By Command of My Husband, the weekend before the robbery

Being a surrendered wife, I obey my husband's every whim. Now a brief pause while I wipe away my tears of laughter.

Anyway, Grant made an excellent point over the weekend, which was that I had not pointed out all the lovely things that happened the weekend before last, prior to the point where we, you know, got robbed. And then he suggested that I should perhaps do so. And there were many, actually, so I shall do so. Apologies in advance as this is an image-heavy post, but you should all have broadband by now.

On Friday, Rohan and Narelle arrived! Grant went out to the airport to meet them, whereas I sensibly slept in. We had a grossly overpriced breakfast in Westbourne Grove complete with fluorescent eggs, followed by a stroll through the Portobello Road markets, and then headed up to Kensington Palace Gardens for a picnic lunch. Unfortunately this was the only day for sort of months that it wasn't bright and sunshiny, but as you can see we were all happy anyway.



Note my chipmunk expression, Rohan being too cool for school, and Narelle indicating that perhaps enough photos had already been taken (hear, hear). At this point we had lapped Ladbroke Grove/Bayswater twice on top of their long-haul flight the day and night before, so we don't exactly get points for navigation or for being merciful to the tired. They did however immediately start smashing previous pedometer records! Such is life in London.

I can't remember what we did after this. I suppose we must have eaten dinner somewhere? Can anyone remind me?

On Saturday we went for a stroll through the divinely beautiful springtime Holland Park, viz:

They had colour-co-ordinated tulips and those weird fluffy little flowers. Awfully swish. To show the difference, this is a shot of the same spot in February, albeit from a slightly different angle:

God, I love this country.

Following Holland Park, we did a nice hike along Kensington High Street to South Kensington (swank; cf North Kensington where we live), past the V&A to our favourite noodle joint for lunch. Actually after last weekend's Noodle Time in Greenwich, to be reported later, it has been demoted to second favourite, but it is still good and awfully cheap and way closer than Greenwich which may earn it handicap points. Ummm, after that we went to Harrods so that Ro and Narelle could pick up an appropriate Harrods giftie for their brand new niece. I also bought a very nice Harrods apron which was subsequently stolen with the rest of the contents of our bag, but let us not harp on such things! Then, we strolled into Green Park for a bit of a snooze in the sun, followed by Pall Mall, Trafalgar Square, and the back end of SoHo up to Covent Garden. Where we found out that it was St George's Day, with amazing street performers celebrating in style. The star was this gentleman on a ten-foot unicycle on cobblestones:

He subsequently juggled an apple, a machete and a bowling pin while on said unicycle. I continue to be in awe of his prowess.

On Saturday evening we had a quick tapas in SoHo, and then went to a comedy club for a line-up on a German, and English and an Australian comic, as well as a compere who made fun of Grant's name (they can't understand it here unless he says his name is "Grahnt"). The German guy was hysterical, starting his act with a stopwatch around his neck and insisting German people could be funny before saying "OK, let's begin" (click stopwatch). The English guy was a mimic, and a good one, but not so great if you didn't recognise half of the subjects, and the Australian guy was a funny guy with ISSUES. I can only hope he finds peace. Good show all up.

However, it left us wiped out enough that our planned river trip to Greenwich on Sunday got cancelled in favour of a wander to the Natural History Museum. Because who can resist the lure of dinosaurs? It has been approximately 20 years since I last saw a big scary dinosaur skeleton so I was happy - a pleasant way to relive childhood. Afterwards, we had a nice little carb overload experience with lunch, tea and scones at the Orangery in Kensington Palace Gardens, followed by a pub dinner in Bayswater and a robbery.

All in all it was a fun weekend. It's been great to have the band back together, plus the step count topped 100,000 for the first time in months!

Thesis count this week: it's topped 25,000. I figure I'm going to go out in style. 30,000 or bust!
Steps: week before last 104,000 (more than 60km), last week 101,000 (ditto). It's like we have poor Rohan and Narelle on some kind of forced march. They're being troopers about it, though.
Cycling: zip for more than a month. My bad. I'm not riding to uni today, either.