the one where I buy the oversize porcerlain cat...

This weekend I met up with the wonderful Alex to have a royally overdue catchup and explore the delights of Camden market. When I was a teenager Camden market was my go to place for all things cool (my uncle had a flat round the corner in the very posh Regents parks area and gave my mum a key to his place so we could pop in whenever we wanted) however since swapping the streets of London for the golden glow of Oxford I haven't been back. Would I be disappointed? Would Camden not be cool anymore? I needn't have worried, all was as it should be. Alex took me to a fantastic tea shop for lunch (a baguel and delicious chocolate cake) and then we headed to the market. One of the first things we saw was a 3ft high black poreclain cat in a shop stuffed full of 60's items. To say it was love at first sight would not be an understatement, but we had just started shopping. We asked the shopkeeper about it (as well as the prospect of getting it shipped to Oxford (they had a massive sign announcing they shipped worldwide). No she couldn't ship it had we felt how heavy it was? We felt, it was pretty heavy. Alex valiently offered to carry it for me, but we would have to go back for it later. I asked the lady if she would save it & that wasn't possible either so after wandering round London all afternoon (and visiting this very cool camera shop, I really want one of these) we returned, and to my joy it was still there. So guess where it is now? That's right, at home with me :-)

Alex

In life, well for me anyway, things tend to go in cycles, you do a lot of one activity/see a lot of someone and then you don't do that thing/see that person for a while but as soon as you do it/see them again you wonder how you ever coped without it/them. This is true of the relationship I have with my best friend from Uni Alex (who's quite frankly georgous wedding featured on this blog last year). Alex and I met on our first day of Uni when my mum (for the purposes of this story imagine Mrs Bennett from the TV adaptation of Pride & Predudice, in fact for the purpose of any story imagine that, it's pretty close) decided he was a suitable candidate for me to marry dragged me across the hallway, pushed me into Alex's room and closed the door.

This act could have scarred me for life but fortunately Alex is awesome and had already put some music posters up, so we got chatting about music and the rest (as they say) is history. We later gained our slot on the university radio station and for a few very surreal months we had fans who would cheer us around the univrsity campus. When graduation arrived we hobnobed with Ian McKellan (yes pretty good) and then went our seperate ways, me to London to live the music dream (where I ended up at HMV Oxford Circus) and Alex stayed on in Lancaster where he met his wife Victoria (yep my mum was disappointed in a that could have been you kind of way). After leaving Lancaster Alex returned to (my) homeland of Manchester and as of January this year is a resident of London. Do you know how close that is people? An hour on the train, just one hour! We've just been to Mogwai together which was brilliant despite a lack of tea and cake (I dunno how this happened, see previous post for Mogwai write up) and more adventures in London/Oxford are being planned. So awesome to have Alex & Vikki time once again!