Week 18

We've started Week 18 with the results of the blood tests, taken a few weeks ago, which provides a probability for Downs Syndrome. The results were that there's a 1 in 42,000 chance so Little One has a very little to no risk.

Sunday BBQ

On Sunday afternoon we had our very special friends Stephen, Christophe, Pete, Karen and Mark round for a BBQ.

I'd lost the key to the doors which lead onto the garden which meant we couldn't hear any music so made do with sounds provided by the local area; strange, intermittent drumming, the ominous tolling of the church bells and an ice cream van playing the 'Harry Lime Theme' from the 'Third Man'.

The weather held off and we had the kind of wonderful, summer Sunday afternoons I absolutely love; time on our hands, people we love, good food and booze.

The food went down well and everybody really liked Georgi. She was on particularly adorable form. We consumed plentiful amounts of beer and wine and I think we were all quite sozzled by the end.

The highlight of the afternoon was Karen's magnificent chocolate fudge cakes and ginger cake with creme fraiche. Absolutely yummy - thank you Karen!

This was the rest of the food; Ibs' squash and flagelotte bean salad

Cous-cous

BBQ sausages, drumsticks and burgers

Followed by afternoon coffee and tea with Karen's cakes

After everyone left, Ibs and I took Georgi for a walk in Roundwood.

The Grand Union

Saturday 28th: A full day of house chores and cleaning but had a lovley walk with Ibs and Georgi in Roundwood Park. The flowerbeds are in full bloom and look wonderful.

We also managed to have an hour's late afternoon snooze, on the sunbeds, in the garden at home.

On Saturday evening we'd been invited to the Grand Union pub for Kim's 50th Birthday party. We bought the house off Kim and have kept in touch since. The wonderful thing about the party was that so many people there had, at one time or another, stayed and even lodged at Caple Road. One person had lived in our spare room for 6 years and met and fell in love with her partner, the legendary Dr Fischer! Everyone had nothing but great things to say about the house. For Ibs and I this made us feel that there must be a very good Karma about our house and made us love it even more.

The Warrington

Friday 27th: I stopped by the mighty Warrington pub in Maida Vale on the way home for a quick drink with Jerry. I've wanted to have a look at it for ages as it's recently been bought and restored by Gordon Ramsay.

I used to go there with my old friend Jason, about 15 years ago, before he left for Hong Kong.

It's a truly magnificent example of a late Victorian pub. Further work was done to it after 1900 when the extravagant art noveau mosaics and plaster work were added. Wish I'd taken more pictures but lost my nerve.

Georgi

Georgi is back with us for 2 weeks and it's really lovely to see her again.

Each time we see her, she's a little more mature and calmer. We're determined that this visit that we'll crack the integration with the cats with a strict 'carrot and stick' regime and she's already responding well.

Hopefully the cats will also stick up for themselves more, they only need to give Georgi a hiss and she backs off. Josie is predictably, the bravest with her and Putty the scariest.

These pictures of Georgi, looking absolutely adorable, were taken at 7.00 this morning whilst we were playing in the garden.

The wonderful mind within my Ipod that selects which tunes get shuffled was on tremendously eclectic form this morning, as I rode into work.

1. Offenbach - Gaite Parisienne, The Can Can
2. The Orb - Asylum
3. The Killers - My List
4. Bentley's Rhythm Ace - Mind the Gap
5. Amy Winehouse - Addicted
6. Massive Attack - Heat Miser
7. Visage - Fade to Grey
8. The Flaming Lips - One More Robot
9. Miles Davis - Flamenco Sketches

It sounds really pompous but hearing the Miles Davis track, from the 'Kind of Blue' album, felt almost like a spiritual experience. It's sublime beauty, constructed with such spare economy, is haunting and can easily point to some kind of divine intervention. Each musician plays an equal contribiution to the authorship of the whole so I checked on Google to see who they were; John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on saxophones, Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums.

Hydrangea Bush

Thursday: on my usual Thursday morning walk through Tufnell Park, I came across this glorious hydrangea bush which filled me with tremendous envy. I want a big hydrangea bush SO much.

