It's In Your Eyes

It’s not a good sign I think when I have to look up my own blog to remember the last time I posted to it. I suppose my excuse is being 'time-poor' in the second half of the week.

The piano course is going well. My text book arrived from Amazon on Friday and the class on Thursday night was productive. I am still one of the more advanced of the beginners, although I have yet to convince myself that that’s because of any innate talent, rather than just my background experience getting me through the easier stuff. I need to put in some practice tonight really.

Friday’s various poker games were enjoyable. At work Gaetan and one of the consultants, Sid S, sat down with me over lunchtime and had a friendly game, mainly to teach Sid the rules. Then Friday evening, Brett & I hosted our monthly game at home. There were five of us this month (Scott L, who has always been doubtful, had called off at the last moment with a rather complicated excuse which resulted in him being stuck at Ikea for the first hour of the game…) so Brett, myself, John M, Rosie and a friend of hers called Andy battled it out in a lively game. The pot was eventually split 2:3 by Brett and John but I had an enjoyable evening, so I’d say it was worth it. Brett did give me some grief the next morning though for all the teasing I’d given my sister about Andy.

On Saturday evening we went to hear the Small Group of the Chorus performing at a music society event in Clapham. They did a huge range of repertoire, both old and new, and it was the first time I got to hear a lot of it as a member of the audience. The group performed excellently, looked very dashing in their black shirts and trousers and were technically almost flawless. There were a few points where the volume needed raising a little bit though. The most surprising part of the evening though was seeing Mary-Lou, (she of the 1950’s ingénue in You’ll Do For Now) being the most brazen tart in a cabaret routine, up and down the aisle of the church, singing ‘I’m Everyone’s Woman!’ My jaw was hanging at the contrast to how I’ve seen her before, but she was very good. Afterwards we went onto Clapham High Street to have tapas with John & Rich before heading home.

Today we got up mid-morning, did various laundry and chores around the house and then drove over to Richmond for lunch with the guys at Petersham Nurseries. We ate in one of the greenhouses and a lot of the menu was home-grown produce which was nice, albeit a little lacking in meat for my carnivorous tastes. Ping was organising as ever; Miles K, John W and Rich C were there from the Chorus. John B, a former chorus member, and a couple more of Ping’s friends made up the table. The service was quite leisurely and in the end lunch didn’t finish until gone 4pm so we felt very decadent. While I enjoyed the meal, I think a lot of that was the company; the menu was pricey and not entirely to my taste, plus the table we were sitting at was very low and left my legs very little room for movement.

Traffic was pretty appalling in the villages around Richmond both on the way out and the way back, but I think we avoided the worst of it by cutting through Richmond Park, where we got to enjoy the views over London in the sunshine and see both a herd of deer and a couple of roaming stags.