An abridged account of the weekend

05/03 - This was a bit of a nonsense day. I got in early to prepare some questions in time for my meeting at half 11. at 10 I got a message postponing the meeting to early afternoon, by which point I would already be en route to England. I composed the questions and sent them anyway, hoping to persuade them to talk about me in my absence and maybe even come up with something for me to actually do as part of the group. In light of my early departure I skipped lunch, a decision I cam to regret soon after - I got the Y bus at half one, and as always made it through to my gate very quickly and was waiting in the departure lounge for an hour - I am going to begin cutting these things finer. My lunch ended up being an extortionate & tiny delice de Gruyère followed by an identical one on the plane - it's just a cheese roll.

I arrived at Heathrow and rushed through arrivals, aiming to meet Kelly at Clapham Junction, to find her waiting at the door for me - she surprised me at Gatwick last time and had claimed she was going to the hairdresser today, but came all the way out here instead. Wonderful.

Le Weekend - I am going to simply write a very brief account of the weekend here, as this blog was intended to be an account of time spent away, not time at home. We went to my cousin's leaving do (she is moving to Nepal for a few months) in The Horse at Lambeth North, and had a great time there before Kelly and I went on to someone's (Guy's?) birthday in an ex-embassy near Hyde Park Corner - a bizarre venue for an awesome party. We are not sure what time we left, but I think it was a lot later than we thought (we both forgot that we had taken a taxi home until late the next day).

I had to get up to go to Kent for my Grandmother' 93rd birthday lunch, which was lovely. She liked the (unoriginal) Swiss chocolates I had brought her, and ended up with a huge bag of presents from her daughters and various grandchildren. I came back to London for a dinner party Kelly was throwing at our house, which consisted of amazing smoked salmon with horseradish and vodka cream, perfect beef bourgignon with a delicious salad and then cheese or Vienetta (yes!) for dessert. The last guests left around 2am, whereupon we cleared everything up - we have a dishwasher now, it's incredible - and went to bed. I counted in the morning, and the 10 of us got through a ridiculous amount of wine - at least 10 bottles, not including the 3 1/2 which went into the bourgignon.

Sunday was spent wandering the streets of Clapham South before settling down in a pub called the Draft Room for a 'pint of thirds' - three 1/3 pint glasses, each with a different interesting beer. In the evening we went to my friend Tom's house for a dumpling dinner - all three courses were dumpling based, and incredible dense and filling. I managed 8, Kelly three and a half. Come Monday morning I still felt like I was full of delicious boulders.

08/03 - This morning I was out of the house by half 6, starting a 5 hour journey back to CERN. There were no seats on the tube so I stood and tried not to fall asleep on my way to Bank. Once I got there I got on the DLR, which I still find a bit exciting - on the way out to London City Airport you go past so much interesting stuff, parts of London I would never usually encounter - it was dawn when I left the house, and everything was bathed in a very clear, crisp light which made it look amazing. London City is an odd place, I was told it was small but it seemed more like a train station than an airport. There were no queues, and when I was made to take my hat off before going through the metal detectors, my hair tumbled out and I was taken aside for a search. A brief rummage later, the lady shouted "yep, there is a cake in there!" to her colleague, and I was let through. I bumped into Anna, a girl from UCL who I did physics with, who was going to Zermatt for a conference on cantilevers (?), during which they had from 0930 to 1700 free for skiing. Sounds like a good conference. On the plane I was asleep before takeoff, missing the free food and coffee for which I had paid the extra money to fly Swiss instead of Easyjet. Bugger. I think it was still worth it though, the chairs in our little 100 seat plane were really comfortable, the plane was half empty, and there were no screaming children either.

When I arrived in Geneva I found I had just missed the half hourly direct bus to CERN, so I had to get bus-tram-bus which probably took me half an hour longer than it otherwise would, but it was too cold to wait outside. Never mind, when I got in I went straight to lunch and had a massive seafood risotto - in spite of the subsequent ristretto, I am now on the verge of falling asleep at my desk. I think today will be a long day.