the best potatoes ever

Luckily, disorganisation and faff on the part of former colleague (above, right) prevented a meal-meeting-catchup between he and I and another former colleague (not pictured), delaying it for a week but fortuitously making it exactly a year since a previous (though not the most recent) such meeting. Pleasingly since the year ago picture was taken the habit depicted has ceased to be performed by the pictured individual, of great benefit thereto as well as the fresh offspring due to be emitted by the young lady beside him (above, left) next week. Foolishly the venue he chose was slightly overfilled by fourteen of his colleagues who happened to be going there for some sort of office-related function-meal though they finished before we did which at least meant I could sit more than an inch from the table and not occasionally glance rightwards to see a waiter's arse an inch from my shoulder as the waiter above it attended to the end of the table behind. Very nice food in La Bruschetta (and apparently very peppery pepper) though they know it and charge accordingly. There was also a twig tied to the bottle of the chosen variety of wine for some unknown reason. Perhaps it's there to serve as an aide-memoire so that next time one can ask for the wine with a twig tied to the bottle. Why not try it yourself if visiting?

Lunchtime was similarly occupied with chat-speak and tablecloth courtesy of Eco-Dad who took TFP and I out to tea. I actually had a tea, too, using judgement techniques developed from prior experience of National Trust coffee. As I didn't have much to eat before that in anticipation of a meal in the evening (though not one as late as the 20:30 start I found out about later) I thus had slight tannin-quease all afternoon until I allowed myself a muffin at six whilst waiting for food-time to drag round.

As I didn't get home until lateish I didn't managed to get the internet working properly again after cessation of service by the sneaky-download-limit-introducing Eclipse and the resumption of provision by Be. After pissing about for a bit I got connected but only via the cop-out technique of the ethernet cable when configuration of the wirelessness failed. Didn't have any time to check the speed and when I tried again in the morning the phone-side DSL connection wasn't behaving so further attempts shall have to wait until the evening and will probably consist of configuring everything manually.