Hypatia Avenue

"For god's sake, stop squashing my plums! If you stand any closer, I'm going to get pregnant!"

So much for choosing the healthy option: I had a whole load of soft fruit in my bag, all ready for a quick, refreshing breakfast at my desk. The Jubilee line decided that it would have its weekly breakdown just as I got on to the platform which meant waiting for three trains to go by before I could squeeze myself into a massively overcrowded carriage. People kept crowding on at all the stations, pressing themselves against me and it was with increasing fury that I realised this journey to work could result in a bag of squashed, rotten fruit, no breakfast and a bouncing baby boy in nine months time. Ugh. Nasty.

June has been an interesting and exciting month so far. Among other things, there has been:

- My sister’s birthday – happy birthday! I heard there was partying in France… hope the hangover wasn’t too bad

- Sixth anniversary with the beloved, including one year engaged

- Attended a Muslim wedding in East London. I was there for the bride, an old school friend, with Lucifer another friend from those days. The men and women were in separate rooms for the mid-afternoon meal and the bride sat with the women until it was time to be brought to her husband at the end of the day.

We should have been with the bride as we didn’t know the groom, but Lucifer is male, tall and white and was very conspicuous at this wedding: though we could bend the rules to a certain extent, being neither family, Muslim or Bangladeshi, we couldn’t bend them so far as to park ourselves at the bride’s table and so all sat with the men instead.
It was a sober affair – both in terms of no alcohol and also due to the fact as a traditional Bangladeshi bride, our friend had to look sad throughout and we felt unable to rejoice at her nuptials while she looked so mournful. We managed a few snatched conversations but will have to catch up when she’s back from her honeymoon.

Weddings are contagious: Lucifer is now betrothed and one post-grad friend has been an official Mrs for a month already. Gah. What have we started?

- Spent a sunny day in Green Park playing Frisbee, eating quiche, reading the weekend papers and getting royally drunk once the sun went down. Had to help heal some nasty flip-flop wounds for the next few days but the wounded recovered quite quickly and I’m very unhappy with Gap and their cruel open-toed footwear

- Had a guided tour of Rotherhithe tunnel as part of London Architecture week, a fantastic thing to discover

- made a trip to Chelmsford to see my post-grad friend and was introduced to her two lovely and enormous Great Danes. My god, those dogs are huge. Two dogs the size of Shetland ponies. Seriously - they are BIG. And lovely. What a nice night that was - even the sprint down the high street at pub-closing time in the rain to catch the last train back to civilisation was hilarious and uplifting

How has your month been?