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Went down to Exeter for the weekend with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kitty_goth, to stay with his sister Kate & her husband Lee. Who are very nice indeed. And I am now the proud possessor of a tartan picnic rug that Kate gave me! I got very excited about this :-) It is "padded for comfort" and has a tarpaulin backing and *everything*.
Got a bit pissed on the way down (well, once you've finished the first bottle of wine & still have an hour & a half of train to go, *really* the only thing to do is to go get another one, right? Hurrah for buffets that sell BOOZE, even if it wasn't terribly good wine), & then I seem to recall that on arrival we put away another fair bit of wine over dinner. Whoops. Had a slight headache the next morning, but wasn't thrown out of the house or anything so presumably I didn't misbehave too horribly. Spent the (very sunny) afternoon a) sitting in a nice park with food & a bottle of wine, b) sitting in the pleasantly shaded beer garden of a nice pub with various beverages including beer (Ben & me), cider (Lee), wine (Kate), Pimms (Kate & me), & gin (Ben & Lee). Headed home after about 4 hours or so for dinner, another spot of wine, & the watching of SCHOOL OF ROCK which is really rather fine. I mean, it's not Great Art or anything, but it was damn funny & generally enjoyable. We just about made it through Withnail & I after that before staggering off to bed. Impressively, despite drinking solidly all day, at no point did any of us wind up plastered. Giggly maybe (well, OK, definitely), falling-down-drunk no. Well done us.
Sunday featured lunch with Ben's parents in a pub somewhere in Devon (or possibly Cornwall, I dunno, I was in the back of the car trying to finish off the book I randomly borrowed off the shelves (Heinlein, "Starship Troopers". Interesting in that it's probably got some of the most up-front explanation of his personal philosophy which unsurprisingly I find unconvincing; not as good as most of the rest of his I've read, which I do rather enjoy despite disagreeing with him politically) & have no idea where we went). Lunch was good; walk round Lynton (? somewhere like that) Gorge cool, especially when Ben found me wild raspberries. Unfortunately we had to leave Ben's parents at the half-way point as we were running late & had to zoom through the second half at speed - 1.5 miles of up-&-down in 25 min which ain't too bad. Train back was, of course, late, but I phoned Pete from Paddington & we arrived on the doorstep at exactly the same time as the pizza, which was good timing.marnameow, just_mon & sbp were also present for pizza-eating, attempting of some music lyrics quiz on the Magical Interweb, and watching of Little Shop Of Horrors. Which kitty_goth had never seen before. HOW CAN THIS BE? He liked it, thankfully, or I might have had to kill him. For his own good, you understand.
Ben crashing over at ours meant that Monday started in one of the best available ways: chipsbeansandmushrooms at the cafe opposite the park. Hurrah. Work (as it did today) went OK - I am comprehending XSLT, & making it work, & everything. And remembering how Java works, & today I made my first CVS commit, go me.
Last night Pete & I went to the Proms, to see a Shostakovich overture, a John Cage piece, a couple of violin pieces (Tan Dun and Esa-Pekka Salonen), and Evelyn Glennie playing the Tan Dun Water Percussion Concerto. Which was utterly splendid. We were expecting something along the lines of a water-based glockenspiel; what we got were large bowls of water used in dozens of different ways to produce different sorts of sounds. Gongs dipped in water as they were struck made a fantastic noise; as did bells played half under the water. There were also upside-down bowls placed on top of the water to be used as drums (played by hand); and a variety of other noise-making things played in, on top of, and near, the water. And there was lots of *sploshing*! Hitting the top of the water with a flat palm; dripping water from the hands back into the bowls; and a splendid moment where one of the backing water-players just walloped the water *really hard* and sent it all over the floor. Fantastic fun to watch, if utterly daft, and I'm definitely glad that we went.
