Still alive

Feels like ages since I've written anything on this blog, mostly cause I had the Easter weekend off work and was determined to do NOTHING the entire weekend. Plan pretty much achieved too. Friday I went for lunch with the two Lauras, Jack and Cicely at Ping Pong (ugh) in Notting Hill (UGH). Ping Pong is a chain of Dim Sum restaurants with terrible service and unremarkable, overpriced food (I'm sure you can google yourself up a website) that I've had the misfortune to go to twice. Given a choice I'll never set foot in one again but sometimes you don't get a say in where lunch happens. Notting Hill as we all know is a gross sucking putstule on the face of west London, is the centre of all that is evil and might be the only place in the world I hate more than Chelsea. Actually Chelsea is worse, although Notting Hill is more confusing. The people are worse in Chelsea. hmmmmm this might come to a photo finish. So lunch was (surprise surprise) unremarkable but it was great to see everyone.

We rounded off the Notting Hill portion of the day with a trip to the Hummingbird Bakery 'the American Bakery in London' which basically means they do those cupcakes with two inches of icing on them and then sell them for £2 even though flour, eggs, butter and sugar cost about 6p. Bought a box of five to take to dinner. Got a lift from Laura with Cicley to Bermondsey to go pick up and accomplished this just in time to make dinner at Amy's about 7:30. Just Henry and I round for a kitchen supper. We ate paella, followed by cheese. We then settled in to watch The Passions of Girls Aloud and eat cup cakes. Good cup cakes, oh-so-drunk Sarah Harding, what more could you want? We then watched the first episode of Dirty Sexy Money which truly mined the depths of televisual cliche and characterization. I think I've literally seen every single second of that television show before in little fragments in other TV shows. Dreadful.

After dinner went round to the Brick Lane flat, sparked one up, lay on the couch to watch Planet Earth and pretty much remaind in that position for the rest of the weekend. Perhaps the highlight was realising that despite being Easter Sunday Up Market was still open and lovely Carribean ladies were once again plying their trade, curry was the same experience as ever: despite being very excited about it, the taste out-performed the expectation. I could provide a list of everything I watched over the weekend but as its three days worth its obviously extensive and probably not that interesting. Highlights included The Wire and John Adams (God Bless American television) and the low point was probably the double bill of Queen Latifah movies we watched. We all seemed to have developed something of an obsession with QL and how her entire oeuvre involves teaching the fancies how to chill. Needless to say talking about how ridiculous QL is is a lot funnier than actually watching her. Is it just me or is 'Bringin Down the House' incredibly racist? Judge for yourself [I did write 'yourselves' but then decided I was probably over-estimating my audience].