A Dud's day out

On Saturday we had a dud's trip to London, with one crucial difference....

no duds!

We did invite at least one dud, but our invitations were sadly rejected so Georgina, Sarah Hole, Sophie, Jess and I went off for a nice day out by ourselves.

The arrangement (as I was told) was to meet at the Imperial War museum at 10:30. I woke up at 9:53 (due to my alarm clock, my boyfriend, having not shown up) and panicked rather. I immediately phoned Jess, frantically apologising and promising to be there as soon as possible, only to be told that, actually, Swing dance lessons (the reason for our excursion to the museum) didn't actually start until 12 and everyone else was getting there at 11:30, they just knew I would be late.

Having been reassured (or insulted, depending on how you look at it), I proceeded to fall back asleep until my mum came to rouse me half an hour later. 11:30 came and went and I was still at home so I called Jess again to apologise from the car on the way there only to find that everyone (bar Jess who is super organised) had done the same thing and she was the only one there and getting a little worried.

Georgina, Sophie and I arrived just in time for the lessons and they were absolutely brilliant! There were these people in 40s costumes boogying away and it wasn't long before we were boogying with them. I love swing dance! I have a video, which I will attempt to put up now, but I've never done this before, so fingers crossed!

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Nope, not happening. Anyone have any ideas how?

Oh, and we were filmed for the ITV 5:00 news! It didn't get shown in the end but how exciting!

After the lessons had finished we went downstairs to the main part of the museum where we posed for some photos with an ARP warden. There was a rather dodgy looking bloke hanging around in the background during this and just as we were about to move on again he came up to us (and the ARP warden) and asked if he could take a picture of me wearing the wardens helmet and posing with the warden for THE SUNDAY TIMES!!!! He took down my name and everything to caption the picture with, but unfortuantely, on Saturday afternoon news happened and we didn't get on tv or in the papers after all.

Anyhoo, we left the museum and wandered on down to the Royal Festival Hall to collect Sarah Hole, who had been listening to a free jazz concert. Then we were off (via charing cross to get some lunch) to St Martin-in-the-fields for brass rubbing. Jess, Georgina and Sarah all went for small brasses, whereas me and Sophie (after some pursuasion from me) got huge ones. We were there for hours, rubbing away. Eventually the others finished their brass rubbings and came over to help us and we carried out a brief experiment into leadership styles. Sophie praised and encouraged her helpers, whereas I exhorted mine with cries of "make it SHINY!" and "rub, slaves, RUB!". (I think I would like to just briefly note that my brass rubbing was finished before Sophie's, and when we took them to the counter to pay, the lady in charge called her collegue over to look at mine, praising it and asking me if I was sure that I'd never done it before, although obviously I don't want to blow my own trumpet or anything, the others' were very good too.)

From there we walked to the Science museum, where we headed straight for the Launchpad. Sophie and I very nearly managed to construct a bridge over a river marked "extremely hard" and then I beat the Science museum's previous record for the highest tower built with their wonky bricks (16 as opposed to a paltry 15). There were some who tried to denigrate my achievement by pointing out that I was a 19 year old Oxford University student studying physics and not a 7 to 11 year old child like most of the visitors to the launch pad, but I won fair and square I tell you!

Speaking of Oxford, I then had to return to those dreaming spires so the others accompanied me back to Victoria and waved me off.

That evening I went to a ball at St Hilda's with my new St Hilda's friends, and it was brilliant! We danced the night away to the strains of MC Hammer (Can't touch this), Bryan Adams (Summer of '69), and Chesney Hawkes (I am the one and only). It was the perfect end to the perfect day.

Me posing for a photo for the sunday times, as you do.

Sophie's brass rubbing

more brass rubbing, small brasses this time

Looks like Georgina and I had the same idea

The finished brass rubbings, look how shiny mine is! SHINY!

Us walking to the Science museum

walking, walking, walking...

Group photo!

Building bridges

Me in the fat mirror, couldn't get anyone else to join me...

Everyone in the thin mirror, they all wanted to join me for that one!

Georgina attempting to mind-meld with a plasma ball.

the tower (after it had fallen down) but it was taller than the steps behind it. It was so tall I had to go up the steps to put the last few bricks on!

There must be an easier way to get photos on my profile, anyone know how?

and now a slightly smaller version so that it's not too big for the profile.

This is really just so that it's on the web so I can make it into my profile picture. But look! It's my beautiful boyfriend!

So, what was I saying?

Hello dear readers

I realise that it has been a rather long time since I last blogged, and perhaps some of you have been wondering what has happened to me?

Well, wonder no longer. It is now trinity term in Oxford and my prelims are in about 5 weeks (for those of you who are not Oxford undergraduates, prelims are the exams I have to pass in order to move on to the second year, otherwise it's off to a new university for me). Term has been going well so far, working hard during the week and then toddling off down to London to see Richard each weekend (not that you'd know it from the amount I appear in his blog). It's been very nearly a year (11 days and counting) since we met on that fateful evening at Jess's house. For those of you that are interested, it is described here.

This anniversary has, of course, sent me into a state of nostalgia and so I've spent the morning rereading Richard's blogs from last May. They're brilliant! Full of veiled references to me, such as "met 2 people, 1 of whom scares me intensely, and the other was refered to earlier as 'i've just realised how long it took me to get to the point' " (just in case you're wondering, I was the non-scary one in that sentence). I went out to this Chinese restaurant yesterday and spent the entire meal recounting the story of how Richard and I started going out but, luckily for you guys, that nostalgised me out so much that I'm not going to do it again and instead I'm going to tell you about the Chinese restaurant.

Now, hopefully you all know I am a vegetarian and, I have to say, sometimes I do miss meat. I like meat, I find it a pleasant meal, and it saddens me that it is produced by such a cruel process that it means I can't eat it, but last night I found something amazing. It was.... wait for it.....

VEGETARIAN SOYA MEAT THAT TASTES LIKE MEAT!!!!!!!!!

Believe me vegetarians, this is no tofu, this is no bean curd, it's so much better than Quorn. It tastes like meat, it has the texture of meat, the carnivore I was with said it was excellent and almost exactly like real meat! Did you hear that? A carnivore said it tasted like meat!!!!

Helen will be coming up with Mum and Steph soon, but any other vegetarians who want to taste meat again (seriously, I had a vegetarian aromatic crispy duck with pancakes and it was so good I nearly cried. I had to get my friendly carnivore to try my vegetarian chicken noodles for me just to make sure it wasn't real meat that they'd given me by mistake!) e-mail me! leave comments! Come to Oxford and I will take you to this place! No more will we have to eat mashed potato with added peas and sweetcorn in the shape of a sausage and have to pretend that it is anything other than degoutant! (aren't you proud Sophie! I used French!)

I will post again soon, but for now readers, au revoir (and again Sophie! twice!)