I spoke too soon

So, after all my moaning on Friday, the wedding was fabulous fun. It was partly because I realised that this would be the perfect excuse to wear my sixties vintage bright purple coat with fur collar, something that I don't get to do nearly often enough. (How this coat came into my life is a whole 'nother story, involving some very skilful shopping by someone who isn't me). It went fantastically well with that pink dress, which came, of all places, from Gap, for a snip. Yes, Gap. I'm doing all my formalwear shopping there from now on. Here's me on my way out - looking a bit surprised, as I always do, by the cameraphone self-portrait wonder technology:

It was also partly because the wedding reception turned out to be held in this place:

No, this wasn't taken with a wide-angle lens, just from the top of the stairs heading down for dinner, so that gives you some idea of the height of the ceilings. And yep, that's a marble checkerboard floor.

But to be frank, it was mostly because of the food. The effect may have been heightened because I've been living mostly on rice crackers and spinach over the last few weeks, but wow, it was good. Here's the menu:

Be glad you can't read it, because otherwise you'd have to start dealing with very covetous emotions. Just believe me, it was goooood. I resisted the urge to photograph the actual food, because I didn't want to look like too much of a tourist in the Land Of The Privileged.

I've been to one or two events like this before, and the thing that always mystifies me is this: why is it that the more your host has paid for the event, the more determined waiters are to constantly top up the glasses with alcohol? Are the beverages on sale or return? Are they having a 'count the empties' competition out back? One glass of champagne is very pleasant, but just because you're still holding the same glass doesn't mean that you haven't had seven or eight standard drinks if it keeps getting filled up every time the attentive waiter circles by. I pretty much stuck to apple juice (excuse me while I polish my halo-actually it was incredibly good apple juice) but there were some very. drunk. accountants. by the end of that shindig. I'm all for good service, but it's not relaxing to have to keep clamping your hand over your wine glass if you want to make it back to the train station in a straight line.

In other, sadder, news the Eurostar fire did indeed prevent my friends from coming over to see us on Saturday. I'm sure they still had a great day - they were in Paris, after all - but it was a shame for us.

Adoption related news - nothing, really. J had his individual homestudy interview, and apparently he didn't feel like crying at all, but managed to keep it cool and rational. Sometimes I wish I was him. We've also now got some contact details that we needed for a particular children's home in Addis, and we need to write a letter to the director asking if she will work with us. Hopefully we will then have a 'yes' under our belts by the time we get to our adoption assessment panel. Neither of us has any idea what to write. How can you put a request like that into words?