I aslo passed this rather lovely vintage Ferrari.

Ibs made this fantastic noodle stir fry dinner the other night. Putting the picture here will hopefully remind me to make sure she makes it again. She always makes wondeful things which we end up forgetting and don't get made again.

Street Art

Tuesday: at Tate Modern for a meeting and took a few snaps of these huge, magnificent images on the front of the building, created for the 'Street Art' exhibition.
The artists are, and I'm not sure which one is who, Blu from Bologna, Italy; the artist collective Faile from New York, USA; JR from Paris, France; Nunca and Os Gêmeos, both from São Paulo, Brazil and Sixeart from Barcelona, Spain.

This is how they look from St Paul's, image from Google.

Planet Terror

Monday. Popped round to Jerry's in Maida Vale for a Mediocre Movie Monday. This is what we do if we get together on a Monday, we watch a film that has to be something we wouldn't normally watch on our own or with wives or girlfriends. This means the film should really be quite bad but actually ends up being quite good.

Last night we watched Robert Rodriguez' 'Planet Terror', his spoof of low budget, drive-in, zombie movies. A really, fun and enjoyable film and far better the Tarrentino's 'Death Proof'.

Both films were shown together in the States as a double bill called 'Grindhouse' but it's failure at the box office meant they were shown separately in the UK.

Jerry made homemade burgers and I cycled home just after 10.00.

Summer Solstice

Sunday. Actually the solstice was yesterday meaning that now, everyday is getting shorter than the previous day, a really grim thought.

I finished painting the kitchen, wrote my blog twice, got in a bit of time to read the Observer in the garden.

Ibs made a delicious fruit pie and for dinner I made roast chicken with roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips and spinach. We watched the 2nd part of the brilliant documentary about Quincy Jones. What an absolute genius! And afterwards, started to watch the film 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'. A magnificent film, sumptuously shot by Roger Deakins. It's a very slow burning movie and we'll watch the 2nd part, later in the week.

The cats seem to be sensing the tle One inside Ibs' tummy. We keep waking to find either Putty or Josie lying on top of her tummy, with another one very close by. I'm sure her tummy must feel warmer than normal but I really like to think they can feel some kind of connection and are being somehow, protective, even maternal? Either way, it's very adorable and sweet to wake up to us all (cats, Ibs, Little One and I) all cosy and snug together.

This was Ibs' wonderfully expanding tummy, yesterday evening.

Kitchen and Nursery

Saturday. I spent a couple of hours today on the blog and lost the whole lot with an accidental knock of the keyboard. So here's my second attempt.

Beatrice and Denis left at 7.30 of Saturday morning to head up to Yorkshire to see Thomas. After they went I started work decorating the kitchen. Ibs went out to the hairdresser for round two of her new cut and colour (I love her new cut and on top of her pregnant glow, she's looking looking fantastic). Adam, one of Paul's Polish workmen, came round and finished stripping the wallpaper in the old dialysis room, the new nursery.

This weekend has been a very rare one with nothing to take me away from the house, apart from a few round trips to Tesco. We caught up on 3 films we'd recorded that have been shown again on More4, part of their Peter Kosminsky season. They were; 'The Government Inspector', 'No Child of Mine' and 'Warriors'. I can't think of any finer examples of British produced TV drama in recent years and they are as remarkable, harrowing and moving as anything I've seen in any media for a very long time.

Decorating the kitchen enabled me to catch up on a very big backlog of music, that I've been trying to find the time to listen to for ages. It turned out to be a very rich seam and has revitalised my interest in new music and made me hungry to seek out more. Here's what I listened to, roughly in order of how good I think it is.

Roisin Murphy - Overpowered

Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue

Mint Royale - See you in the Morning

Vampire Weekend - Vampire WeekendLaura Maling - Alas, I Cannott SwimCansei der Ser Sexy - CSS

MGMT - Oracular Spectacular

Spiritualized - A&E

Foals - Antidotes