wow...

...that's a lot of bikes. i've never seen london fields so packed. had a bit of a struggle trying to find young miss chantry within the masses. it was so amazing to see her though (when i found her, thanks to a white dog) and very normal. just happy to have someone else on this side of the earth, relatively close-by, and somewhere to crash when in oslo!

steamy

sunday was really freakin' hot - they (the bbc) said it was 25 but i think it was closer to 30 in the sun. ellie, hannah, kat and a girl called sarah (i hope? could be wrong) went to the carter's steam fair for some old timey fun.

i mean really old timey.

this is simon the otter that hannah won for ellie. we bonded, it was a beautiful thing (me and simon i mean, and me and hannah to a lesser extent!)

making the most of the weather

we had a very busy saturday at work but were rewarded with an exceptionally tasty barbeque on la terrasse at matt and lizzie's place.

matt "chef" mills

my goodness, there was so much food, so much meat. chef marinated some pork chops for 36 hours, max (in the hat) stole many sausages from work and acquired some prawns too and i won't bore you with all the other food we had. too much. definitely met my meat quota for the year though.

lizzie, nicola and hattie.

pockets. what a dude.

sam, with max's gramophone. that was the teeny window we had to climb out of to la terrasse.

silly

i met alain de botton this evening (that's him, the bald guy in the blue shirt). he's just written a new book called the pleasures and sorrows of work and monocle released a limited edition version of it. so when i went to have my copy signed, he asked me what i do and i explained my situation and we spoke briefly about monocle's take on architecture etc. do you know what, i didn't even think to tell him how much i enjoyed his book the architecture of happiness. what an idiot. probably for the best though.

and sunday too

yep, bowling.

this is deerhunter with the deal sisters (from the breeders, the curators). bradford cox, the lead singer of deerhunter, totally geeked out the whole time they were onstage. it was pretty cute.

this is minehead.

this is soph, and the beach, and wales in the very background.

friends.

soph, gareth and rach, round the world in eighty days. it was pretty incredible that it took us all weekend to notice and make the most of this thing.

and then on monday we packed up the car and came home again. i learnt a few things over the weekend though. firstly, atp is my kind of festival and i'm not sure if i could face something like glastonbury now that i know better. secondly, i'm a sucker for 3/4 time, every time. also, i fall in love with musicians really easily, though fleetingly.

all saturday's parties

family portraits done in the wee hours of saturday morning.

rach and gareth were asleep when the rest of them were drawn so they went out and got one of those creepy photo-booth ones done.

see, it's all terribly civilized.

a brief moment of sunshine.

css played way too early (5:30pm) but their set-up was amazing. or maybe i just love balloons.

so weird.

all friday's parties

this weekend soph, rachael (soph's housemate), gareth (rachael's boyfriend), brooke (you've seen her before) and antony (him too, brooke's boy) all piled into a car and went to all tomorrow's parties (a festival).

first stop : sainsbury's in whitechapel. we went in a bit confused and came out very well-stocked with booze and a huge box of cornflakes (and salad, don't worry mum. i even bought suncream even though the whole festival was inside - well trained i guess).

not only did it take us forever to get out of london (we saw all the sights though) the motorway was jammed like mandurah on the easter weekend. this is gareth, he drove us all the way.

soph and a dog in a wig.

so this is butlins. butlins is, firstly, completely indescribable, secondly, a holiday resort thing and thirdly, completely weird. i'm still not over how weird it was.

many, many gulls. rach and i went out to feed the couple of ducks that were wandering about and were very swiftly bombarded by hoards of fighting gulls. they're about three times the size of the seagulls that i'm used to and ten times more aggressive.

brooke and antony (he hadn't slept in three days or something dumb, finishing a major project for uni).

rachael.

soph, contemplating her wristband while waiting for bon iver to begin. i may or may not have fallen completely in love with him.

more to come...

no words

more recently (friday night) soph and i went to see beirut. i nearly died.

hampstead

ok, this was actually a while ago now. last saturday to be exact. not this one just been but the one before that (i know, i know).

after meeting on broadway market and receiving advice from many, many (probably too many) people, nicola, hannah and i headed off to hampstead heath. we got really lost. and none of us had a map either so we had to keep phoning hannah's friend anita (who we were also trying to meet up with.)

eventually, after running into a customer (it happens all the time), we bumped into the heath. it's actually quite large so it's quite incredible that it was able to elude us for so long.

up on parliament hill. the best view in london apparently.

pining

this is quite funny and sometimes awfully true (i especially like the last one - though it was true for me in high school too...). been hanging with some unemployed architects recently and am missing uni a bit. starting to research schools though, apparently uts (sydney) is on the up.

new home

hanging on the stoop on sunday evening. some of them i live with, some live next door and some are just there for the festivity. (nice portico huh?)

farwell

this was last saturday, after work. darling tabea is going back to germany (actually she's already gone...) and this was our farewell to her. poor kerry.

work crew, minus a couple and with a few awkward extras.

chefs.