Hurrah the sun is back

I'm a hot weather person, I'm such a sun worshipper I'm practically solar powered so I've been enjoying late appearance of the summer, I only wish it had got here sooner. Summer has arrived so late all the dip is gone and people have starting drinking Creme De Menthe.

On Saturday I went to a family bash with T.P. this bash turned out to be the celebration of Peruvian independence, that she had forgotten about. I was rather mocking her for this and then I remembered I couldn't recall the exact date of St George's Day.

The party was packed, there were lots of Peruvian women who were dating English chaps, but strangely no Peruvian chaps dating English women. Or maybe the women were just banned? Either way there was a lot of drinking of Inca Kola (the Peruvian equivalent of Irn Bru) and eating of traditional Peruvian food in between bouts of dancing. The dancing was a mix of salsa and more traditional Peruvian forms. As far as I could gather traditional Peruvian dancing is either a bit like Spanish dancing where ladies put a range of great expressions on their face while waving their dress about or it involves dressing up as Pocahontis and waving a bowl around to Shakira.

Someone with nice hair from the Peruvian Consulate even turned up and gave a short speech about how he was there for us or something like that, he could have just been announcing that a Taxi was waiting outside, my Spanish isn't that good yet.

The last post about cars for quite some time

When you are a little chap you often dream of things, things that will probably never happen like meeting a dinosaur or getting to fire the cannon of a pirate ship. It's extremely rare when things like this come true.

Yesterday, I with some friends, were left in charge of about half a million pounds worth of super cars, on an airfield (so no speeding laws or people to endanger) for a day to see what they could do.

My face still hurts from smiling. If you are going to get a stupidly expensive car ( and after having driven a reasonable selection of them I would have to say they are definitely worth it) it seems like a shame to never see how fast it can go.

They can go jolly fast, and give a vague impression of how going fast is effortless. So when you decide to see what happens when you go around a corner and press the pedal that makes the entirely needless 450 horses roar out of the engine you discover that these cars can spin out of control very quickly. It was wet and luckily we were in a safe controlled environment so no-one got hurt, or damaged but I still aged a year as I flew backwards.

I really want one now.

Cars, mustard and flowers.

I have returned from Devon. Yet again it was a pleasant trip. Strangely my ancestral home was spared any sort of bad weather so we were feeding geese broken biscuits in bright, life-giving sunshine while the rest of England was being slowly washed away in floods.

The family party was good fun, it was in a huge tent in the grounds of one of the family piles in Dorset. This estate had loads of slightly snooty looking Alpacas striding around much to the amusement of my little brother. They were just the other side of a ha-ha so you could safely eyeball them from the croquette lawn with minimal danger to your gin and tonic.

The meal was good, a large pig on a spit roast fed the 150 or so distant rellies and in between courses my little brother and I had a fiercely fought mustard eating contest followed by a round of see-who-can-eat-the-biggest-flower. I won that but felt very strange for the rest of the day.

I've just got back from a test drive in the new Aston Martin, H has one for a few days to review so we went for a needless drive up to the Heath and back again getting as lost as possible so more driving could happen. Strangely unlike other high-performance cars people let you out when you are driving it.

It is a splendid car, at low speeds it's almost silent and then when you step on the accelerator it roars into life. You could almost feel the Polar bears dying because of the excessive petrol consumption but I think their deaths were not in vain.

I want one, actually I need one (the car, not the polar bear - our flats have a no pet policy) I just need to find some way of getting £120,000. I wonder how much my cravat collection is worth.

The black door

The party was a roaring success. It started a bit later than I had planned, which caused me to have a slightly nervous half-hour where I was alone in a flat with a large amount of crisps and cake wondering if anyone is going to turn up at all.

At around 7:30 T.P. appeared with some work chums and some of my friends that she had found at the tube station wondering around looking lost. The party burst into life and shortly after that more people arrived, and then more, and more.

Every room was packed with people drinking and laughing, even the small basement garden we have was standing room only with people having in-depth conversations while smoking.

Someone even fell asleep in the bathroom, it was brilliant. It's good to know that when you are at least superficially a grown up you can still have house parties like a teenager.

One of the naughty smokers opened the black door in the garden. I've never opened as I thought it was just the door covering the electricial supply, but no it leads in a huge room under the street, that appears to lead to another room and possibly something more. It's like having Narna outside the flat.

After breakfast I'm going to make some sandwiches and go exploring. If I don't come back, tell my family I love them and to stay away from the black door...

How to drink from a horn

The massive order of party supplies didn't arrive yesterday, I'm not entirely sure why but this means instead of the flat being lavished in booze and exciting cakes for the guests we are only going to have rum and flour.

Oh and we only have 6 cups and one drinking horn, so if more than 7 people want to drink at the same time its going to be from cupped hands. Still the person drinking neat rum (we have no mixers) from a drinking horn is going to feel pretty macho. The horn holds a pint and a half, and requires a special technique to drink from it successfully.

Asethetically one is always tempted to drink from the horn with the tip raised which is fine initally but in the latter stages of your drinking experiences a bubble of air will charge towards the tip resulting in a tidal wave of booze rushing towards your face. This is an acceptable side effect when quaffing ale in a tavern after defeating some goblins or Cardinal Rishlou's guards, not when drinking neat rum which makes your eyes feel warm across the room let alone if it has been liberally splashed into your retinas.

