so it was actually quite a busy weekend for us, considering that our usual friday to monday schedule generally involves doing as little as humanly possible. friday night we met our friends emma and dave for drinks to welcome them home from their own round-the-world trip. we’d met them as travel mates on our uyuni salt flats excursion starting in chile, and ended up travelling in parallel with them for about three weeks up through peru (including witnessing the horrific accident together). we compared stories, moaned about their enviable tans, and in spite of drinking inadvisable quantities of wine and prosecco, i was actually feeling surprisingly fine on saturday morning (though that can’t say anything good about the state of my liver). i got up, went out to get bagels and eggs, made breakfast and coffee, considered going for a run a bit later in the afternoon.

and then bam! at one o’clock a massive migraine hit. this is the return of a very disturbing trend, and in spite of jonno’s incessant teasing, i know it was a migraine because i don’t get funny visual effects with just a plain garden-variety hangover. i was incapacitated for most of the afternoon, but rallied in the evening (assisted with a small overdose of ibuprofen) for dinner at chris and ton’s house. funny how the prospect of a home-cooked meal can make getting up from the couch so much more enticing. ordinarily, evenings at chris and ton’s end when chris starts going through his extensive wine collection and drunkenly opening bottles at random, while we start swilling it like water. luckily it was one of our rarer and more sedate evenings and i managed to steer clear of most alcohol and escape unharmed.

so i was feeling good sunday morning, when i woke up at a lazy hour, went for a run, and was in the shower thinking about breakfast and a relaxing afternoon when jonno burst into the bathroom.

“do you know anything about meeting muriel at baker street at noon?”

shit!! shitshitshitshitshit!

i dash out of the shower, and start running around the house, wet and naked, yanking on the nearest clothes, yelling “tell her we’ll be there in an hour!”

my aunt muriel, as I’ve mentioned here before, is my grandfather’s cousin, and my only relative here in the u.k. she’s a garrulous old bird in her mid 70s, and lives up near oxford, where we dutifully visited her for an overcooked sunday dinner and sherry every few months. she’d wanted to meet up with us since we returned from our travels, but now that we no longer have a car, agreed to come meet us in london for lunch. i’d made the plans, written them in my diary… and completely plumb forgot.

understandably, poor muriel, after taking the bus all the way down to london, sitting in the cold for a half hour and being stood up, was not all that interested in waiting around for another hour for our inexcusably late arrival, and graciously agreed to try again another day as I apologized profusely.

meanwhile, i’d barely had time for a sigh of relief and to dry off properly when, not three minutes later, my friend kim popped by for an impromptu visit – something i have always been encouraging her to do, but which only a few minutes earlier would have resulted in her witnessing my wet and frenzied racing about like a madwoman. however we had an enjoyable chat over coffee, as I tried to slow my heart rate from all the earlier excitement, and she was thoughtful enough to drop off a cool little travel book for us as well.

after that, the bulk of the afternoon was taken up with grocery shopping (read: me forcibly dragging j through the grocery store) and noodling on the computer, until later that evening we headed over to kerryn and tracey’s place for our traditional weekend dinner and videos date. kerryn flexed his culinary muscles with roasted sea bass with chorizo, and we watched the inane “my super ex-girlfriend”. (yes, i managed to stay awake.)

so that’s what our eventful weekend looked like – food, drink, friends, frenzy and a healthy portion of humble pie.

Like this post

Unlike