Day 16 – More food and parties

I walk dad and AK up the hill towards civilisation. All of us have deathly hangovers and the climb is murder, every step a reminder never to drink alcohol ever again. A fine way to start the weekend.

Spirits in the city of Bath are high, and a complete dude shows us his slice of chocolate cake as he gets into his girlfriends car. She will drive, he will look after the cake. “Will you look at that!!” he cries. It truly is a magnificent slice of cake, the grin on his face well justified. I venture a taste and am totally enthused by its firm consistency and rounded flavour. As dad drives into the parking space the slice is briefly exchanged through car windows. Its thumbs up all round.

Loo has come all the way from London just to have tea in the tipi. How cool is that? We have cheesy potato bread which she made but leave her half-eaten sausage roll. I’ll have that later. We chat over lots of tea and some beer and laugh at the kettle. The kettle is my best friend in the tipi so far. Neil (the big mushroom) was cool, but he’s dead now. AK spent 2 weeks finding the kettle – it’s one of the few you can buy to put on a fire. I find its wailing completely hysterical. It’s like that of a 5 year-old child. After boiling it whistles in a low whimper, slowly turning into a “but I don’t want to” and then pretty quickly a proper balling, head-banging “WAAAAAAAA!!!! Get me the smeg out of this fyyyyaaaaaa!!!!”

We arrive at Fran, Augusta’s and my own housewarming party, in town. It’s for the flat I will be moving into in two weeks. Matt, Loo and I hastily do some shocking cowboy lighting electronics with some dodgy lights Pat gave me as a present from Thailand. No-one got electrocuted on the tests but we are all secretly hoping the building doesn’t burn down. It doesn’t and, thanks to Fran and Augusta’s organisation, the party is wicked.