Boat race and birthday

Pfft. Facebook’s not working. I put some photos up, as did Billy and Rachel, but I can’t link to them now. Oh well.

So yesterday, as I start writing this at least, was my 19th birthday and the boat race happened to coincide so Maria being the fantabulous person she is organised for a bunch of us to meet up and watch the race.

Ray made a stylish late entrance on Cong’s bike, we headed over to London avoiding fun engineering works congregating in Waterloo a little after 12, having discovered on the train that international texting to Bernard in Hong Kong costs a little more than 12p. For lunch on to The Yeast, a noodle bar near Putney Bridge for lunch, wandering down the south bank of the Thames, wandering back to Putney Bridge then set off along the north bank.

Walking seemed like a good way to pass the time, and pass the time it did. We managed to get about a third of the way down the coure, I'm informed. As the boats went past us it looked like Cambridge had a slight lead in both the reserve and actual race.

The reserve race seemed to end in Cambridge's favour, but not the main race. After the boats went past us we went to a local pub that seemed to be at least 80% Oxford fans. Ali managed to get her little finger stuck in a bottle *much* to Ray’s amusement.

The pub was too busy to get into so after an impromptu (I like that word) happy birthday we wandered round London and ended up at The Nags Head at Covent Garden, then to The Dublin Castle to see waveform and ALSO. I think Maria knew a few of the people in waveform, the motivation for going but I ended up being more impressed by ALSO. There’s a waveform promo on my desk waiting for Fairport to come out of my drive so I can have a listen though.

Might be worth interjecting words to note that I haven’t become a manic Fairport fan, I’ve just made friends with a couple of guys who have misunderstood Fairport’s target audience by 40 years or so. Having taken me along to a gigconcert in February Paul got me Fairport Live Convention. Awesome. I’ll have more of a listen, perhaps back in college. I’m sure Dmitry’ll my metal-playing neighbour will love it. Mmm.

Anyway, post-gig we headed back to Maria’s via Subway sat around chatting and watched Mean Girls, which turned out to be a chick flick. Billy in protest fell asleep and then left when he woke up.

Ray left early this morning, the rest of us wandered in to London and I ended up walking with Ali from Waterloo to Victoria having lost Iain, Billy and Rosie by this point. I then rang Ben, had a bit of a chat, his having-friends-over plan wasn’t welcomed by the parents particularly, he seems alright about it though. I went to Harrods and other posh shops and wandered about seeing price tags with large numbers, but got what I was after, then meandered back home. Parents are away until late Thursday and I totally need to work like crazy over the next week. Eep.

Facebook’s working again, so my photos, albums one, two and three.