Summer Summary 07.

I haven't updated for ages, just like last summer.

So, once again, a brief summary. As much for me and my fading memory, as for any readership this blog may yet have.

Last summer's main event was buying the flat in London. And we've been tremendously happy here this year.

Happiness compounded one bright spring Saturday morning, April 21st, when the internet revealed that sore breasts were a sign of pregnancy. We went out and bought two different brands of pregnancy tests, and both emphatically confirmed that my wife was, indeed, knocked up.

Cue reading of many books about childcare and pregnancy in preparation for our daughter to be born this coming Christmas.

When not reading loads of Bornography, this spring/summer I have been mostly:

• - Attending a conference in Lille with Rod and Brad, then ditching the final day and driving the MINI to Paris. I am very proud that we found our way from Lille to an English football pub near Notre Dame, then for an epic drive around the Tour Eiffel, the Champs Elysee, the Arc de Triomphe, and then back to Lille, solely on the basis of my memory of the city's layout, and Rod's knowledge of the city from a computer game!

Seeing the opening night of Othello at the Globe, in a downpour.

• - Driving on a racecourse, also in a downpour, a Jaguar. A Lamborghini. A Porsche. An Aston Martin. A Ferrari. For free. I anticipated enjoying the Jaguar the most, but actually the Aston Martin was the most wonderful. All I can say is the day was cooler than I looked in these photos on Evan's blog.
• - Inventing a new diet for myself: Simply, what can I not do without? Coffee, Tea and Toast, Soup, Fruits and Nuts.
• - Using my unlimited cinema pass to see countless films on Fulham Road and Chelsea.
• - Playing with Facebook. Who hasn't?
• - Visiting Steve, Amy and Megan, David W, David M, Frank, Rowan and Ann in Seattle. Hot-tubs in the back garden.
• Walking over 3 miles to the British Film Institute Library or, sometimes, the British Library, to research, most days. Now I'm debating which library I prefer to work in. The BFI is more accessible and valuable on my specific topic - film - but is less architecturally (and thus intellectually) inspiring.
• - Visiting Lori-Ann, Kyle, Oliver and Alicia in Canada. Riding round Kelowna on Kyle's yellow motorbike. Staying in Darrell and Rosemary's chalet at the top of the mountain, and seeing elk and deer every morning on the drive down.
• - Seeing David Warner's return to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, as Falstaff in Henry IV.
• Taking Jenny, on her final day in London, to see the awful place she and Evan might have lived if they hadn't pulled out and come to live near us instead. It was a great year with them around close.
• - Attending Audrey's epic Eurovision Song Contest party in Chiswick. I traded with her to get Ireland, for all the good it did me.
• - Taking my sister-in-law to see the Comedy Store Players.
• - Renewing our season tickets to Arsenal, and changing them to be situated right in the heart of the RedAction chanters. Better view of the pitch, too.
• - Convincing Amanda that we didn't have to completely renovate the flat before the baby comes. Once this was finally achieved, some lovely, relaxed visits to Progesso on Portobello Road for coffee and newspapers.
• - Teaching a summer course on JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, and doing an Inklings tour of Oxford with lunch at the Eagle and Child.
• - Savaging Kenneth Branagh's film of Love's Labour's Lost in my public lecture at Shakespeare's Globe. My mother and good friend Evan attended, and gave a decent critique.




• - Renewing the tradition of Friday night soup at our parents'.
  
  
• - Finding my pregnant wife a lovely place to live during the week, near her new job.
• - Moving the wife, her purloined cupboards and bookcases, and her thousand cardboard boxes of supplies into her new classroom. Then moving them all again into a different position, a few weeks later.
• Hanging out with my niece and nephew, and with the kids of Rod and Maria, Adam and Nicole, Sasha and Eileen, and taking a much keener interest in infant psychology and discipline. Having a shock of realisation, while playing with my crap friend Mark's kids, that I know how to play with boys' toys, but don't have any idea of how to play with girls'.

S'bin good.