It rained all day on Saturday, just lots and lots of miserable pouring rain. I cleaned my flat and offered to the Tall South African that he could come down for dinner, but he decided he didn't want to go out in the rain. I didn't blame him, as the weather was really rubbish. I went and did some shopping, but otherwise it was a slow day.
The rain continued on Sunday, but today I'd promised Max, a friend I know through the club, that I would go to his garden party for his birthday up in Cambridge. I got a bit of a slow start, but managed to race to the card store and grab a birthday card, and then get to King's Cross to catch the 14:15 train.
I hadn't been to King's Cross in a while, and I kept thinking I'd somehow wandered into the wrong station, as I was so disoriented when I walked in. Bizarrely, it looked somewhat like Gare du Nord, and so I was baffled. Had I somehow come out of the Tube and popped up in Paris?
Yet, apparently they'd been doing some construction work at King's Cross for ages and had finally finished, and so now I was experiencing the disorienting results. I ran across a footbridge platform that took me into an unexpected part of the station, so I had to run back, find a ticket machine, buy my ticket, and finally find my way to the correct train platform. I suppose I will eventually get used to it, but I was definitely turned around for quite a bit there!
I made it up to Cambridge and found my way to Max's flat. Turns out Max lives in a really lovely one-bedroom flat right around the corner from the train station, which explains why it is so easy for him to get down to London so frequently. The flat was really nice as well, not like your standard student flat at all, which made me a bit envious of it when I think of the places I lived as a student! In fact my own place now is nowhere near as nice, which makes me realise there are advantages to living outside of London!
Due to the rain, it was more of a "living room party" than a garden party, but we all made do. It was a really good time, about 15-20 people in attendance, and a real mix of people from all aspects of Max's life: Food and Wine Soc people, people from his program, people who he'd lived at a fraternity in Tubingen with, and me, his friend from the club.
Max was the consummate host, putting on a fine spread of strawberries, cheeses, bread and pate, and punch bowls of Pimms, G&Ts, and some whiskey-and-ginger-ale concoction. In fact it was all so well organised, and his flat so clean and tastefully decorated, I was surprised to realise I was in the home of a bachelor, until I remembered that he's a bachelor with a lot of German influence. So I guess order and organisation are to be expected!
Good times as well hearing stories about living in a fraternity in Tubingen and reciting drunken German poetry to large groups of men, the trials of learning to understand Nietzsche, and how much Max enjoys the TV series Mad Men. I didn't leave until about 8 PM, it was such an entertaining afternoon on the whole. When I left, Max was asking me for updates on the Wild Welshman, and I realised I didn't have any. So I spent the whole train ride home tapping out an e-mail update to the Wild Welshman on my iPhone. Given that I'd missed the fast train, it turned out to be quite the epic update! He replied to me a few days later telling me how lovely it had been to hear from me, which makes me think I should do things like that more often.
Finally made it home a bit sleepy but glad to have made it a day out, it was such a good time to be back in Cambridge once again.
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