Dorset

I just had the most wonderful weekend in Dorset celebrating a friend's 30th birthday.  The vast majority of my friends are turning 30 this year, so I have a whole range of soirees lined up, from weekends in Amsterdam to parties in art galleries, but this one has set a very high standard for the rest of the year!  I won't inundate you with photos of my friends who you don't know, but here are some highlights:

The Nerd and I drove down on Thursday night (with a little help from our slightly-bossy-but-ever-so-useful new friend, Tom Tom), so we all just had a couple of catch-up drinks upon arrival and hastended to bed - everyone else had driven down from London and so were significantly more exhausted than me!  On Friday morning we went to the coast for a wee walk, cameras in hand:

 The pace of life in Dorset:

Our friend Alex is seen here demonstrating some of the choreography he had to display in his recent audition for the Olympic Opening Ceremony!  We're all really hoping he gets to be in it.  I might actually watch it!

We were staying in a cottage in the village of Bothenhampton, which looks mostly like this:

We went to the pub and played skittles:

Here is the Birthday Girl wearing the scarf I made for her (she loved it - hooray!) and holding up some napkins which our friend Sarah hand embroidered for her! 

We had a delicious dinner out, followed by a hefty slab of this little baby (Sarah made this, too!):

We stopped by another pub which had a great covers band playing, did some boogeying, and then did a little more when we got home:

We walked in into Bridport on Saturday to have a mooch around the market, then had a delicious lunch at a friend's (very generous) parents' house.  We staggered home, very full, had a disco nap (we're getting old, don't judge us) before getting ready for our Murder Mystery dinner: 'The Brie, The Bullet, and the Black Cat'!  It's set in Casablanca in 1942.  Here I am on the right, dressed as an exiled Russian aristocrat, alongside a Danish art dealer:

...and here are some of the boys, looking dapper:

Clearly we are all frustrated artists at heart, because everybody went to great effort in their costumes as well as their characters - you should have heard some of the accents flying around the room!  It was really good fun, and we followed it up with a couple more presents and a game our host invented which was a cross between a flash mob and musical chairs.  There may have been some MC Hammer involved.

We awoke on Sunday to a gloriously sunny day, so after we'd tidied up the house we drove a little way along the coast to feast our eyes on an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty:

Here I am with the Birthday Girl - look at that sunny, sparkly sea!

I could quite happily have sat on that beach watching the water for hours (and maybe taken another disco nap) but sadly our weekend was coming to a close, and everyone wanteed to make a start on the grim task of Driving Home.  It was a beautiful drive for me, windows down, feeling warm for the first time in months!  When I got back to Bath it was only 3o'clock, so I made myself a flask of tea and took my book to the park, to make the most of the sunshine.  Bliss.