Birthday Celebrations

( Description and photo from Science Museum under the cut )

Marios, Nick, antipodienne and I headed to the Barbican and were joined by several_bees, kekhmet and augeas. We went to see the giant pig, which was unfortunately all booked up, so we did not have a chance to suckle on it, but did watch other people doing so.

We signed up to strange tours. several_bees, antipodienne and I joined a tour that involved going into the men's toilets, wearing blonde wigs and big sunglasses, giving shoulder massages to strangers and then pretending to be Lady Macbeth dying. The disaster tour sounded more fun, since apparently they had to dance to avoid disaster and twirl umbrellas and were given special keys. I do not know what the tour with people wearing tin foil hats involved.

We then headed to the exhibition in the Curve, which was made up of lots of bowling computer games, which were each set up to miss every time and go in the gutter.

We then briefly saw khalinche, Jon and khalinche's friend who I can't remember the name of (sorry!), before we navigated our way out of the Barbican and to the Bricklayer's Arms pub.

The pub unfortunately was not selling food, but Nick, kekhmet and augeas managed to arrange it so that we got pizza delivered. (Thank-you so much for this!) abigailb, mondoagogo, flavius_m and razornet also appeared. About 11, razornet, augeas and kekhmet and I went to the Intrepid Fox, but it felt too much like a mosh pit, so we went to a quieter pub for one last drink before I got the bus back to Oxford. I arrived back in Oxford about 4am, exhausted, but happy to have been a cockroach and to have seen my excellent friends. Thanks for coming all!

Following

"Are you lost?" he asked.
"No," I said, "I'm just wandering."
I started to walk towards a footpath I had never noticed before.
"I'm going that way too," he said. "I'm not following you though."

I walked faster along the footpath that followed the river, stomping on brambles that were in my way, until I reached the bridge and looked around, and he was no longer there.

One of the good things about this time of year is that footpaths I have never noticed before have emerged, when usually they would be overgrown and I would not see them.

I saw a tree in the meadow that had planks of wood attached to it. I will attempt to climb it on a less sunny day, when there are less people around.