Remember kids, always drink with the point down.

I wonder if I can make a rum and flour based party snack.

Pizza rage

My girlfriend hates pizzas, not dislike or would choose something else given the choice, hates. They are forbidden in the house. She used to live with a chap who was an extremely fussy eater so all they could ever have for supper was a margarita, that’s every night, for months.

I would have broken before her, but she put up with this chap for quite a while and as a result despises pizza. I can’t even mention it in front of her. But I am a simple man, a man with yearnings.

It started off fairly innocently; I was looking at a cookery website and found myself drifting towards the Italian food section. One evening when she was out I secretly downloaded recipes and a few pictures into a hidden folder on my computer that was tucked away in a subfolder of a subfolder labelled ‘invoices’.

Now it’s become an obsession, I’d like go to secret places with hut in the title and gorge myself,constantly checking over my shoulder like a gazelle at a watering hole in case she spots me, but then I’d have to lie in the evenings about how my appetite has mysteriously disappeared while wiping the sweet red juice off the corners of my mouth.

I keep pamphlets under the bed, ones full of salubrious offers of free garlic bread or extra toppings if I would only just place an order. I’ve thought about it. Whole afternoons have been spent day dreaming of ways of getting her out of the house for just a few hours so I can enjoy something deep pan with extra cheese. Sometimes I think even placing an order would be enough, just to get me through the day.

The pamphlets are laced with numbers, manned by people who can’t wait to talk to me about crusts and pepperoni. Perhaps I could just place an order and then cancel it, just to feel what it would be like to be able to eat but I worry my girlfriend would see the numbers on the phone bill and then I’d be in trouble.

I’ve tried sating my habit in other ways; slyly adding a tomato or two to cheese on toast or ordering a Bloody Mary with some mozzarella on top but it’s not the same. I want the subtle layers of flavour on top of a circular, crisp base. It’s spreading to other food now, I only want ice cream on a round wafer, of it has to be strawberry ice cream with a good dollop of custard on top.

I even dress like a pizza, brown trousers, red t-shirt with a yellow shirt on top. If I could get away with it I’d have green earrings for the seasoning and little sausage coloured epaulettes, perhaps with a spare pair shaped like an anchovies for when I want a change.

So I’m trapped in a breadless relationship and all I want is to bite into the soft dough covered in the intoxicating mix of fresh vegetables and cheese. It’s strange; before I met her I wasn’t much of a fan.

My lovely bucket

I brought a bucket today, well I brought a bucket for work. We needed something to hold ice and bottles of wine so I got to trundle around Soho looking for a suitable container. After careful consideration I got a lovely steel number that clanks pleasantly as I walk.

This bucket was much admired as I walked around, two chaps and one lady remarked on it. Forget man bags, this season a good solid bucket is the way forward.

The wine isn't bad either.

My first coffee

Due to moving in and other things I've not had coffee in a while. I love coffee, proper coffee made in a needlessly complex way in something made out of either brushed steel or chrome.

My first cup after a week of no coffee was bliss, velvety smooth. Oh how I missed it. This got me thinking about smoking and cycling. I read in the papers that people like smoking because it is a poison. Their bodies release endorphins because of presence of the smoke and that is what makes them feel nice. So when people ban smoking in pubs people get all angry about the government taking their endorphins away.

A few weeks ago I was drunkenly talking to the editor of TimeOut, he said that subject that gets the most mail is cycling. If they even mention it people rant on both sides of the argument. I cycle a lot. It's a great way of getting around London, it's good exorcise but more than that after I've been on a good bike ride (at least 30 minutes) I'm as high as a kite on endorphins. When I cycle to work I spend most of the day buzzing away happily.

If that was banned I bet I'd be furious too, although I'd probably still do it in secret. You know, find out who could sort me out with a couple of bikes and go to some underground cycling den full of whacked out people doing a couple of laps to take them away from it all.

Hello Soho

I've rather disappeared of late. With out an Internet connection I felt as if I disappeared off the face of the earth, well I'm back now. At least at work, yup I'm sat at my new desk, in the new office in London's trendy Soho. I saw a Drag Queen as I cycled into work, is there any better sign of a good area?

The office is small and slightly spartan but only because we haven't really moved in yet, Soon art created by chimps will adorn the walls and later today a delivery of wine is arriving (40+ bottles) so we will have an extremely well stocked wine section for the office. Thank you PR company. We don't have a bottle opener yet but it is only a matter of time.

I'm extremely excited, this company is so cool it makes my teeth hurt. I'm listening to French Jazz in the office as it seemed like the right thing to do. I must admit I'm slightly concerned as what my exact job will be. So far it seems about having lunch in members clubs and talking to people at parties but that can't be all.

The new flat is lovely, it's still a mass of baggage and the sofa isn't completely made but it is starting to get there. We have plates and everything now, so the days of eating out of recycled Chinese food containers are over.

I saw a parking attendant on the way into work, he was putting a parking ticket on someones car and his hat was at an angle which almost anyone would describe as jaunty. It doesn't seem right that a supposed authority figure should have a hat resting on his head in a stylishly rakish way. Would you accept a telling off from a police officer if their hat was on backwards?