Cold collation

Based on the weather today, I'd say yesterday's bride, Catherine, totally lucked out! It was raining cats and dogs when I woke up this morning and seems to have done so all day. It wasn't an unpleasant sort of rain. It was that heavy rain you only get in the summer which brings with it an inexplicable, powerful smell which evokes childhood. I went to buy milk from a local shop and was a little surprised to see the streets full of joggers, the majority of whom appeared to be wearing prat hats. I've always rather enjoyed running in the rain; it brings with it a sense of liberation not dissimilar to the times in our early childhood when we were given permission to strip you down to our pants and run into a hose pipe in the garden.

We went up to Thaxted again today. It was my Dad's birthday yesterday and we were due to go to Cambridge for a meal in a Grantchester pub until my Dad came down with a bug and we decided there wasn't much point in going somewhere which is much nicer when it's not raining with a bloke who wouldn't enjoy eating the food he was kindly offering to pay for! So instead, we took food with us and prepared what my mum would call a "cold collation," which is essentially a table of cheeses, salads, breads, quiches and nicknacks. Brother Edward and Sascha were there, with Ted's university friend Daniel, whom I've known since I was seventeen. He's adorably easy to shock (a product of having lived in the U.S. for way too many years) and, as a result, always brings out the outrageous in me.

Sally and Stuart from the town popped by with their two kids to have a slice of the ludicrously large birthday cake which my father had found in the local bakers. It was less cake, and more hand-crafted stool; a great big chocolate thing covered in more chocolate, which we ate with raspberries because we all know there's nothing better than the combination of chocolate and raspberries.

We left at 7.30pm, and, in the short time it took us to drive from Thaxted to the M11, a blinding sun burnt through the hazy, murky rain clouds which turned the sky opal blue and lasted all of ten minutes before the clouds descended once again and darkness rushed in. 

On our way home, we tuned into Radio 4 and were greeted by a "topical comedy show" about words called Wordaholics. It was a little confusing as they seemed to be making jokes about the BBC's recent move to Salford and the "forthcoming" London Olympics. It was only as the programme finished that they announced it had first been broadcast in 2012. 20-bloody-12?! Words cannot express how disappointed I am with the BBC at the moment. Repeating a three-year old "topical" radio show in, what must be, a fairly well-listened-to slot, is almost unforgivable. It's not like these radio panel shows are expensive to make, or that what we were listening to was comedy gold which has stood up to being repeated so long after it was relevant. If the BBC genuinely wants us to believe it's taking itself seriously as a broadcaster at the moment it has to do better than this. This is BBC Radio 4. Not Dave.

For those of you who are interested in the caricature that was done of Nathan and me at the wedding yesterday... here it is. We didn't tell the artist we were married, but he seems to have put hearts all over the picture! Could it have been that obvious?