No, not THAT Bastille Day, but today is the day we finally got to Bastille to have a peek at the opera house. And book some tickets Alas, the opera itself was a little too pricey for our pockets, and the mama wasn’t too keen on seeing Eugene Onegin, so we’ve booked ourselves in for a two-piano concert of Dutilleux and Hindemith on Saturday night. And it’s been a beautiful day – so hot! So much sun! Made the parents very happy after their freezing-cold Sydney winter.

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It seems quite hard to believe, really, that I’ve never experienced a sushi train before. They always intimidated me a bit because I’m not terribly familiar with Japanese food, plus I’m a fussy eater, so grabbing random dishes without really knowing what they are kind of put me off a little. But it was great! We ordered a dish each of chicken katsu, and pulled a few random things off the train (unidentifiable squishy balls of… something, some salmon teriyaki, a raw fish and broccolini thing, custard-filled pancakes with raspberry sauce and a little fruit salad) – most enjoyable!

Afterwards we wandered through Hyde Park with the World’s Best Ex-Boss chatting about this, that and the other – old friends, web CMSes we have known, HTML 5 and mobile web dev, among other topics. Really perked me up.

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at lunchtime, with a friend – the longest I’ve done since the accident – just over 4km!! I tested out the My Tracks application on my phone too – very cool! Showed where we’d been, how far it was, how long, how fast we walked – all sorts of things!

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Found an interesting-looking graffittied gate on Brick Lane on my way to the station and just had to pull out my new camera and have a play.

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Not generally something to warrant four exclamation marks, but it is right now. If you consider that I haven’t been able to even contemplate any sort of exercise for over three months that wasn’t getting me from A to B (and then usually with a struggle), this counts as a huge achievement. AND it’s a gorgeous day out there. Nice to clear the cobwebs (even if it was only by going round the block), hear the birds going twit and see the sun.

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OK, so I wasn’t really supposed to do any walking, but it was SNOWING and the air so crisp and fresh and people were out in it and there were shops and stuff going on and I’ve been cooped up at home for three weeks now. Ankle hurts now but good grief it was lovely.

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at lunchtime. I went the other way along Brick Lane, back towards Spitalfields Market, then turned off and looked at the church close up. They do a lunchtime service on a Tuesday. Maybe I’ll go along someday.

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… with an enormous art shop! Just round the corner – only about 3 minutes’ walk from the office. Looking forward to spending many happy lunchtimes in there!

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And some cheap brushes to use with it. Both on sale at Cass, of course. We went to the one at High St Kensington and did our usual walk through Holland Park to and from, which was lovely but totally wiped me out – SO exhausted. Nice to be out though.

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After a productive morning’s work and my friend’s physiotherapy appointment, we drove out to Abroath where we had a spectacular afternoon tea at Sugar and Spice – a teapot full of tea, little sandwiches (I had chicken, my friend had ham), simply enormous and amazing scones with superb raspberry jam and cream, plus a small strawberry tart, a raspberry/white chocolate/caramel slice and two shortbread biscuits. We finished our scones and then declared ourselves stuffed to puss’s bow so we had to ask for a doggy bag for the cakes – they looked too good to waste!

And of course a walk was in order to deal with the aftermath, so after buying a few small treats from the sweetshop section for djelibeybi, we wandered along the seafront and up into Arbroath before buying some Arbroath smokies (smoked fish – mackeral maybe? very tasty) for tea and heading home. Lovely!

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