Dinner Party 3: Dinner Party Revolutions

So then Paul, Michelle and Chris joined Claudia and me for dinner last night, and we had sausage and mash with onion gravy. It was all very nice, but I have to say it's a relief not to have to cook dinner tonight. And I'm looking forward to that leftover cheesecake.

After dinner we went to the Bedford in Balham, to watch Steve Reed play a couple of tunes. A dutch chap let me play his double bass, and I complemented their singer on her excellent vocal stylings, and the way her band made 7 time sound so natural. They really did too, normally it sounds like a 3 and a 4 stuck together, but they made 7 sound like 7!

Well, that's the trilogy over - perhaps there'll be a spin-off TV series later in the year?

Dinner Party 2 - Son of Dinner Party

Last night, Christian, Catrina, Adrienne and Chris came round and had pork chops and cheesecake with Claudia and me. Our garden can take the table both ways round, as it turns out. We chatted about shooting stars, what a nice place Sheffield is, the etiquette of pouring wine for your guests first (sometimes you forget...) and who the hell Beatallica were. The cheesecake seemed to go down well. The recipe is pretty simple, courtesy of my mum. Beat the hell out of some ginger biscuits, melt some butter, mix the two together and spread evenly in a cake tin. Then blend, whisk or otherwise mix a tin of condensed milk and two small/one large pack of Philadelphia soft cheese, and the juice of a couple of limes. Add the zest if you're feeling fruity. Put this on the biscuit base and chill for an hour.

I'm going to go and look up the timing of the Leonid asteroids now, so I can encourage Christian and Catrina to invite us round during shooting star season.

Edit: Can anyone think of a better title for tomorrow than 'Dinner Party 3: Dinner-Party vs Mecha-Dinner-Party'?

Dinner Party 1 - Dawn of the Dinner Party

Well, they say the garden is like an extra room, and we definitely demonstrated that yesterday. We had a very pleasant evening with 6 of us sat outside, enjoying wine, company and a quick Thai Green Curry followed by a spot of icecream. Caroline, Rob, Ben and Emma joined Claudia and me for the evening. Caroline, Rob and Claudia discussed some local clubbing venues, Ben and Emma told us about the difficulties of moving house, and I angled for a plus-one at their forthcoming wedding. I'm particularly looking forward to meeting Ben's aunt and Emma's cousin, who will be sat together.

Watch this space for the rest of the trilogy.

A nice way to spend a weekend

On Friday I went out with work. I was determined to take it easy, as I had a date the following evening with someone I hadn't really spoken to much before, and I wanted to make a good impression. The road to hangovers, however, is paved with good intentions, and after a fantastic evening, and the first work do in a while where I haven't been apprehensive about going to work on Monday afterwards, I did go home fully aware that the next morning would involve a headache. I woke at 8.30. I went out, fixed my exhaust, got a few bits for the new strimmer and mowed the lawn, tidies the garden, tidied parts of the house, hoovered, washed up, mopped, etc. My head still hurt, but I figured that's probably part of who I am, and they always say about these things, be yourself.

The date was a very pleasant evening in the Ritzy Cafe, with excellent music and excellent company, I'm glad to say. The girl in question was very understanding about the hangover, and very polite about my tendency to rant about jazz.

Today, I've watched about ten episodes of Frasier, experimented with cooking for the series of dinner parties I've planned for next week, flown a kite a little (a short aside - struggling to get my kite into the air today, I saw someone else unfold something in Ozone Samurai colours. I thought, that's quite a big kite. Then they unfolded it some more. It was about 30 square metres. On asking, it quickly became apparent that it wasn't a kite at all, but a paraglider, and they were just giving it a bit of a clean. Still, if the wind is going to be like that more often, I might have to get a 30m kite of my own), and had some very nice pork chops. I've also discovered that no matter how hard I try, I'm never going to be able to play Chromatic Fantasy on the four string bass. I'm settling in to a nice bottle of rose, some breaded pork chops (couldn't find any sage, but coriander seemed to work ok), and Top Gear. I am a picture of contentment.

Ben's stag weekend

...definitely deserves a brief writeup. We spent a very pleasant Friday in Grantham with a few drinks, a lot of 'tall-silly-monkey', including a game that got us thrown out of one pub, and a kebab too. We popped up to Ancaster for a swim then we went camping. Waterskiing, wakeboarding and jetskiing on Saturday made a great hangover cure. The jetskis were a little fragile but it was all takn in fun by the guys who had to repair them. The tractor and trailr pub-crawl was a little on the warm side, but excellent fun, especially once the sun set. Sunday's trip to Go Ape wasn't heralded as the best thing ever by the best man the previous night, but in fact it was a lot of fun. Treetop tall-silly-monkey definitely added an edge to the game. The trip down to the barbecue was uneventful, and the barbecue itself a pretty sedate affair - both parties had had a rough weekend. A short drive back to London with Simon and Monica, and a quick pint in the Leather Bottle and that was that. Hats off to Guy for organising the thing, and for Grainger's dedication to the cause, driving the groom and best man back to the camping site.