Wedding Eve

I re-evaluated my suit trousers for tomorrow and landed on a horrid conclusion. They're a little tight in the thigh (aka, not ideal for dancing as the night goes on). So Mum and I walked into town to swap out some garments and to do a bit of window browsing around the shopping districts of Bristol. It was like a mini day out in a way, capped off with a little tea break at a favourite nearby cafe.

Back at home I put the last minute, finishing touches onto my Best Man speech. I'm now super happy with it and once I push through the nerves I'm very excited to deliver it. Louis also hooked me up with a kombucha starter kit of sorts - we now just have a huge jar of suspicious loo liquid which after a few weeks will produce delicious spoils.

In the run up to the wedding we also have Jamie and his partner Clare staying over with us. We figured a nice activity would be to run up the road for Friday board games and that proved to be a great idea. We all left a little later, a little merrier and a little more excited for the big day tomorrow. 

Dim Sum Champs

Slept in on account of the midnight bus I caught home last night. I napped like a baby on the coach, waking up just as we pulled into Bristol. Today I was back to speech writing and getting the house ready for a series of house guests over the next few days. First of which being my mum. She wanted to pop down to see us and to try a Dim Sum place that Rachel recommended. With Rachel's help we ordered well and we feasted on turnip cake, chicken claws and BBQ bao buns. We left absolutely stuffed, with a full belly and a half a night's sleep in my tank I reckon I'm going to hit the hay hard tonight.

Dentist Done!

Woke up and fell properly asleep in Bristol, but in between I was in London.

First up, I had my final dental appointment regarding my braces. They power washed the nuggets off my teeth and provided me with a set of retainers. My treatment is concluded. I asked to see some before/after pictures and the dentist happily obliged. When I was looking at them, it's hard to believe I was looking the same person. It's been a long, painful ride but my teeth look significantly better now.

Then I hopped on the coach up to London for the Rivals Series 2 screening. I saw a bunch of my old team and crew, shared a drink and enjoyed watching the fruits of our labour. We watched a couple of episodes and I was left saying wow. This is going to be a hit. 

Almost Char

Another day home for me, gradually getting round to a handful of bits. I wanted to get back into cooking during this bit of time off, but it oddly feels like my culinary skills have regressed. I wanted to cook dinner for Rebecca and opted to try my hand at a dish she makes quite regularly: veggie tacos. Which is basically roast baby potatoes and mushrooms in a wrap. I forgot exactly what size the everything needed to be cut down to before roasting so I err'ed on the side of smaller means they'll cook all the way through. It also means they cook quicker, crisp quicker, start to burn quicker. The meal was salvageable thankfully, but I still bungled it hard. Back to the old YouTube cooking videos for me I guess, I gotta get better before my skills fall out my hands.

Getting Round to the Written Word

We had Jamie staying over last night and I wanted to extend the hospitality a wee bit so I got everyone some bakery pastries for breakfast. My attention is being drawn towards best man duties ahead of Mark's wedding next weekend. It's mostly speech writing which I naturally will spend far too long on (because I care too much about it). It only needs to be short but I want it to be the full emotional rollercoaster. I'm also catching up on my LetterBoxd review backlog. I'm sticking to my guns on trying to write a short piece to consolidate my thoughts on each film I watch, trouble is I'm watching so many films now that I have a glut of reviews to write which takes up almost as much time as watching a film! 

There's a theme here if me spending too much time in writing... 

Le Stag on Le Boat

Slept hilariously well on the boat, especially since there was apparently a group of ravers who started listening to drum and bass music after 1am - I slept through the whole thing while poor Dan could hear it through his earplugs. Regardless, we hit the water again after a quick pastry breakfast and made great time heading downstream. We even carved out a lunch slot for a cheeky board game session before cruising back into the boat hire place.

And ongoing mission I started was 'lets all try to beat Dan's Tetris highscore' which gained a lot more traction than I expected. I have a little Gameboy which I passed around to the group as we chased for spots on the leaderboard, if we all got a bit more practice then no doubt we could have gone toe-to-toe with Dan, but his skills were too mighty for us.

We all hugged goodbye at the end of the weekend though. It's been a long time since I've been out on a canal and the experience was even more lovely than I remembered. We did it all with a good gang with a great shared attitude, we had a bonafide romp. 

Stag Cruise

Dan drove me across to the outskirts of Oxford to meet up with Mark and Co so we could all hop onto a canal boat together. It's Mark's Stag and we spent the day opening both locks and beers all while cruising upriver and marvelling at the countryside. We ate very well (my early research did us well there), we finished the evening off with some board games before crawling into our teeny-tiny beds, then we get to do it all again tomorrow.