I'd arranged to meet up with a philosopher friend over at Russell Square for coffee and a chat. Which meant that I really needed to work from home because, well, it's easier to rearrange my day when I do that. I was a little concerned by the weather as it seemed to be controlled by Contrary Towers. Which is never good.
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| Scrubs up okay. |
I actually worked like a little mad thing. Astonishingly it all went quite well, the stuff was done, emailed and I could happily scoot off to an afternoon of sipping and chatting.
And that's just what I did. I even managed to find a 323 to ride on to save the joy of arriving at Mile End hot and bothered. Which would never do. It was a bit warm down there. But the breeze in the tunnels was nice.
Even if it did leave me looking like Medusa on a bad hair day.
I hopped off at Chancery Lane, sauntered out and sighed. I do love the bustle of High Holborn. A quick text to my flatmate to find out what she fancied to drink and in to the coffee shop I went. Trouble is I'm a bit of a ditz and partially misunderstood the message, did she really want iced camomile tea? You would have thought that after living together we wouldn't want to spend any more time in the same room, but it's still a joy and leads to a conversation full of giggles and belly laughs. I had my first diet sin of the day with non-skinny iced latte. I was working on the premise that I'd not had breakfast (bad) so this was my lunch (not much better), so full fat was okay?
Yes?
Of course. There was one teensy fly in the ointment. I was wearing new, flat, shoes. And they were starting to rub. I'd even taken the precaution of wearing tights, but to no avail. It wasn't as bad as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre I had back in April, but still, I was concerned.
I sat quietly, enjoying the rare chance to sit in the sunshine and read. Currently I'm on After London by Richard Jefferies, and it seemed quite apt to enjoy his descriptive writing as I sat listening the gentle rustle of the leaves. Of course instead I was distracted by first the squirrels and then a little bit of people watching. I never did get the coffee in Russell Square.
But I'm not complaining.
You know when you meet somebody and you are overawed by a stream of brilliance. It was fabulous, it was a joy to listen to my philosophers ideas, theories and the frustrations of dealing with academia. I was developing just a teensy sapiocrush, it was very exciting. I mean, how can you not get excited about discussing an alternative quantum theory and why we should look more closely at deterministic versus probabilistic views.
Of course the feeling might have just been the sun on my bare shoulders. That does that too.
Talking of which... I really am a silly cow. Why didn't I have the factor 30 on my shoulders? Hmm? I now have two lovely pink areas with white strap marks. Genius. I think not.
We covered so much, science, books, a little of the arts, elements of history, more science and the difficulty of being an academic. The interesting thing though was the time. He arrived at around 3pm, and I was answering voice mails at about 4:30pm, yet, it seemed that time had gone on forever, hours and hours had slowly drifted by. It was proof, if I needed it, of my perception of time being altered by the creation of these new and fabulous memories. I can't wait to meet and talk with him again. Though I know it won't be until much later in July.
During our conversation I had a text from the inimitable @obotheclown asking whether I was still in Bloomsbury and, if so, did I fancy a coffee at around 5:30. Duh. So I meandered off to the British Museum to kill a little time. I didn't actually make it in, it was such a delightful afternoon I instead sat on the wall on Great Russell Street watching the tourists pop in and out of phone boxes. They are quite mad.
All would have been simple if, in the meantime I didn't see a call from the lovely @PrincessofVP in search of somebody to have a sip of medicinal wine with. Perfect! A quick phone call later and a venue was set. Which meant coffee was off, I would have to force the clown in to a pub.
Astonishingly though, he wasn't drinking owing to heading towards a private viewing, so after our quick walk in to Covent Garden it was orange juice and lemonade, or some such witchcraft, for him and a bottle of Malbec for the cackle crew. This will end well. It almost always does when I have just the one drink with my bezzie...
And cackle we did, plus very grateful to the nice clown for providing us with winez. Oh, and also thanks to my flatmate for texting what became the title of this post. I must admit if I'd known he wasn't stopping I wouldn't have let him get a bottle, so, I guess the next round is mine! We chatted for a good while, caught up with each others news since I last saw her on, err, Tuesday, and turned our cognitive powers to the other thing that's usually on our mind. Food.
The plan was to go the the excellent cheese board at the Globe on Bow Street. I really like this pub and the last time we ate there, a few months back, had left a good memory. So off we trotted, we left the pub, I turned left and she went right.
Uh oh.
Err, sweetie? That minor faux pas over, and a little giggling, we headed off to the next pub. But didn't get there, instead, we found ourselves sucked in to the pavement seats of Wildwood on Bow street. Eh? What. I didn't realise there was a restaurant here! I was really quite confused. But, it turns out, they only opened at the end of May. That's alright then.
This was beginning to turn in to a Contrary Towers style evening. Distractions, deviation from any plan, unexpected delights. How good is this.
Or we good were we? It was brilliant sitting on the pavement seats watching the world go by. I felt like a bit of a tourist, but heh, it was a lovely evening and my pink shoulders weren't quite pink enough yet.
We drank more winez.
And ate. Quite a lot actually. But it was the laughing that was best. And being quite shockingly bitchy. But that was mostly me. I will say the service was a bit slow. And the menu had no cheese board. So we finally made it to the pub. Next door.
Where we ordered more winez. And the cheeseboard.
It was lovely sitting in the window, again watching the world go by, chatting more, giggling more. And sending silly tweets. The evening seemed to go on forever, but in a glorious way. The sort of perfect evening you don't want to stop. But we had to. We couldn't order more winez, though we were tempted, it was getting late! Right?
Wrong.
Who knew, it was only 9:50 when we rolled in to Mile End, eh? Oh yes, those new memories. It's magical stuff this perception of time thing. It was time to, sadly, separate, and head to our respective lairs. In a wobbly fashion.
My flatmate was awake when I got in having walked winsomely down Bow Common Lane, so we chatted, I told her lots of things that I would then repeat the next morning because I was too sozzled to remember I'd said them. And I painted her nails (we currently match!).
It was odd to have a contrary evening without her, but she did look better for the chilling, even through my red wine soaked eyes. I've said it before, I'll say it again, everybody should have a contrary day, once in a while.
They are very special.
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