Meet the Neighbours

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but the week before last we attended the Eden Project Big Lunch. Essentially the idea is that on Sunday the 19th of July, as many local communities as possible, would gather together and have a kind of 'getting to know each other' picnic.

I was sceptical at first, telling Lucy that 'I already know loads of people I dont have time to keep in touch with - why do I need to know some more?'. I protested. She made me go.

Actually it was pretty good fun. We live in a new build house in the grounds of an old mansion which has been converted to flats. The mansion appears to come complete with quite a few curtain twitchers, which I was concerned would lecture me about parking my car accross the big 'keep clear - no parking' sign as is my want. Contrary to that, we were informed that anyone can park there and that as the only renters we hadn't found out because our landlord had neglected to tell us.

I ended up meeting the old dean of a major university as well as a high court judge (who informed us that our favourite restaurant is actually a front for a Thai marajuana dealing operation). We made friends with some of the people that live in the terraces next to us. A friendship that we put to good use when they had to store our dead cat in their garage for a day last week.

the main concern really is that we were the youngest people there by a good five years. Ok Lucy was the youngest person there by a good five years (I was borderline fitting in). They all had kids or were pregnant, or had grandkids so far as I can tell!

Anyway. I have discovered that it is good to know your neighbours.

What Made Me Laugh Yesterday

Lucy and I were making our way to Blockbusters last night, knowing we had a fine to pay and arguing about whose fault it was as we couldn't remember. After deciding on our rentals (which is a lengthy process involving much negotiation), I asked the guy at the counter: 

"Do we not have some kind of fine to pay?"

The guy replied "yes, you have £4 outstanding for some crappy chick flick"

"I knew it!!!"

A Cat Called Beau

Every day when Lucy or I come home from work, we come in the door and Beau is there to greet us. She rolls on her back straight away and demands her belly rubbing (she does this a lot). Lucy picks her up and carries her around the house, I tend to swear at her and tell her to get out of my way.

And every morning, I wake up at a bout 4am to Beau purring like a demented tractor, staring into my eyes from about 1 inch away. She follows us around when we get dressed, she keeps me company when I work from home, and she follows us down the drive when we go out. When we eat you have to throw her off the table / sofa at least 10 times per meal. Lucy is totally in love with her, and I have to admit, despite the early mornings and the inability to hit the cat litter tray, I was too. I have known a lot of cats and have never met a cheekier, friendlier bolshier one.

The only one she follows around more than Lucy is our other cat - Ripley. They are quite the gang, roaming the neighbourhood together. Beau cant be more than 5 metres from Ripley. They sleep in the same basket or at the bottom of the bed together.

Except that our neighbour horrifically backed his car over Beau (as unfortunately witnessed by Ripley) this morning and we are totally gutted.

The heartbreaking thing is watching our other cat roam around the house looking in every corner and walking round in circles looking for Beau and miaowing (and they say cats aren't sentimental). Apparently she was doing this outside all day.

Totally gutted.

The Rock Star's Tribute to Michael Jackson (Latvia Style)

Complete with random drunken girl.

This was actually a brilliant bar we went to on a couple of nights.

On Latvia

I have just got back from a 5 day trip to Latvia and am now in recovery mode. At the moment this involves trying to de-tox by drinking water and eating celery, though this is not working so well...

Riga is a brilliant city however - full of contradictions. On the bad side, the influx of stag-do's into the country as assisted by Ryanair's cheap flights (I may prepare an entire blog post about my feelings for Ryanair) has meant that the city is full of sleazy joints where attractive women feign interest in you to trick you into buying £500 bottles of champagne. The hostel I stayed at has a whole list of clubs and bars that 'you cannot go into or you WILL be robbed'.

This has led to a bit of bad blood between the Latvians and the English and we struggled a little bit to get to see the real city. We weren't helped by the fact that there were seven of us, and we were drinking, and we were loud!

I have kind of decided that I will try to veto foreign stag do's arranged by my mates, as I really think it can affect a place.

On the good side we did managed to do some cool things, like get ourselves into a Latvian nightclub on the 6th floor of some old soviet bloc concrete building, we had some great food and managed to get out of the city to some of the beach resorts which were absolutely fantastic. And unlike when we went to Prague 5 or so years ago, we managed to completely avoid the stags (except in the airport), and by Monday the stags had all disappeared. So it can be done!

Riga is beautiful and boasts some of most beautiful people you will ever see anywhere (and I've been on a fair few different continents). Just don't go where the stag do's do.