Banksy+.

On Friday evening we took full advantage of the sunny weather and birthday BBQ'd at Catrin's house. Details are sketchy, but I do recall the presence of a giant snakes & ladders set, several poor attempts at initiating a drinking game or two, arguments concerning Ron Weasley vs. Draco Malfoy and the university whereabouts of Emma Watson, big hair-dos and silly faces and following Gaz and Emma around with a selection of cameras, hoping to catch a single fake kiss in the making. Later in the evening there was intense Doctor Who/Torchwood discussion (plan: Gaz and I will dress up as Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones and run around Cardiff ♥) and a somewhat surreal walk back to my house. This involved, among other things, Boston crabs, unsuccessful piggy-back rides, climbing up the rugby Hs, inflatable bollards and James loudly proclaiming, 'If I were a Unicorn--'.

Saturday morning came about far too quickly for my liking, and it was with much lethargy that I set off for Oxford via. Birmingham. I spent the morning in Stratford-upon-Avon, walking Cleo through the streets, which were busy with Japanese tourists, searching for Shakespeare's birth-place. We bought some fudge and sat by the canal in the sunshine, until Cleo started whining and drinking the puddle water. In the afternoon my mum and I went for a sunny drive and visited some family friends in Warwick aaand in the evening we went back to Oxford and watched Boy in the Striped Pyjamas with pizza and chocolate eclairs. It was a nice family sort of day.

On Sunday my dad and Josh and I got up early(ish) and drove to Bristol to see the Banksy exhibition. We read on the museum website that the queues were up to two hours long and that last admission was at half four, so arriving at one o'clock we thought we had given ourselves plenty of time. Oh, but we were greatly mistaken. As a result we spent three hours at the front of a very long reserve line, swapping stories and food with a young couple from Southampton, and watching as several hundred people made their way into the museum before us. Eventually however we made it inside, with a mere fifty-five minutes to spare. There were some pretty amazing paintings/sculptures, both in the exhibition proper and dotted throughout the permanent collection; my favourites among them including "I don't think we're on canvas anymore", a sleeping and graffitied Thomas the Tank Engine and the woman with the Groucho Marx glasses, would you believe it? In the gift shop I bought a Monkey Parliament poster, just because and on the way out of Bristol we spotted a real live street Banksy. Which just about made our day.