As we were planning a late night on Thursday, Marcus and I took Friday off, to give ourselves a long weekend. And what a looooong weekend it was:

Thursday: Dalston Jazz Bar. Sarah had told us to expect the evening to be low-fi, non-scene, non-poncey and groovy, and it was all of these things. Low-rent, too - it is hard to tell if the venue is half-constructed or half-demolished. All those hard reflective surfaces - the bare concrete ceiling and basic steel-framed windows - do not lead to comfortable acoustics. A pretty convivial place, but chatting to more than one person at a time requires too much shouting over the music. We stayed till after midnight and then ran around the mean streets of deepest darkest Dalston trying to find a mini-cab office that wasn't barricaded. No visit to the area could be complete without a trip to the Spiral. Unfortunately...

Friday: We had friends round for dinner. Marcus cooked, the wine flowed, the vodka shots came out...

Saturday: We had been invited to dinner in Croydon. Ten minutes before the train was due to arrive, I suddenly realised I didn't have a ticket, so went sprinting down into the station. When I arrived back on the platform, a train was there, and Marcus and Janne were holding the door open for me. "Are you sure this is the right train," I panted. They assured me it was. It wasn't. Oh no, it was the train to Margate. The express train to Margate. First stop: Tonbridge in Kent. Ninety minutes after we set out, we were arriving back at London Bridge to start again. We finally made it and had a lovely dinner with Katarina and Martin, whose wedding I'll be going to this summer, in Stockholm, hurrah! From there it was a train and tube to Brixton and Queer Nation...

Sunday: Why, the RVT, of course. Good to see my ex, Pano, utterly loving the place - the show, the music, the atmosphere. And another regular is born...