I've been a bit slow as other things have cropped and there have been days I just can't be bothered to update the blog, since it is primarily for my records when I look back years hence, but time to recount the events of two weekends ago.
On Saturday 12th September, I went up to see Mel for her birthday party. Being first at her Bethnal Green flat, then at the pub where a space upstairs was reserved, almost everyone there was from uni - a lovely reminder of those times - the gang reunited as the saying goes. Tom and I swapped reminisces about famous cases in both our lines of work (chance does play a big part in police procedure) and then Tom courted controversy by talking about 'touching your own wood' if no wood was around to touch to assuage the superstition. He had crossed swords with Lynsey about this already, but first he asked me and I said I'd never heard about 'touching you own wood' i.e. your head in the context he meant. Foiled, he through it open to the whole table, whereupon everyone proceeded to disagree with him. Viki tried to put an end to it, as its rudeness had been alluded to, by saying "Touching your own wood is touching your erect cock." Still, Tom wasn't satisfied and when Alex Goff arrived later, Tom anointed him as an oracle, asked him the question and was again frustrated when Mr Goff went with the consensus. Altaa and I caught the last train back.
On Sunday, I went to Rochester Cathedral in the evening for Mo's recommissioning as an evangelist. We had a good selection of hymns, the Bishop of Tonbridge gave the address and there was a little role-play for the new evangelists where they were given 'P'-plates, like some motorists wear when newly qualified from driving lessons. Richard Hoare drove me back (he lives a couple of minutes from my apartment), but his car had a fuel injection problem. Huge clouds of smoke spouted from the exhaust like a Wacky Races car. I said, this would be perfect, if we were being pursued by enemy agents a la Goldfinger. Richard replied "Well, we don't want to be pursued by enemy agents." Well, his car didn't have oil slicks. Going up Chatham hill, the car struggled, getting down to 10mph with Richard's foot to the floor and a huge backlog of cars building up, he drove into a bus lane, to let everyone else get past. Thanksfully, for Richard, his fuel injection has now been fixed.