Unfair fine and a sociable day

Today Mason went to Edgware to collect his medication, and I went off to Hampstead to meet Diane. Luckily neither of us had to go to the hospital which was nice but unusual. We went to the Flask Pub in Flask Walk and had caught up with each others' news and had a drink. Last year I thirsted for ginger beer, and this summer it seems to be shandy.

We had a bit of a walk around, and decided to get a packed lunch deal from Tesco's as an economy measure. Mas and I had just got a fine for driving across the bus lane, which you have to do, to get into the car mechanics, there is no other way to do it, and there is no way of appealing against it and if you do not pay it immediately the fine doubles! That is a fair system!

We ate our lunch in the sunshine talking and admiring the local architecture. Diane is making plans to go and live in Normandy for a year for a change. Afterwards we went and had a coffee
at Carluccios before walking down to Belsize Park and taking the tube home. I walked back feeling tired, and with a stiff neck.

As soon as I got home Mas told me that Monika, Oktay and the children were coming over immediately as Oktay was visiting his doctor. Mas had been shopping and had organised a meal for them all. In ten minutes they arrived, and I was amazed to see how much Talu had grown since we saw him last. Our cat Salty ran away from them with a lot of meows and stayed upstairs which surprised me as he is used to the children.

Milan and I were talking a made up language together, which was funny, but the difficult part was that I had to tell him what he had said, in English, and what I had replied. Mas had bought some trout for dinner which he had asked the fishmonger to fillet; he had made a poor job of this, so I tried to do it while Milan was singing to me in his made up language and waiting for translations of each verse.

We all had dinner together and I got all the news of their recent holiday in Czech. Mas had bought some fancy cream cakes for dessert so we ate these. Monika had made a rhubarb crumble which she gave us (this was much nicer than the cakes which Mas and I found out the following day).

Salty began to show himself timidly just before they all went home. It was lovely to see them, but I felt tired as it had been rather a full day.