A music festival, a BBQ and back to work

For Christmas last year my Grandfather gave Vaughn and me a diary with a beautiful letter saying 'these will be some of the biggest moments of your lives. Write them down before you forget as I have.' I remind myself of that each time I procrastinate about updating this blog, which I see as a kind of diary, albeit public.

There's been so much in the last couple of weeks worthy of a post, but there's a funny thing about this medium: perhaps because it's so instant (no delay in publication, everyone has instant access), it feels funny writing about anything that hasn't happened very recently.

Two weeks ago we went to the Rise festival, in Finsbury Park just down the road from us. It was a free public event organised by the Mayor of London to celebrate diversity. It was massive and there were stages dedicated to African, South American and Asian (in the British sense of the word - India and surrounds) music, as well as the main stage which loads of different performers, including The Wailers of Bob Marley fame and Common, who was great. Apart from the music, my favourite moments of the day were having a wonderful African meal after queuing 90 minutes for it (I feel initiated into the British culture now), getting finger puppets and the first few moments of the ride we went on before I realised I'm a Grumpy Old Woman. At first I was all 'I love rides, this is great' but by about half way through when we kept getting faster and faster I kept having visions of disaster - a bolt falling loose and up plummeting to our painful deaths, the slow down switch breaking and us being stuck up there for an eternity of very fast and loud ride, with the controller calling out 'scream if you want to go faster' and me wishing everyone would just be quiet, etc. Vaughn later compared the experience to being in a washing machine, and admitted to the same feelings of impending doom. We're a Grumpy Old Couple.

Common on stage

Finger puppets!

Last weekend we went to Fleet for a bbq at a friend's place (friends of friends count as friends, I assume), which was brilliant fun. There was giant jenga and very large bbq with great food, juggling balls, fire twirling stuff and everything else you'd need to entertain a bunch of 9 year olds at a birthday party. And best of all we saw Lauren and met her very charming boyfriend.

Lauren and Charlie

The threat of heavy wooden blocks
falling on my head added to the tension

The jugglers discuss technique

Next time we got to Fleet I want to see where John Donne was imprisoned.

In other news, I started work a couple of weeks ago. Not only have I not been struggling with getting up in the morning as I thought I would after three months of being able to sleep in, but I've really been enjoying it! I'm working as a researcher in the litigation team of one of the Magic Circle firms. It's only a three month contract, but it's a position that was created for me - they realised that I'd be terrible for the business research position they interviewed me for but luckily liked me so much they created what is essentially my dream job. So far I've mainly been doing all the induction training, but I really like the feel of the place and the little bit of proper research work I've done has been great. And the people are really nice.

Last week, on my way back to work from a training session, I was walking along Fleet St with one of the very nice people. We saw a couple standing in front of a double decker bus yelling at the driver, and then the guy kicked the window and it broke. I found the different reactions to this scene funny: (me) 'I can't believe that just happened'; (paralegal) 'I can't believe that happened on Fleet Street'. Ah, London.