I've been missing the beaches of Perth and desperate to get some water-side action in. This desperation saw me convince a group of friends to picnic by, and swim in, the Hampstead swimming ponds. These are ponds that are set aside for swimming in the Heath. Admittedly, the fact they are swimming ponds does not mean they are devoid of your average park pond features. As you swim, you are more than likely to have a duck swim past your head and some slime press against your leg. And on getting out of the water I did have to wipe the mud and silt off my skin. But it was worth it to have that fabulous feeling of immersing myself in cold water outside on a hot day.
Next up was Love Box, a music festival in Victoria Park. A group of us bought tickets to the Saturday session on 17 July. We began the day with a very large breakfast before joining the masses at the park. Once again I got the opportunity (last had at Primavera) to hoot and howl to Wild Beats and to dance myself silly. An unexpected highlight of the day was seeing Jay Electronica. He was a last minute addition to Love Box and, perhaps because of this, there was a very small group of people watching him. He obviously decided that it was time to get the crowd a bit more fired up, so jumped from the stage mid-set and into the crowd, politely asking disinterested people standing around to get involved and "put their hands up". He also decided to hand the mic around, and let everyone who wanted to have a go. It made for a pretty unusual but hilarious spectacle. The only downside to the day was a complete absence of mobile reception in the park, meaning that after wandering off for drinks or loo breaks a lot of time was then spent trying to find one another without the benefit of modern means of communication.
It has also been a month of sleb spotting (this time only minor slebs - Mark Warren and Abbey Titmus) at XO in Belsize Park. And a month of theatre (the Prince of Homberg at the Donmar). I have also developed a passion for running. This will no doubt surprise anyone who knew me back in high school, when I did my very best to avoid Phys Ed classes. In fact, I was so successful in coming up with excuses as to why I couldn't participate, that eventually they took my name off the Phys Ed roll and didn't expect me to turn up to class any more. How things change!
We have also been travelling, spending a long weekend in Dubrovnik. But I'll leave that to another blog post.
On top of that, we've had some house guests for the last week. These were rather unusual house guests, in that we were sad to see them go.
Finally, it would not be life without a minor disaster. The disaster this month involved a broken fridge, some smelly spoiled food and discovering that the previous owners did not leave space for the cord for a new fridge to be fed down to the power point. Thankfully we discovered that it's relatively easy to create new holes in old walls.
I have been a bad blogger lately but I'm going to resume my regular blogging now, even if I don't have much to say (and even if no one reads this blog). I'm promising myself to check in at least once a week, so I'll see you soon.
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