Tonight, in comparison, has been quiet.kitty_goth dropped round briefly earlier, then I forked over the compost heap, attacked some of the shrubs with secateurs, did the washing-up, put some washing on, tidied the living room a bit, & knitted (trying to get my dress finished. Been doing the straps, which at least involves knitting backwards which is kind of interesting). Play with the ratgirls now, then bed soon.
kitty_goth, to stay with his sister Kate & her husband Lee. Who are very nice indeed. And I am now the proud possessor of a tartan picnic rug that Kate gave me! I got very excited about this :-) It is "padded for comfort" and has a tarpaulin backing and *everything*. Got a bit pissed on the way down (well, once you've finished the first bottle of wine & still have an hour & a half of train to go, *really* the only thing to do is to go get another one, right? Hurrah for buffets that sell BOOZE, even if it wasn't terribly good wine), & then I seem to recall that on arrival we put away another fair bit of wine over dinner. Whoops. Had a slight headache the next morning, but wasn't thrown out of the house or anything so presumably I didn't misbehave too horribly. Spent the (very sunny) afternoon a) sitting in a nice park with food & a bottle of wine, b) sitting in the pleasantly shaded beer garden of a nice pub with various beverages including beer (Ben & me), cider (Lee), wine (Kate), Pimms (Kate & me), & gin (Ben & Lee). Headed home after about 4 hours or so for dinner, another spot of wine, & the watching of SCHOOL OF ROCK which is really rather fine. I mean, it's not Great Art or anything, but it was damn funny & generally enjoyable. We just about made it through Withnail & I after that before staggering off to bed. Impressively, despite drinking solidly all day, at no point did any of us wind up plastered. Giggly maybe (well, OK, definitely), falling-down-drunk no. Well done us.
Sunday featured lunch with Ben's parents in a pub somewhere in Devon (or possibly Cornwall, I dunno, I was in the back of the car trying to finish off the book I randomly borrowed off the shelves (Heinlein, "Starship Troopers". Interesting in that it's probably got some of the most up-front explanation of his personal philosophy which unsurprisingly I find unconvincing; not as good as most of the rest of his I've read, which I do rather enjoy despite disagreeing with him politically) & have no idea where we went). Lunch was good; walk round Lynton (? somewhere like that) Gorge cool, especially when Ben found me wild raspberries. Unfortunately we had to leave Ben's parents at the half-way point as we were running late & had to zoom through the second half at speed - 1.5 miles of up-&-down in 25 min which ain't too bad. Train back was, of course, late, but I phoned Pete from Paddington & we arrived on the doorstep at exactly the same time as the pizza, which was good timing.
marnameow, just_mon & sbp were also present for pizza-eating, attempting of some music lyrics quiz on the Magical Interweb, and watching of Little Shop Of Horrors. Which kitty_goth had never seen before. HOW CAN THIS BE? He liked it, thankfully, or I might have had to kill him. For his own good, you understand. Ben crashing over at ours meant that Monday started in one of the best available ways: chipsbeansandmushrooms at the cafe opposite the park. Hurrah. Work (as it did today) went OK - I am comprehending XSLT, & making it work, & everything. And remembering how Java works, & today I made my first CVS commit, go me.
Last night Pete & I went to the Proms, to see a Shostakovich overture, a John Cage piece, a couple of violin pieces (Tan Dun and Esa-Pekka Salonen), and Evelyn Glennie playing the Tan Dun Water Percussion Concerto. Which was utterly splendid. We were expecting something along the lines of a water-based glockenspiel; what we got were large bowls of water used in dozens of different ways to produce different sorts of sounds. Gongs dipped in water as they were struck made a fantastic noise; as did bells played half under the water. There were also upside-down bowls placed on top of the water to be used as drums (played by hand); and a variety of other noise-making things played in, on top of, and near, the water. And there was lots of *sploshing*! Hitting the top of the water with a flat palm; dripping water from the hands back into the bowls; and a splendid moment where one of the backing water-players just walloped the water *really hard* and sent it all over the floor. Fantastic fun to watch, if utterly daft, and I'm definitely glad that we went.
Tonight, in comparison, has been quiet.
kitty_goth dropped round briefly earlier, then I forked over the compost heap, attacked some of the shrubs with secateurs, did the washing-up, put some washing on, tidied the living room a bit, & knitted (trying to get my dress finished. Been doing the straps, which at least involves knitting backwards which is kind of interesting). Play with the ratgirls now, then bed soon.