Cups and cakes.

Recently we rediscovered Beaumaris, a small sea-side town on Anglesey, with a grey crumbling castle and a beautiful mountain back-drop. It ticks all the North Wales boxes; there is a fish and chip shop, a smattering of tea rooms and gift shops, a bowling green and a pier and it is within ten minutes drive of the renowned mouthful, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Basically, the perfect place to take your weekend visitors - and so we have been taking our weekend visitors. It was in one of the assorted gift shops that I discovered the work of Poppy Treffry this weekend, as we shied away from the football scores. Printed on tea-pot cozies and tote-bags, Poppy Treffry's scrawling cups and cakes fit right on in with my current East of India/Cath Kidston homeware explosion. So, that decided it. Come August or September when Gabby comes to stay, I am taking her to Beaumaris (exploring the castle, walking by the seaside) and buying enough tea-towels to steep a flood.

Ich bin ein Berliner.

I am home for the Summer (♥) and feeling so much calmer about the intricacies of the next four weeks. Don't they say that moving house and booking holidays are two of the most stressful experiences in life? Well maybe they don't, but in that case they've never arranged an interrailing holiday on behalf of three people or orchestrated a move from the opposite end of the country. Whatever.

Grumbles over, we're going interrailing :) I can't believe this is actually happening. I've come over all nervous and confused now and I find myself staring at the map of Europe and thinking 'where on earth do I start?' (Europe clearly, Pisa specifically). But I am also SO EXCITED. My rough to-do list is very much all over the place right now - I don't think we'll quite manage Pisa-Paris-Amsterdam-Stockholm-Cracow in our little two week period - but so long as I can follow in my mum and dad's footsteps and do the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, I can die happy!

Déjà vu.

It's that summery time of year again - there are fabs in the freezer and I am living in shorts - so come Saturday morning Gabby and I set off for Cambridge to watch the races. This year I took the time to inform Harry of my impending visit a couple of days before my arrival, as opposed to a couple of minutes, so I was rewarded with half an hour of his company when I got to Selwyn. Then he set off for the boathouse and once again I was left to my own devices and faced with the task of locating the river. For the most part things went according to plan and direction and thus my only issue was tearing myself away from the book-stall in the market square in time to reach the riverbank. It is with great amazement that I inform you that I did not buy a single useless thing and reached the Cam before the first starting signal was fired.

Unfortunately my biggest dilemma was locating the 'ideal' viewing point that Harry had suggested to me earlier in the day. He pointed to a large bend in the river on a map, intoned some boaty jargon about bumping and left me to it, with the result that I spent the rest of the day walking up and down in search of this mythical meander. I was (surely?) no more than five meters away when I saw Harry's boat row past, but somehow I managed to miss all the action. It wasn't abundant or in their favour, so it probably for the best - but still. Following M2's defeat I made a series of misjudgements which saw me walking down and up the river a couple more times, missing another Selwyn race and hurting my foot in a really serious way. Cue limping back to college and meeting up with the Flexer family for tea.

We went to a nice little seafood restaurant (or so I thought, apparently it's a massive chain? So is Wales I suppose) called Loch Fyne. I had so much fun watching Gabby and her dad/Stephen and his girlfriend make their way through £90 deluxe platters and champagne, while I sufficed with the standard, but tasty prawn cocktail/fish and chips. In particular I enjoyed naming the baby lobsters (Chancy, Brian, Mildred and Ethel), acting out dramatic death scenes fit to put the others off their food and fashioning a disguise out of lobster crackers and crab claws. Seriously, playing with one's food has never been so entertaining. Three hours later we left for the station, only to discover that we had missed the last train by all of ten minutes.

We went back to Selwyn to find beds and were met with the task of finding Harry, who had taken his key from his pigeon hole and was not answering his phone. Luckily he was Cambridge drunk and hadn't got very far; we soon found him, slumped at the boat club dinner after-party. When we asked a girl to call him for us, her response was, "Harry! Harry! ...He's having a bit of trouble standing." And so I found myself walking through the porter's lodge, supporting a stumbling weight and saying, "I've been at university for two years now and I had to come all the way to Cambridge to witness somebody this drunk".

In the morning - after Harry woke me with the words, "what are you doing here?" - we went for brunch and then made our way back to London. Working our way around multiple tube closures, Gabby and I went to Marylebone Summer Fayre. It was much the same as last year, except this time we went to Oxfam Books and Music, mostly so I could collapse on the floor and rest my aching foot. We bought soap and lemonade and ice-cream because we missed the doughnut stand, and I justified my Cath Kidston purchases with ten percent discount (reduction much) and the promise that we will make our own lemonade later in the week. Sorry for the mammoth post, I got a little bit carried away in my shellfish-excited state. In other news we are harbouring an illegal hamster here at Scawen Road. Until further notice her name is Hattie.

One year on:

Run Forrest.

Some couldn't believe their ears. Others thought it would never happen. I was particularly doubtful. But today, along with my lovely friends, I went to the Race for Life event in Rhyl and I RAN like the wind - and in 35 minutes to boot. An impressive time when you consider that I was wearing my brother's old P.E. shorts (due to a lack of suitable attire) and had barely two hours of training under my belt.

I would like to issue a big thank you to everybody that has sponsored me this far and to remind the rest of you that there are still four more weeks to go before my sponsorship page closes. Please donate to this amazing cause and make a tired and aching girl's achievements worthwhile :)

Ouch my legs.

Dock leaves.

Yesterday I spent a summery afternoon in a meadow in Oxford. Give me sunshine, a camera and a field full of buttercups and I'm happy.

Overground, underground.

Twenty-five pages of fruitless Time Out suggestions later and Charlotte and I spent most of the day sitting on the grass, walking round the shops, bumping into elephants and looking for banks/toilets/the British Museum. Apparently my geographical knowledge of central London is much like a dodgy sat-nav: very good at locating the major thoroughfares, grey and foggy round the edges and useless when it comes to the particulars. If I stray from the beaten track I am want to tell myself, "where possible make a u-turn", but unfortunately I rarely listen to my own sage advice (hence lots of marching through unchartered territory hoping to bump into a familiar landmark eventually :)).

Because Charlotte arrived after two and because the sun shone late into the day we existed on a weird extended time-scale. We ate popcorn chicken at Marble Arch, bought camera film on Carnaby Street, popped into Hope and Greenwood for 'I'm a good girl' badges and the Primrose Bakery for miniature cupcakes, then after a long walk North and a bus ride back to London Bridge we went to Shoreditch and shuffled into the Cargo beer garden. With spare change in hand we bundled into the Photoautomat and proceeded to plan our props and poses. This involved at least ten minutes of umming and ahhing and runaway pom-poms and finally, a couple of strips of photographs. We took the new (seats circa. nineteen-seventy) overground line back to Surrey Quays - and not 'Haggerston' as the tannoy lady informed us - where there was time for Frankie and Benny's and secret scanning before a late-night bus trip to Oxford. Womble womble.