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And oh what a party it was!

Jacob, the other PhD student in the research group, and his wife, had their birthday at the end of July (within 2/3 days of each other or so). So guess what they did? Organised a birthday party…WOOHOOO!

The party was at their house, in the garden (luckily it was decent weather ). The food was all home made(GORGEOUS hummus, great ice-cream…yeps…home-made as well)…even the TABLES were homemade…hehe. Yeps…as you are probably guessing, it was a great and amazing party…disappointed that they will be soon leaving London . But why am I talking about the party? I haven’t talked about arriving there!

So Linda and Irina (the two research assistants) and I had decided to meet at Victoria station to get a train from there (yeps…they live a bit far out…around 15mins by train). Irina and her husband were running late, so Linda and I popped in for a drink at Starbucks. When Irina arrived then we sauntered off to M&S to buy some stuff, and then on to buy train tickets. Off to catch the train…oh NOOO! It left just as we were going through the access gates (mainly my fault as could not find my travel card I guess :-/). This was already 1 hour after we had originally planned to meet, so we had to wait for the next one in half an hour.

One problem…who had printed the instructions to Jacob’s house? Hmm…no one? Oh well…we’ll see! We phoned him for the post-code at least as Irina’s husband had a mapping tool or something on his phone. One problem…not all the roads were marked on this tool! We had to pass through kissing gates we were told…but apparently our idea of a kissing gate was the wrong one…so we passed straight past them! After quite a bit of walking however we finally arrived.

Kissing Gate

OUR idea of a kissing gate

We arrived in the most gorgeous garden I’ve seen in London (probably cos that is the ONLY garden I’ve seen which can decently be called a garden? ). People had already gathered (of course…we were quite late ). But we immediately settled in. There were people from Tate and English Heritage (where the birthday couple work) and of course us from UCL. It was a good crowd.

And besides the food? There were also games…woohooo! There was badminton, croquet (we couldn’t understand anything of THAT…it just reminds me of Alice in Wonderland that’s it!) and even boules!

Croquet in Alice in Wonderland

And there was also a pinata! Having played softball Jacob pin-pointed me out to hit it quite early on…I managed to give it a few good whacks (maybe cos I could see it a bit? )…but being one of the first meant that I didn’t get any sweets…boohooo to that! Not a problem though…there was MORE than enough desserts on the table…there was the most wonderful pavlova…and remember…everything was homemade!

Well…all in all a wonderful end to the weekend. It was good to relax with the UCL people (rather than mainly meeting at uni…even though we get a good chunk of socialising there as well, what with going for coffee or shopping for groceries from Tesco or whatever together…or buying bananas )…and can’t wait to do it again.

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