09/12/24 - 15/12/24
Dec. 26th, 2024 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
satyricaBetween everyone’s comings and goings, we’d put D&D on pause for the month, so I just had a quiet evening-in on Monday, then Tuesday evening was the latest leg of our Round the World Dinner: this time it was Portugal’s turn and we were just off Regent’s Street, meaning I’d got to see the Christmas lights along there, which were pretty impressive this year. I headed home after work on Wednesday then out again to Hackney Wick for my first trip to the Colour Factory: I met up with PFW to immerse ourselves in Fat White Family’s Counter Vortex experience, which was essentially just seeing them in a more intimate setting; whilst the stage was in the centre of the space, there was a fairly consistent ‘front’ that everyone crowded round.
On Thursday I travelled up to L’s in Harlesden after work, we had dinner together and then joined R on line for our monthly chat/boardgaming; it’s always more the former than the latter but we snuck in some rounds of Love Letter. I worked from home on Friday, finished at 3pm then got the train out to Newbury where K & I were meeting at our familiar haunt of The Hatchet. We’d been quartered in their ‘cottage’ out in the beer garden this time, which worked really well given that it wasn’t exactly getting well used in the middle of winter and so we were away from everyone and didn’t emerge from our room once until 10am the next morning, after our usual all-night extravaganza of cards, quizzes, murder mystery games, online escape rooms and shitty retro games shows.
I caught the train from there to Oxford (less direct than you would think), wandered up into town and met L & family, as well as both A & A, in the café of the Weston Library, a new addition to the Bodleian since my days. It was L’s birthday and she’s just put her first novel out into the world, which I was mid-way through, so after lots of fun chat, A & A headed their separate ways and the rest of us poked around an exhibition they had there which was Oracles, Omens & Answers and pretty interesting. I caught the train back down to London and headed over to A's in Shepherd’s Bush for dinner and it was lovely just to have a really chilled out evening-in with someone, drifting between chatting and watching stuff on TV.
On Sunday N & I headed out and did a wander down through Hoxton we’d found online, a lot of the ‘sights’ weren’t very notable or didn’t exist anymore but we saw lots of cool street art on the way and carried on down over London Bridge to The George for a Sunday Roast. From there we wandered some more along the South Bank and up to St Paul’s, then I got the tube alone up to Finchley to pick up a present at Leisure Games and do my shop at the Sainsbury’s there before travelling home and joining Family Zoomtime in the evening.
On Thursday I travelled up to L’s in Harlesden after work, we had dinner together and then joined R on line for our monthly chat/boardgaming; it’s always more the former than the latter but we snuck in some rounds of Love Letter. I worked from home on Friday, finished at 3pm then got the train out to Newbury where K & I were meeting at our familiar haunt of The Hatchet. We’d been quartered in their ‘cottage’ out in the beer garden this time, which worked really well given that it wasn’t exactly getting well used in the middle of winter and so we were away from everyone and didn’t emerge from our room once until 10am the next morning, after our usual all-night extravaganza of cards, quizzes, murder mystery games, online escape rooms and shitty retro games shows.
I caught the train from there to Oxford (less direct than you would think), wandered up into town and met L & family, as well as both A & A, in the café of the Weston Library, a new addition to the Bodleian since my days. It was L’s birthday and she’s just put her first novel out into the world, which I was mid-way through, so after lots of fun chat, A & A headed their separate ways and the rest of us poked around an exhibition they had there which was Oracles, Omens & Answers and pretty interesting. I caught the train back down to London and headed over to A's in Shepherd’s Bush for dinner and it was lovely just to have a really chilled out evening-in with someone, drifting between chatting and watching stuff on TV.
On Sunday N & I headed out and did a wander down through Hoxton we’d found online, a lot of the ‘sights’ weren’t very notable or didn’t exist anymore but we saw lots of cool street art on the way and carried on down over London Bridge to The George for a Sunday Roast. From there we wandered some more along the South Bank and up to St Paul’s, then I got the tube alone up to Finchley to pick up a present at Leisure Games and do my shop at the Sainsbury’s there before travelling home and joining Family Zoomtime in the evening.
