Right, now that Owen and I have finished spending another witching hour sipping tea and chatting about stuff – mostly agreeing, sometimes not – I feel it is time to blog. Starting with some photos from Fireworks Night, which Tash will be glad to hear we observed through attendance at the council’s big public firework display! (I always forget about the duty of organising firework displays when critiquing the impotence of local councils. Silly me.) And honestly, I do wholeheartedly forgive Oliver and Abi for not wanting to go on the fairground rides, but I do now feel I am owed a roller coaster or two by Fate. Make it happen, K?
Oliver is secure in the knowledge that my enthusiasm for the rides is in a distinct minority
Pretty fireworks, though!
“Don’t you wanna know how we keep starting fires?”
And now a brief interlude from show and tell to enthuse a little bit about work. Yeah, work may always be’ work’, but it also forms the final year in which the state will be fooled into sponsoring me to read about the motivations of the All-India Muslim League, or Hegel, or the letters that John and Abigail Adams wrote to each other. And on this final point – my Special Subject is actually fun. I mean, I’m just nosy and enjoy reading people’s private letters, mmkay? Especially when they turn rather silly and fun, like when they have stupidly decided to list each others’ faults (don’t ever do this) and John notes with annoyance that Abigail has a habit of sitting with her legs crossed. Still, I guess if this is the best that you can come up with your marriage is probably sound. (No emoticons, though. It’s not true love.)
Talking of true love…
(We weren’t even drunk by this point…)
I think Simon and I are now just playing up to Sanna’s vaguely homoerotic blog post on the subject. But anyway, the above photo was part of a hugely entertaining pub ‘crawl’ (of, ahem, two pubs) embarked upon by Lucy and I with Simon, Chris, Rob and several others. (I’m in a bind now, because whilst ‘and several others’ sounds rude – sorry! – Rob objects to being lumped in with ‘That Emma Lot’ – sorry! – and a long list of names is hardly conducive to anything outside of war memorials and firing squads. Sorry.) Twas lots of fun, although it’s always somewhat risky to mix beer with rosé. (Manly rosé. We made this clear.) More photos, as the saying goes, on Facebook.
Oh, and as Lucy noted, we walked past Father Alexander (of chrismation fame) the other night. Maybe it was our Pizza Hut smell, the encroaching darkness, persistent rain or the fact that he was fully engaged in conversation at the time, but we didn’t stop to chat. If he’s reading, though – and of course, he isn’t – he’s more than welcome to stop by for tea sometime 
Oliver actually looks like a grown-up – er, adult! – in that third picture! Scary.
I mentioned you to Fr. A. yesterday. I said, "They were not impressed by your lack of ability to control the weather." He replied that he was too busy being upset by the assaults of "two arrogant, misguided Protestants" on the MA course he teaches to think about controlling the weather. As ever, not entirely sure about the extent to which he was joking
xx
Woah woah woah. Did Dominic include me in this controlling the weather thing? If so, this is very wrong of him. I was in fact much too excited that I’d actually recognised Fr. Alexander to even consider a change in weather
xxx
I was genuinely about to say that I was the only one with weather demands
(Come to think about it, I’m not entirely sure about the extent to which I was joking…
)