frogcake.net

Well, Matt should be landing in Cairo right about now. I hope he packed some sunscreen. I checked the weather: 37C. Yuck.

He was originally going to fly to Cairo from Algiers, but decided to swing by London when an earthquake changed his itinerary. Unbeknownst to me, he had been in contact with Kathryn and they had hatched a plan to surprise me on my birthday.

We had just returned from tea at the Ritz (photos here), an experience I thoroughly recommend, and as I walked through the door I was greeted by a voice which intoned, “Good evening.” Needless to say I was somewhat surprised.

That night we had dinner at Wagamama in Covent Garden. Matt paid for that. The next morning dawned bright and blue, and by a stroke of good fortune it was a bank holiday and I had the day off. So we went to Bluebird for breakfast, alfresco style. It was lovely. Matt paid for that too.

After a hard day’s shopping we had dinner at Pizza Express at the end of our street. Yum, pizza. Matt paid.

It was great timing, really. I had a few days off, as did Kathryn, it was my birthday and the weather was bloody marvellous. We had a great time and were sorry to see Matt go.

There are pictures in the London gallery.

After the server crashed it seemed as good a time as any to redesign the site. So after many long hours at the keyboard, this is the result; the all-singing, all-dancing, object-oriented, dynamically created website. I know you don’t care about all that. You just want to know why it took so long to get back online and why the pages load so slowly now. Seriously though, I am spoiled by my broadband connection so if any sections of the site are painfully slow please let me know. Or better yet, get broadband installed.

I have had to rewrite almost every page of the site and reading over the last four years in fast-forward has been an interesting experience. It’s fun to notice the transition from the wide-eyed young Adelaide boy in the big city to the cynical Londoner you see before you now. In one entry I drop into St James’s on Piccadilly to see a lunchtime concert, little realising I would be performing there regularly in the future.

Perhaps one day my journal will become a great historical document like Pepys’s. Or perhaps it will vanish in a steaming pile of bits on a trashed hard drive. I have a cold at the moment and it seems to have put me in a reflective mood. Sorry.

Anyway, enjoy the site. More photos are coming, including our time in Malaysia.

I know, that was six months ago…