Earning the weekend

The weekend just gone was the first one that I’ve actually earned, because on Wednesday last week, I started work! I’m doing a very short (5 week!) contract for a company called The Lemon Foundation, a new media company based in Farringdon. I think Louisa would approve! Anyway the work so far has been quite difficult, as I’m writing some extensions to a fairly large system (over 60 tables!) used by Vodafone and Phones 4 U. The first few days was mainly spent frustratingly trying to work out how the system works, which proved to be even more difficult since there was practically no-one I could ask questions to. But now that I’m almost on top of it, the pressure is off a little bit – and overall, so far, the work has been most enjoyable, so really no complaints! (Well one complaint, the one hour commute door-to-door is somewhat different to the seven minute walk I used to enjoy in New York!)

So how did we spend our first earned weekend? Well, we kicked things off by walking down to the Old Ship pub to meet Conrad and his lady-friend Elkie for Saturday morning brunch. Conrad was only in town for a few days, and we hadn’t seen him since our wedding! He’s currently living in Germany though, so we’re going to organise a weekend trip to go and see him in the near future.

Saturday evening we were going to be in Hammersmith, and so were Stacey and Wes (with their Aussie friend Andy), so we hit the Hammersmith Ram – the Ham Ram! – for a quiet ale or two. The law which bans smoking in pubs came into effect on Sunday, so it seemed every smoker was out in force on Saturday night. But, so were the Nicorette reps, and for some reason they threw about 15 packets of nicotine gum on our table. Andy and Wes both enjoyed a piece each, no doubt starting the downward (yet backward) trend into pack-a-day boys!

Afterwards, we met up with Pat for dinner at a vegetarian restaurant called The Gate. It was rather a strange place, serving dinner in the “attic” of an active church! Still, their food was wicked good! And, it turns out Pat lives and works right near where I am, so now I have someone to meet up with for lunch!

The weather on Sunday looked slightly better than it did on Saturday, so we met up with Shelley and Julian out at Hampstead Heath. We’ve been trying to take a day trip with these two scallywags for ages, but we’ve been holding out for “a nice day”. London looks like it doesn’t enjoy too many of those, so we decided that we’d risk it instead.

Hampstead Heath is a very lovely park, but it’s quite huge and rather hilly. We all found it a bit bizarre that a park that big didn’t really have any maps or directions to let you know where you are or where to go, so we probably ended up unknowingly walking around almost the entire park. We also got to see London’s version of “four seasons in one day” – four seasons in half-an-hour. It was sunny, then overcast and windy, then cold, then rainy, and then back to sunny again. Crazy London weather!

We finalised our weekend back at Team BaM’s, enjoying Clever Wally’s pizza, and chips from nandos, with John and Kirstin. Clever Wally’s lived up to their reputation, though I’m not 100% convinced on the “cook it yourself” deal. Plus I think I overate, so I was awake at 4AM with stomach cramps. D’oh!