going to Copenhagen and Iceland. Curry, chat, and a sensibly not late night.