A Lot Can Happen In Two Weeks [Updated - with new added photo's]

Hi everyone.
First of all another apology for not having blogged something sooner. I'm still very limited with my time on the internet, my wonderful cafe has been slightly less wonderful this last couple of weeks as the wireless network has been a touch eccentric in its willingness to work which has meant that when it has, I've had to take the opportunity to do the more boring and mundane things like check e-mails and download songs.

Another reason for not writing anything sooner is that the last time I had the chance was the day after my job interview and I was feeling pretty crap about it. I'm sure you've had the experience, but it's certainly similar to coming out of an exam and realising that all the answers you gave were so completely wrong that you're sure you gave answers on history all the way through your science exam. I can clearly remember at one point saying that I was articulate and then, as they asked the next question, and with my brain screaming at me to say something intelligent and, well, articulate, the only thing I could come up with was to say 'erm' a few times in the style of Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. So, that's my roundabout way of saying that I didn't want to write about my job interview because I was so depressed about it that the thought of talking about it at all was even more depressing.
However, like all those exam results, it wasn't as bad as I thought, and it turns out that I got the job! Which is obviously absolutely fantastic, exciting and basically good. I start on the 26th, so got a couple of quiet weeks and then the madness starts.

Another absolutely fantastic, exciting and basically good thing that has happened since I last talked to you all, is that England have won the Ashes! (which for the uninitiated of you is the biggest cricket victory England have had in my living memory). It was a wonderful moment, I've always been a cricket fan and to see them win against Australia was something I honestly thought I'd never see. Tuesday morning, the day after the victory, I got up early to celebrate with all the rest of the seventy odd thousand sad people that call themselves cricket fans in Trafalgar Square as the English Cricket team arrived in their open top bus and we basically celebrated, showed off and, for some reason, sang Jerusalem.

Strangely enough, for a day that started in trafalgar square, I ended up there again around 15 hours later, and yes, that was the middle of the night. At about ten thirty that evening I got a phone call from a friend of mine to say that he and his girlfriend had just landed in Heathrow and weren't getting a train home to the morning so did I want to meet them in central London for a drink? Since I didn't have to get up the next morning, I decided that it couldn't hurt, and so, having spent a few hours in a late night bar then a late night cafe, I ended up giving them the tourists walk around London at three in the morning. We went to Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Downing Street, the London eye, the south bank and across waterloo bridge (my favourite bridge for a view down the Thames) and despite walking to all these places, hardly saw another person, apart from a few vaguely worried policemen watching us as we walked down the mall towards buckingham palace pointing out all the surveillance cameras cunningly hidden in the lampposts. It was an incredibly fun, funny and wonderful night as we chatted about everything, nothing and climbed on lions in trafalgar square. I got back home at seven thirty in the morning, knackered, achey and very happy.

Now, sor those who aren't sure what Lard's on about, a couple of photo's that, whilst not great because they were taking at night with no flash, illustrate the point. The first is of AJ mounting a lion in trafalgar square, the second is of Kate enjoying a the statues outside Buckingham palace: