Picnic!

My absence is again due to studying- I finally finished highlighting the even key-er parts of my key notes tonight and will be reading them over until my exam on Thursday at 2 p.m. But it's also due to the fact that I've been having some fun, too.

I was invited to a picnic in St. James' Park by my flatmate and friend Emmie. Technically, it was a post-exams picnic, but I was still allowed to come with my exams yet to be had :p Adrienne came, too, and we met at one to head off to the park.

We got to the park around two and were ravenous by then. We had all contributed to the food haul and it was a pretty delicious spread.

A fair amount of people were expected to attend, but it ended up being only six of us. This was actually a great number to have- we had some interesting conversations and I made some new friends, which is always good. It was warm enough to ditch my sweater and sunny enough to get a slight tan (or, in other people's case, sunburned.) All in all, it was a wonderful afternoon.




We stayed in the park until about six thirty and then wandered toward the tube. Adrienne and I broke off from the group to do a bit of quick exploring and headed back an hour later. Before we had left the group, Emily, one of my new friends, asked us to come to her flat to watch the new(er) Sherlock series with Benedict Cumberbatch. Besides the fact that I've heard really great things about it, I was interested in seeing Cumberbatch in something else after seeing him in Frankenstein back in February. I loved the episode we watched- it's really funny and the series is set in contemporary times, which surprised me. Another surprise was that Cumberbatch's performance as Sherlock was amazing enough to completely make me forget about his perfect performance as the digusting and hateful Paul Marshall in Atonement. I hate that character so much that I was unsure whether I'd ever be convinced by him in another role. I was. We met again last night to watch the last episode, which was just as awesome.

This morning, I was supposed to have breakfast at Jamie Oliver's restaurant with Arcadia. If you don't know, Jamie Oliver is a very famous cook here who has had a million television shows. Unforunately, while I set my alarm, I neglected to switch on the actual alarm. We were supposed to meet at the restuarant at 9:30 and I woke up at 9:15. If the resturant hadn't been twenty-plus minutes away, I would have attempted to get there, but I hate it when people are late and decided not to be that person. Thankfully, the event was free, so I didn't lose anything but a hearty English breakfast. I was automatically punished for my laziness by the fact that the only thing I could do for breakfast without going shopping was a piece of toast and jelly. Oh, well.

Random but sad: I did my last grocery shopping trip today. Bye bye, Sainbury's. I will miss you, your funny wrappers, and your amazingly low prices.

In addition to my studying, I've been doing a lot of personal writing and I'm pretty happy with what I've done; even though it's just a single scene, it took me a long time to write it. Now I must return to said writing :)

Also- tomorrow, it will be a week until my family gets here!!!