In the morning when we woke up, I cooked breakfast for both Zhan and Emily, some toast and eggs. It was all very civilized, just hanging out, eating breakfast together, although surprisingly fun. Sometimes there's really nothing quite like a lazy Sunday group breakfast. It was always a favourite thing to do with Nikola after every weekend I stayed with him, and I can see why he enjoyed it so much, it's just such a great Sunday ritual.
After a while, I went to lunch at my club with Zhan, so he could check it out. Admittedly we were going on a Sunday for lunch so Zhan could go without needing a jacket and tie, as "smart casual" dress is allowed on the weekends before 6 PM. Admittedly, we were both drinking water, but we had a nice meal and I hope Zhan enjoyed the club, but it's definitely a different dynamic having lunch in a nearly empty club vs dinner on a weeknight...
After lunch, Zhan went to meet some old friends from Cambridge, while I went to a drinks party being hosted by an old friend from Cambridge at her flat in Pimlico.
Once at the flat, I ran into a guy I'd known at Cambridge, also named Adrian. Charming Irish guy, he's a real sweetheart, I used to play polo with him as well, and he even wrote for the Polo Times for a while too. We had a good time talking and catching up, as well as confusing everyone who was introduced to us. ("Wait, you're BOTH named Adrian?") He's such a stellar guy, it sort of confirms my theory that all Adrians are awesome people.
As we were talking about his current work for the Conservative Party, the upcoming election, and how all Irish people seem to know each other (we have a mutual friend from my Oxford days in common), his friend James showed up. Wow, startlingly handsome, in a classic, public-school English boy kind of way. Think of Hugh Grant in his early days.
I had a lovely time becoming deeply ensconced in conversation with the English Public Schoolboy, although it was one of those situations where I wasn't sure if he was truly interested, or I was simply the cutest girl at the party to talk to. I've run into that situation before, and while I certainly don't mind it (the English Public Schoolboy was certainly the only boy there that I was interested in talking to), it's still not quite as ideal as a genuine connection.
It turns out that he had just come back from a weekend of camping while trying out for the Royal Marines, so it's not like we would suit in the long-term anyway. Apparently he's a real thrill-seeker type, the kind of guy who jumps out of planes and bikes in central London because he likes to live on the edge. Although, talking to him and learning about his all-boys schooling background and how much more at ease he was in conversation with Adrian than he was with me, he could also be the classic military type who joins the military simply because they are more comfortable in the company of men. Not that they don't like women, they just have no idea what to do with them.
To this point, I was surprised at one point in our conversation when he asked me how I found British men and dating. I made the point (that everyone seems to agree on) that British men don't really know how to ask women out. He gave me a smile and said, "Yeah, we're rubbish at that," leaving me utterly confused. Was that being flirtatious and making the point that he wished he could ask me out? Or was that just him being nice? Really, it was so classically English, no wonder I was thinking of him as the perfect English Public Schoolboy! (Still, an irrepressibly cute one, in the way that the early Huge Grant movies made you adore him even as he was being almost annoyingly shy and uncommunicative).
Of course, as I was in the midst of this shy-yet-intensely-flirtatious conversation, I was annoyed to find a Very Large Harvard-American girl attempting to squeeze into our conversation. Now, I'm normally all for being super socially welcoming and not exclusing people from conversation, but please people, you're supposed to try to break into a conversational group that already has at least 3 people in it, or at least try not to break in on the couple who have so clearly sectioned themselves off in the corner to get to know each other better! Couldn't this girl see that I was trying to talk to a realy cute boy?
Alas, the Very Large Harvard-American girl did not seem to pick up on this, and after I was left with the choice of including her in conversation or seeming incredibly rude, she talked to us for a bit, before the English Public Schoolboy, sensing that his opportunity to just talk to me one-on-one had passed, announced it was time for him to go. Hence our parting was a bit awkward, as you could tell he would have liked to talk to me more, except we hadn't spent enough time talking to really get to the exchanging information stage, and we also now had an overly intrusive audience in the form of the Very Large Harvard-American girl. In the end, it was just one of those tragic situations where you just had to let it go.
With the English Public Schoolboy gone, I would have made my excuses and left at that point as well, except for that my flatmate had just texted to say that she was on her way, so I really had no choice except to stay. And then once my flatmate arrived, I had to stay longer and make conversation to really give my flatmate an opportunity to stick around and socialize as well.
Out of boredom, I made myself a really strong G&T with Hendricks (how nice to have friends who offer you the good stuff!), and then proceeded to talk to somebody's boyfriend about my favourite read of the summer, Mary Roach's book "Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex." I really have to stop talking to total strangers about sex research, it really must be giving people the wrong impression of me!
Finally, my flatmate was ready to head home, and I was only too eager to jump at the opportunity to get out of there. So alas, not much happened, but there are worse ways to spend an afternoon than talking to charming cute English Public Schoolboy-types!
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