Eating Ice Creams at Midnight

It was a quiet weekend. The most adventurous movement was on Saturday night, crossing town to attend a party in a flat opposite one of the more obscure MI5 buildings in Vauxhall. I did not stay too long, despite the caviar and ostrich canapés, eclectic music and a French-African dancing like Cossack with such ferocity that the floor moved. We gently drifted home, eating ice creams at midnight and failing to find anywhere selling early copies of the Sunday papers. Tea was made, an hour of trashy TV was watched and the wooden hill was climbed sometime around 1am.

The remainder of the night I slept deep and long. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed more than six hours of warm oblivion, free of nightmares and secure that the morning would be flooded with gentle, happy promise.

The next day was deliciously lazy. Most of the morning was spent reading in bed. Later, Surreal Girl and I turned up at Giraffe just before the blueberry and banana pancake stacks at came off the brunch menu at 4pm. After bookshop browsing and ingredient shopping for my experimental chocolate bread and butter pudding were completed, Tempranillo pulled our compass homeward.

Sometimes the most gorgeous weekends are not made up from audacious exploits. Delight is not always the thrill of the new or density of experience. Some of the best times come from revelling in an heightened awareness of all the easily overlooked gifts of life – whether they are the joys of a beautiful four cheese pasta bake or a sun-filled walk across graveyards and glass bridges.