A delightful weekend

I drove down to Peterborough via Birmingham on Friday. Well, my friend Si drove us from Brummagem, to tell the truth, then I did a smidge of chauffeuring once we arrived. 'Twas my friend's birthday party. I've managed to acquire two Kats as friends, so for clarity for the bemused Lampeterian I hereby point out that this is not that Kat I know you know I know. Mm, clarity. We went to Chiquito's, a Mexican-themed restaurant, dressed in stereotypical Mexican fashion. Ben, Kat's awesome other half, had acquired a false moustache which achieved the feat of making him look like an American from the 1980s pretending to be a Mexican from the 1880s. I, as you will agree, looked in no way ridiculous. My hat, fans of high culture will be amazed to learn, was fashioned from newspaper, blue paint and string, my poncho from a towel onto which I spray-painted zig-zags, and my moustache from some spare teddy-bear fur I happened to have lying around. Wargamers may know that it's handy for simulating thatched roofing.

Anyway, a grand time was had by all, and we then gradually repaired to Ben's place for tequila shots and so forth. A sign of my increasing age is to be seen in that I spent most of the evening sitting down, and when we did retire to bed, I stayed up until 4am, finishing Coroner's Pidgin by Margery Allingham. I commend it to you! Up at eleven the next morning, as I had arranged a barbecue at mine for that afternoon. Poor timing on my part? Truth be told, I'd started setting it up about three months ago in an attempt to secure a date suitable for everyone's schedules, and still managed to pick a date several people couldn't make!

That said, despite running a little late and a torrential rainstorm, it went very well, I fancy. We sat beneath an overhang, so the rain wasn't a great problem most of the time. A party of ducks provided some pleasant viewing, despite cruel taunts from some of our party, suggesting they should join us with some hoi sin sauce! ;-) We adjourned to the pool room afterward, so the ladies could revivify themselves with heat (it's about 35C in there), and so we men's brains could puddle in our shoes (see last bracket!). Then we had a wee game of Cranium, which went rather well. Well, for others. Misled by a combination of rum and whisky (imbibed in separate glasses and at different times, I hasten to add), I transposed the H and I in the initial three letters of chihuahua, losing my team a valuable roll of the die. Cranium has a distinct die, a D10 marked twice each with red, blue, green, yellow (the colours of the themed questions/tasks) and purple (the brain!). That reminds me: any tips for rejuvenating my Cranium clay (about seven years old now) gladly accepted.

Cutting it very fine, those of our party who weren't staying overnight made it to the local station for the last train of the evening with about ten seconds to spare! Si, Tammy and I had a relaxing and pleasant time watching The Dark Knight, which they'd somehow managed to avoid after once seeing it in the cinema. Remarkable!

It's Father's Day today, so I should make some mention of this. It's a bit tricky, though, as I slept rather late, and so have yet to see Dad today. He's often busy on any day ending in the penultimate letter of the alphabet.

On the modelling front, my brother's kindly given me some of his sand, which he tends to use for such peculiar purposes as making cement or perhaps I mean concrete. So I'm drying that out now, and should be able to move forward on a lot of the terrain I've been working on very shortly. I've popped an initial coat of light grey paint on those boxes from the other day, but you can see how busy (and even absent) I've been over the weekend, so you must forgive my failure to proceed with more alacrity, milords and ladies! Au revoir!