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I keep starting entries here and then not finishing them, which is irritating. I'm currently stuck in a slight limbo today waiting for my boss to merge some of my last batch of changes back into the main codebase so I might as well take the opportunity for a bit of an update. Went out to Le Manoir for my birthday last week, which was just as amazing as I remember it - each dish perfectly designed to provide little flavour bursts - intense, but also delicate. One thing I have noticed is that although I have a very strong appreciation of flavour, I have a very poor vocabulary for describing it, which makes it difficult to convey an experience like the Manoir. I find it difficult to pin down what a flavour might remind me of or anything around "notes" or that sort of thing - it feels like an odd sort of blind spot. Anyway, suffice to say, dinner was amazing.
As well as dinner, I had a really lovely day with my folks on the day itself - we went out fabric shopping at John Lewis, thanks to the very generous voucher I got from work, so now I have lots of fabric for trying out new projects with, which is quite exciting. We also went to the garden centre and I'm already getting excited about veg growing this year. I really loved having fresh garden veg, especially the tomatoes and courgettes, what with last year's wonderful BBQ weather. Most of what I grew last year will be back this time, but I'm going to have a shot at growing all of my salad veg, so adding cucumber and sweet peppers to the mix. Having conceived of the wheelbarrow last year as a one off, temporary addition to the veg plot, it will be making a reappearance this year as there's just so many things I want to grow some of!
This weekend, we met up with Alex's folks for a theatre trip to see a ISIHAC special - rather than being for recording, there were lots of guests all dropping in and out for different games. It turns out the show was originally conceived as a fundraiser for Jeremy Hardy when his friends realised he needed some financial support while he was sick and unable to earn. When he died, the decided to still put the show on but create a charity foundation in Jeremy's name which would be for supporting charities and causes most likely to piss of the Daily Mail - as the producer of the show said, it's what he would have wanted. The show took a little while to get going, but the second half was absolutely hilarious, especially the twister variant of Mornington Crescent. They even played in a couple of classic clips of Jeremy singing on the show, which made me a little sniffly but all together a wonderful evening. We speculated on the way in as to why they'd decided to do it in Oxford rather than a London theatre and I wondered if some of the more elderly Clue regulars might be Oxford locals. Barry Cryer came on in a wheelchair, and was obviously pretty doddery (although still making some hilarious contributions) so I wonder if he might be based round here somewhere.
As well as dinner, I had a really lovely day with my folks on the day itself - we went out fabric shopping at John Lewis, thanks to the very generous voucher I got from work, so now I have lots of fabric for trying out new projects with, which is quite exciting. We also went to the garden centre and I'm already getting excited about veg growing this year. I really loved having fresh garden veg, especially the tomatoes and courgettes, what with last year's wonderful BBQ weather. Most of what I grew last year will be back this time, but I'm going to have a shot at growing all of my salad veg, so adding cucumber and sweet peppers to the mix. Having conceived of the wheelbarrow last year as a one off, temporary addition to the veg plot, it will be making a reappearance this year as there's just so many things I want to grow some of!
This weekend, we met up with Alex's folks for a theatre trip to see a ISIHAC special - rather than being for recording, there were lots of guests all dropping in and out for different games. It turns out the show was originally conceived as a fundraiser for Jeremy Hardy when his friends realised he needed some financial support while he was sick and unable to earn. When he died, the decided to still put the show on but create a charity foundation in Jeremy's name which would be for supporting charities and causes most likely to piss of the Daily Mail - as the producer of the show said, it's what he would have wanted. The show took a little while to get going, but the second half was absolutely hilarious, especially the twister variant of Mornington Crescent. They even played in a couple of classic clips of Jeremy singing on the show, which made me a little sniffly but all together a wonderful evening. We speculated on the way in as to why they'd decided to do it in Oxford rather than a London theatre and I wondered if some of the more elderly Clue regulars might be Oxford locals. Barry Cryer came on in a wheelchair, and was obviously pretty doddery (although still making some hilarious contributions) so I wonder if he might be based round here somewhere.
