Fighting wasps

Whilst chatting to my mum on the phone this morning, I noticed what appeared to be a pair of wasps fighting on the pavement. They were really going for it; rolling about on the Tarmac, getting stuck in. It was a proper brawl. On closer inspection, I realised I was was actually watching was a wasp attacking a bee. My save-all-bees instinct instantly kicked in, and I carefully trod on the wasp, pinning it down for long enough for the bee to disentangle itself and fly away. At that stage I released the wasp and was not unhappy to note that it flew away as well. I used to kill wasps with great alacrity, but have to confess that these days I find it difficult to deliberately kill anything, however gross it is.

I made a point of walking down to my favourite cafe this morning to do some work, but found it closed, so I took myself instead to Jackson's Lane, where, for some time, and until the lunchtime rush, I was the only person in the cafe there. I did, however, bump into a drama school acquaintance. We had a brief catch-up chat, and were horrified to realise that it's now 19 years since we were students at Mountview. He lived below me in bug-filled bedsits in Crouch End which were called Highgate Lodge, but known locally as Hellgate Lodge. There was rarely any hot water, we shared bathrooms and had baby belling ovens in our bedrooms to cook with. There was a single pay phone in the building's hallway, which was the only number I could offer anyone wanting to get in touch. This was before the days of mobile phones. If I went on a date, I'd have to give him the payphone number, which, of course, meant I could always find an excuse for someone not calling me back, convincing myself I'd simply not had the message passed on to me!

The one positive thing about Highgate Lodge was the fact that I had a little ledge outside my window, where I could sit and drink orange juice for breakfast whilst looking out across the North London skyline. Majestic on the horizon was Alexandra Palace, and I spent hours gazing at it, deciding then that it was London's most beautiful building. Little could I have known that the best part of twenty years later, it would be the location of my wedding.

It's been very hot today. Fiona, who's just returned from the States, called me in a state of confusion. It's almost November, and the mercury was up at 21 degrees.

I went out this evening to rescue some cup cakes from the car which Nathan had brought back with him from his trip to Flanders where he was singing in British Legion concert. It was still fairly warm and I was able to go out comfortably in a T-shirt. Sadly the cup cakes had melted in all the heat and ground themselves into the car's parcel shelf. As I strained to scrape cake goo off the upholstery I heard my trousers rip all the way from buttock to bollock! When I returned back to the house, I discovered we'd entirely run out of tea to drink with the melted cake. All in all a pretty disastrous outing!