Our first dinner party

Phil and I had our first dinner party in our new(ish) place last weekend. Actually, our previous places have been too small for parties, so it is our first one since we arrived in the UK!

We had been holding off due to the fact that we are still light on furniture, plates etc, but we finally decided to bite the bullet and go "picnic" style. The fold out outdoor table that came with the apartment served well as a dining table, although people did have to straddle the oddly placed legs and we had to top up the plate count with a couple from our plastic picnic set.

To continue with the picnic theme, I made pork & pineapple and lamb & apricot meatballs to be accompanied by pitta bread, onion chutney, greek yoghurt and copious amounts of salad. For dessert we had crackers with mouldy cheese (actually, Phil & I don't do mouldy cheese, but I know that our guests quite enjoy it) and brie (for the tamer cheese eaters), and fresh strawberries and cookies for the sweet tooths.

All up we really enjoyed ourselves and hopefully our guests did too.

Rock star Phil

Over the past couple of weekends we've been out and about enjoying the summer sunshine*.

Last weekend we visited Phil's ex-workmate for his birthday BBQ. It was a great afternoon mixing casual chatter out in the garden with a session of Rock Band and a Euro 2008 football match indoors - something for everyone.

I'm sure Phil appreciates my backing guitar skills, but the BBQ finally gave him a chance to play Rock Band with a full band - Stu & Geoff shared guitar and bass guitar, while Tom sung and Phil pulled it all together with his new found drumming talents. I'm not sure that they're quite ready for a World Tour, but keep an eye out in the future ;)


Yesterday we traversed halfway across London and back again! In six hours with our friends Helen and Trent we covered the fantastic Borough food market, South Bank, Regent street, a Thai festival in Trafalgar Square and a couple of sections of the British Museum! Being a tourist can be hard on the feet and both Phil and I are out of practice, so I did a quick knock up dinner for the four of us and we all put our feet up to finish off a wonderful day out.

Of course we couldn't go up Regent Street without stopping off at Hamley's (five floors of toys) to clap at the giggle bears - Phil's favourite London activity! You can see in the photo how much entertainment he gets out of watching them all shake and giggle after he claps madly at them...


... of course you then have to deal with the side effects of sore hands from such enthusiastic clapping...


*I know I've brought up the weather a lot in the past couple of posts - I can't help it... I have been steadily assimilated into the English way of life over the last four years! Ooh! Speaking of assimilation - I had brief moment of panic on Friday before I opened an envelope from the Border Immigration Agency where I thought "what if this letter says I have to leave the country immediately? Arghhhh!". Luckily, it was my visa approval letter, so I can legally stay in the UK for another 3 years. Sorry family - I guess we're not on our way back yet!

Pygmalion

My apologies for the long dark blogging silence. As my project deadline has loomed the days have been eaten by work, work, work. Luckily the daylight has finally broken through this week, so I'm able to get out and about enjoying life away from the keyboard again.

Last week Phil and I had a delicious dinner near Covent Garden with one of my school friends Hel and her fiance Trent. They have just been seconded over here for work, so after the drizzling rain stopped we gave them the "Phil & Katherine Special Walking Tour of Central London" - taking in Leicester Square (home of the movie premieres), Phil's favourite Trafalgar Square, a quick flit past Downing Street and the Royal Horse Guards to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. London is great for sightseeing - the main tourist attractions are all within walking distance of each other, which is surprising for such a massive city. I'm looking forward to catching up with them some more and perhaps taking a weekend away somewhere together once I get my visa approved.

Okay - pop quiz... Hands up if you have heard of the opera/play/movie/book Pygmalion? Right - hands down. Now hands up if you know who Michael Collins is? Thanks - hands down again.*

Phil and I saw a fabulous performance of the play Pygmalion at a WhatsOnStage outing last night at the Old Vic Theatre. Having read the play and seen the movie at school, I was really surprised that Phil had never heard of Eliza Doolittle, Colonel Pickering or Henry Higgins. I thought Phil was an educated man!! Of course, he turned the conversation around by asking if I knew who Mike Collins was, showing my ignorance too. So all up we had a fun night out and it was educational!

*For anyone who is still in the dark (and hasn't found the wonders of wikipedia):

• Pygmalion the play was written by Bernard Shaw. In it, a gentleman named Pickering bets Higgins, a professor of phonetics that Higgins can't change Eliza, a Cockney flower girl from Covent Garden, into a refined lady of society in six months. He, or rather she, makes an amazing transformation but it results in complications neither of them anticipate.
• Mike Collins was the Command Module Pilot on the Apollo 11 mission. He stayed on board while Neil Armstrong was making "one small step for man...".