The first of the farewells

The first of my farewell dinners took place last night. Kate whisked me off for a very nice dinner in Cafe Rouge in Worcester...which is pretty adventurous for us Malvernites! We got down to some girlie chat over a delicious dinner and a of glass of wine. It took us the usual 1/2 hour to decide what to have - the standing joke between us is that Kate will pore over the menu for hours, exclaiming over the deliciousness of each dish and then decide to have Cajun chicken!! Every time!! However, there was no Cajun chicken on the menu last night, so both of our taste buds were tickled with a rather delicious chicken breast stuffed with leeks and spinach on a bed of savoy cabbage and onion sauce. Sounds delicious doesn't it? Well I can assure you it was every bit as good as it sounds. The fantastic thing about Kate and I is that it doesn't matter how long it has been since we last saw each other (days, weeks or months) we can pick up as if we last saw each other a few hours ago. Kate if you have managed to work out what a blog is and are reading this - get your butt over to see me in DC!! Be brave - the flight isn't that bad!!

The gluttony continued today with a girlie lunch at the Cottage in the Wood. I was actually restrained and had a smoked salmon salad - I must have sensed there would be a wickedly rich bitter chocolate tart to be chosen from the dessert list! I'm trying to pace myself a bit over the next few days as we've got a lot of meals out and I want to be able to fit into the clothes that I've sent to the US!! I really enjoyed lunch - all the ladies who were out have a fantastic sense of humour and we had a good laugh. The same offer applies to you ladies incidentally - if you want to come over to visit then let me know!! I have to admit it was a bit of a struggle to come back to work and focus on more mundane issues like setting up meetings and drawing up flow diagrams...

I'm currently sitting here at 8pm and the sky is dark and menacing. Nearly black. Considering we're only a couple of days away from the longest day of the year and it should be light til 10pm it's pretty ominous!! And...right on cue, the heavens have opened and lightning is splitting the sky. I'm just waiting on the power going off now... You just have to love the British summer weather!!

The weather closes in...

I'm now really convinced that Stephen has actually been abducted by aliens and replaced by a clone. He's displaying some very un-Stephen like behaviour. I have been asking for months for him to put up a mirror in the en-suite to no avail. Mum asks him once and he was bounding up the stairs, drill in hand...