long spring days

Lots of fun and foolishness yesterday, in one of those lovely long spring days which go on much longer than they are supposed to. In the morning myself, Vic and Morgan helped Natalia move flat and indulged in a bit of casual breaking and entering, along with lots of jumping - from the raised airlift platform on the back of the van to the pavement (Vic cries "Morgan! your knees!") and then from the sliding door of Natalia's new room, which opens five clear feet above the patio, provoking another leg-wobbling drop. I rode Nat's bike up and down the road, having forgotten how much fun cycling is. I like the shape of girls' bikes (as well as the shape of girls).

Afterwards we rounded up the troops to the Battle of Trafalgar and ate heaving plates of food and sat in the sun; the central table in the pub garden is broken and buckled, so we had to balance it evenly on either side to prevent our drinks lurching across it everytime someone moved. When people did get up the table undulated as if in the tide. Of course, when I got up to go to the bar nothing happened, as I'm too thin and weedy to actually counterbalance anything much more than an adjacent packet of crisps.

Afterwards, I strolled over to Dave, Michi and Eleanor's flat for a soup dinner and buckets of wine. Michi's sister Andrea and her boyfriend Blair are visiting the UK for the weekend and are lovely, so we had lots of fun teasing each other, firing toy parachutes from the balcony and drinking (rather simplistic) champagne cocktails. Before long, myself and Dave's compulsion to drink faster than everyone else, combined with the good work we put in at the pub earlier, meant that we started talking rubbish and making stupid jokes, dishing out romantic advice (a hilarious notion, Dave has just broken up with someone and I have been single forever), hatching plans to steal chickens from a local farm, and shouting enthusiastically about inbred mice and animal testing - don't ask.

Afterwards we watched 'Flash Gordon', the film me and Dave made last year, and everyone accused me of going to private school because I have a bewilderingly posh voice like 'wot Tony Blair has. "I went to the roughest comprehensive in Laandon", I cried, exaggerating wildly and putting on the least effective cockney accent since Damon Albarn sang "It really, really, really could 'appen" in 1995. I didn't bloody well go to private school. But I admit I've got a stupid posh voice - I've spent too much of my life affecting to be Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and listening to Radio 4.