Posts Tagged ‘elina’

Last week, I took Elina to meet my friends at York Brights. It was a rather strange evening as when I walked in I found them sitting in a whole different corner to the usual one, due to the amount of people at the pub. For creatures of habit, like myself, this simply isn’t cool and I spent a good twenty minutes repeating over and over again “this isn’t where we sit…” ;).

There were also lower numbers than usually turn out, perhaps due to so many people taking holidays at this time of year – which also contributed to a slightly lower than expected turn out to Skeptics this month.

Never the less it was a great night all the same, and we tried the food for the first time which turned out to be average.

On the way back, the heavens opened to what I think was the heaviest rainfall I have ever driven through, possibly even heavier than the torrential downpour I went through on my way to appear on Ummah Channel. We’re talking so heavy that I was driving significantly below the speed limit! Nothing wrong with rain, when you’re inside though ;).

On Thursday, I met Elina’s mum.

She and her boyfriend are currently over in Leeds visting Elina and with it being her birthday, we decided to go out to dinner. We ended up at Las Iguanas because I presumed Elina was joking when she told me to sort out a restaurant, which was apparently a silly mistake lol.

It was always going to be an interesting evening as I don’t speak any Finnish and Riitta doesn’t speak any English, and as you all know, Elina isn’t the most chatty person ever 😀 . Still, a bottle of rioja later and things were fine.

We also found some common ground on our love of vodka and Riitta’s boyfriend told me about his career as a ship designer. So all in all, an enjoyable dinner and only slightly more awkward than introducing Elina to my parents.

With the BHA Reception to welcome in new president A. C. Grayling taking place at a very convenient time to converge with mine and Elina’s six month anniversary, I decided to take a trip down to the capitol with her.

We got down there with only a slight delay and met up with Phillip and Linda from West London Humanists who are amazing people who have a lot of great ideas for community projects. They have a great vision for making a difference and I’m hoping I can help them develop their ideas based on what has and hasn’t worked for us in Leeds.

Afterwards, we wandered down to the National Gallery which was fantastic of course though it was a mission to find any paintings not about Jesus or some other religious subject matter. Luckily the Dutch artists finally came to the rescue, and there is currently an excellent exhibit on Swiss and Norwegian artists there too!

In the evening we met up with James and grabbed some dinner at a nice place called Canal 125. The food was good though I don’t think the salad I had turned out to be a light option after all once I had eaten all the dressing, cheese and chicken lol.

The hotel we stayed at was the Thistle City Barbican. It was mediocre, especially for the £150 we paid for it, and despite getting a family room we actually got three single beds and with Norm not having joined us after injuring his ankle, we ended up paying for three beds and only using one of them.

On the Saturday we headed over to the Natural History Museum which is always enjoyable though I’ve done a lot of it now (and yet I still go back even though I’ve never been to the Victoria & Albert Museum lol) and includes exhibits such as rocks and cooking pans that I’ve never seen before.

I would have liked to have had more time there as we didn’t get there until mid-afternoon, having spent out time walking over and stopping for lunch at Las Iguanas on the South Bank. That was very nice but it was directly under the Waterloo bridge rail track, so made for noisy intervals.

All in all we did around 13 miles walking, which is only half that of the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge! Still a good bit of exercise though.

Many of us feared that when Terry Wogan stood down from presenting the British coverage of Eurovision, that it was all over. But, having sat down with Norm and Elina for a bit of a Eurovision shin dig last week, I’m fully behind Graham Norton as a worth successor.

It proved to be a hugely entertaining evening, with us gathering more points by the first few results than we managed in the whole competition last year. That said, I’m no longer friends with Elina after Finland failed to give us any points.

The competition is of course ridiculous – the phone lines open before the songs have even been performed. Is it just me that thinks it would be nice if we at least pretended it was about the music, rather than people just tactically voting for their neighbors? Not to mention that the best song, ultimate didn’t win.

Special mention goes to Estonia, for the campest performance I have ever seen:

Her dress is also adorable. Second special mention goes to Georgia for actually being good:

But ultimately, there was only just one song that deserved to win. Despite Graham Norton’s mocking, Moldova’s So Lucky was clearly the entry of the competition:

Martini. Whiskey on the rocks. Life on the top, my party never stops. So lucky! I think Elina is starting to get sick of those lyrics being sung into her ears…

Btw, does anyone know where I can get her some unicycle lessons?

Elina had recently jumped ship on her accommodation again and this time moved to St Mark’s, which is located just behind the Eldon. In celebration, she invited me over for dinner. I was very much looking forward to trying herring casserole, but this was mainly due to the fact that at the time I was mixing herrings up with storks for some reason (herring, herring gull, stork maybe?) though when I found out it was just pork instead, I was equally contented.

The flat was charming, which I’m sure you’re all aware is a nice way of saying that it’s a shit hole. The tiny kitchen table suited the two of us very nicely but would have been a push to get four people round, as is traditional with any student kitchen, the gas stove spark didn’t work and to top it off the showers don’t seem to produce any hot water. Ah, student days.

After dinner we settled down in Elina’s room and watched Star Wreck, which is a Finnish film parodying Star Trek. It waas well worth a watch and the questionable production values only added to it’s charm. Much like the actual Star Trek it gives it’s audience something to aspire to (just in this case it was being Emperor, rather than that whole Utopian future nonsense 😉 ).

Fonze having missed most of his birthday meal, we headed down to The Elbow Room to shoot some pool.

What looked like a slightly disappointingly stocked bar when we first approached, turned out to actually offer a great selection and we were soon enjoying some Ketel One vodka. I’m not a fan of the American style pool tables as their ridiculous size pockets mean that it’s very demasculating every time you don’t pot anything and the white goes in on almost every shot.

However we struggled on none the less and having taken the first game I suggested Fonze and Elina have a game, after all we had the table for another forty minutes so that was plenty of time for them to play and still get plenty of other games in.

Turns out I was quite wrong about that ;). A fun night none the less though.