Thursday

(as is becoming traditional) was flat booze destruction day. We went for a curry at Tipoo Sahib just round the corner. I say "Tipoo Sahib" while in actual fact I mean "the 1970s". Incredible place - a '70s time capsule Indian restaurant in a basement, serving a wide variety of blandly identical curries. I recommend - nay, I urge you never to go there. After we were stiffed for our change by our smiling, attentive, mostly deaf waiter, we got out and walked across the road to the Kenilworth. I think that this might become our local; they were kind enough to donate a pint of milk to us just after we moved in and now we must repay them by drinking their beer.

Our housewarming, long planned and anticipated (apart from by the legion of people who begged off because they were in other countries), arrived on Saturday night. The theme - just wear black and/or white - was, I think, an unqualified success. It appealed to the Vegas set, who like to dress up in evening wear as if we're rich and important; to quasi-, ex-, current and repressed goths, who view any invitation to wear black as a blessed relief from being needled for wearing it the whole time anyway; and to the random guy who was likened to a cross between Robert Smith and Edward Scissorhands. Especially to him.

The flat was packed, and it rocked. Tiny Monkey's rhythm section also rocked: you haven't witnessed the awesome power of the Monkey till you've seen a paralytic bassist 'play' along with Doug drumming on the end of an upturned whisky tin. (I might add that someone asked me to play, so it wasn't entirely a self-preening ego trip. Maybe 50/50.)

The next morning's tidy seems to have gone well. The morning did not go so well for me.

Once I was able to walk without fear of a spontaneous stripey laugh, I had a shower. Now it's probably because I haven't shared a flat with any girls for a good few years, but I was alarmed at the number of pink disposable razors gathered along the ledges of the shower basin. I was doing a virtual sword dance in a slippery shower cubicle while almost unable to see.

Fortunately, I still have all eleven ten toes.

P.S: Steve has just posted a nice photo of the Capp on the way back from a camping trip a couple of years ago. Ah, those were the days. Roof down; wind in your hair and money siphoning from the bank account like there's no tomorrow.