LEAVING LONDON

I've just had another fantastic weekend in London. Arriving off the Edinburgh train late in the afternoon, I went straight to a friend's place to get ready for the party of the century. It was a combined housewarming/birthday party for four people. The night began with fairy bread and chocolate crackles (at my insistence - I was by far the most demanding of the birthday quartet) and ended with smashed wine glasses, spilled drinks, tequila shots and absinthe. I woke up on the sofa the next morning, dazed and confused.

There was no time for hangovers, as I was booked in to spend all that day with a good friend from New York who was coincidentally in London the same weekend that I was. I hadn't seen him since we both lived in Vietnam so we caught up on three and a half years of travel and adventures and also managed to practice our rusty Vietnamese language skills over dinner. The whole of Monday was also full of catching-up-with-people-before-I-go-overseas appointments which were a heap of fun but the hectic (compared to my sedentary Edinburgh lifestyle) pace of the whole weekend left me sleep deprived and happily exhausted. Monday night was my official farewell/birthday dinner and it was spent in wonderful company at an amazing Thai restaurant in Fulham. So today I'm completely exhausted and am looking down the barrel of a 22 hour flight back to Australia. Hopefully I won't be sitting next to anyone as horrible as I did on the way over. I'm thinking the lack of solid sleep over my last weekend might help me combat jetlag. Ever the optimist.