Take a car park in Central London, renovate it with 8 bowling lanes, a pool table or two, a lounge area and giant bar and you’ve got yourself a nice little money maker. Of course change “car park in Central London” to ” private Pacific island in northern Fiji” and you could be mistaken for Mel Gibson.

So last night we had had the first of a number of London wide “sporting” (used very loosely here) events for work at Bloomsbury Bowling (netball, darts, rounders etc. to follow.) It was actually a pretty decent turn out with about 60-70 of us gamely pulling on the ever so classy bowling shoes to take turns knocking down the pins although I think people spent more time at the bar than in the lanes! It was definitely up for debate whether imbibing in alcohol actually makes you perform better but if our score was any indication I’d say the answer was no!

I think a good time was had by all. Unfortunately we must have been having too good a time as we ended up second last on bowling averages! Oh well – its all about playing the game isn’t it? Not winning …?

The stoned floor, wood timber walls and candle-lit tables give the main room a very relaxed feel. Tonight it was buzzing and the music was great. The company was great. The only negatives was the over priced drinks (I guess that is Central London for you) and the bar service with attitude (must go with the media-types that tend to frequent this bar.) Otherwise an okay bar for its ambience and music. Beware of the potential for high cover charges.

Birthday greetings to my little bro. Tonight he celebrated his first birthday in London with a night out at AKA. I’d never been to AKA but I think its sister club located next door The End – an apparently world-renowned nightclub as L tells me – is quite the popular hang out. Tonight was GAY night at The End and its patrons also spilled over into AKA.

AKA is a pretty cool place with lots of seating in a split level room and because the music and noise doesn’t start in until about 8.30-9.00 you can catch up with your friends and save shouting yourself hoarse until later in the evening.

My bro knows an amazing number of people already and he had friends come in from all over including Oxford! I think he had a good night and did well flitting betwen all the various groups (high school friends, uni friends, exchange friends, work friends, friends of friends, room mates etc.) Photos are here.

You’ll notice that in a lot of my posts over the English summer I am going to be commenting on the weather as appropriate so xif it starts to get a little old – too bad. : P

Today it started off rather gray but, as this English summer is want to do, by the end of the day the clouds had cleared and the sun was soon beating down upon us (at 6pm I even managed to get a slight sunburn! Unfortunately on the same side I was unconsciously cultivating a tan on when I was at Wimbledon earlier this week.) R and C were both doing the Race For Life run at Richmond Park today. It was a nice 5km run that was over in minutes it seemed. I think I wore myself out with my job as chief-bag-look-afterer and girl-who-must-laze-around-whilst-1000s-are-running-miles. R and C were well pleased with their times considering neither had been able to train for the few weeks before.

After the run, we headed off for a late lunch at Wimbledon village. My main motivation was hoping to see some tennis players in their civvies. And I did!! Woohoo – first cab off the rank was Lindsay Davenport. She was with family so I was a bit reluctant, and as ever too shy, to ask for a photo. Later on when we were digging in to our pizzas Svetlana Kuznetzova and another unknown blonde-haired female player walked by. I was happy with my “star-sighting” fill.

Tonight I met up with some (say about 8 or 9) people from my old workplace back home. I shouldn’t be surprised that there are so many of us over here, London being the wonderful city that it is. We always seem to say we’ll stay in touch and catch up but, not too strangely, everyone gets on with their life and it is often 6 months (at least) before we meet up again. So tonight’s meet at Waxy O’Connor’s was a good chance to catch up on what was going in everyone’s lives. It was a good night.

On a side note would you believe that I got carded!! That’s pretty flattering. The guy at the door had a hard time believing my date of birth. We had a good giggle after he saw it.

My patch at work had their Christmas do today. It was definitely an interesting education in Christmas the Audit Commission way. After a surprisingly entertaing 2 hour session of quizzes (which, not that I’m gloating, my team won!) it was off to Hogs Head for a quick round of drinks (or two) before a lunch at La Rueda. I’m not sure who chose Spanish for lunch but the food was good (and plentiful) and we left at about 4 stuffed beyond comprehension. Then it was off to Mash for more drinks (we had to get through the drink kitty after all) and then on to yet another pub, Porterhouse, where it appeared other Audit Commission patches had taken up residence. To say we had overtaken and conquered was an understatement. Some of the more eager partied on until late into the night (or early morning) – very strong fortitudes indeed.