A Chinese, a very long trip back to London and Kelly's feast

25/03 - I struggle to recall the events of Thursday. Nothing much happened during the day, I had lunch with Ben and Ricardo during which we discussed what I should do for the note we are working on, then I went back to the office and failed to get some code working for a while. I went to beers with Tina, Lawrence and Dan, sitting just near all the LTA lot who were having a farewell drink with Gemma. I don't know Gemma very well, and consequently felt a little bad about what happened next - I was walking to the bus stop, saw the bus leave and so got a lift with Matilde to Planpalais, where Gemma et al were going for dinner. My plan was to go home, but I was persuaded to go to Fouille de Banane, a Chinese restaurant which has a three course all-duck option on the menu (it didn't take much persuading, to be honest). This turned out to be much pricier than my choice, a chicken in dry chili sauce dish which I would describe as adequate. I tried some of the duck things, and I was particularly impressed by the duck skin pancakes (fried duck skin wrapped in pancakes, not pancakes made of duck skin as I had hoped).

26/03 - Hmm. I write this sitting at Geneva airport, awaiting a delayed flight. I managed to get a reasonable amount of work done this morning, produced a plot I was happy with, and, due to Kelly's worrying, got the 3pm shuttle to the airport. I was through security and waiting at the gate by 1515, for my flight at 1650. I have sat here messing around on the internet since then, and have just been informed that my flight has been delayed by an hour for some reason. Bugger. I could have got the shuttle at 4, or even later, and been fine.

Well, my journey from desk to front door took me 6 1/4 hours, compared to 4 1/2 hours last time. I eventually got back to Clapham at 8, to find that Kelly had taken my suggestion of a chicken salad for dinner and gone a little crazy. We had roasted squash with pecorino and prosciutto, a mango, pepper and rocket salad with orange-marinated chicken, ciabatta with prosciutto and goat's cheese and with a tasty cheese and chilli topping. We also had Joe Hawkins for dinner (as a guest, not a course), as I was a lot later than anticipated. We had planned to go to Kelly's friend Olly's birthday drinks and then on to Dalston for some gypsy balkan music, but after dinner we decided that it would take too long to get there (over an hour each way, according to TFL) and it was a bit late anyway. As we were getting ready Kelly suddenly felt awful, and sent Joe and I off to the pub on our own. We played some table football and drank some pints, and after a few tries I got through to Kelly and found she had fallen asleep, soon after which she came and joined us for a couple of drinks before we were asked to leave at midnight. The bouncer was a bit odd - he advised us that we couldn't take our drinks out, then that we could in bottles, but had to pour them in inside the pub, and Kelly's had to be drunk. Consequently Joe and I made a huge mess decanting our beers back into the bottle, and we reluctantly helped Kelly get rid of her remaining cider.