Torrential rain? Erm, what torrential rain?!
I was struggling for ideas as to what to do this weekend, as every single forecast I had seen informed me that I was going to be subjected to two whole days of relentless, torrential rain. Well, that’s the last time I ever trust a BBC weather forecast again. Saturday was a reasonable day and Sunday was a lovely day, so Babel and I could actually have done something much more exciting than we actually did, but notwithstanding the lies of the Met Office, we did manage to have rather a pleasant afternoon in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Babel didn’t admittedly get off to a great start, by arriving thirty minutes late, reeking of cigarette smoke, and proceeding to tell a story of how he was offered a shag the previous night, but I managed to successfully navigate us to Stratford without getting lost, and by the time I was sitting in a pub by the river with an enormous burger and a glass of red wine, life seemed a lot less stressful 
I’ve decided I quite like red wine, and the burger was really rather delicious.
The rain was still holding off, so we went for a stroll by the side of the river. Stratford is actually a bit of a mess this year, as they’re doing building work on the theatre and half of the gardens appear to have been dug up, but the far bank of the river is untouched, and there’s a pleasant little footpath which leads from the park through various fields and woodland for miles and miles. We followed it for a little way, pausing for a while to look at a herd of cattle which looked quite cute from behind barbed wire, though would have been less so had we been sharing a field, and when it did temporarily start raining we were able to sit on a bench under a convenient tree Babel took the opportunity to wind me up incredibly, but whilst I may not have appreciated it at the time, I reluctantly admit that I kinda did later on 
Once you’ve walked along the river for about a mile, you have two options. You can continue across the fields in the direction of Long Marston, or you can pass through a little gate and climb up a bridge onto a cycle track. We didn’t have time to venture as far as Long Marston because I’d only had enough small change for four hours parking, and so we had a leisurely walk back into Stratford along the cycle track
Whilst Babel discovered no fewer than two branches of The Works, I discovered that Stratford has a branch of my favourite coffee house, Caffe Nero Having fed my caffeine addiction with a Frappe Latte (if you haven’t tried one, you haven’t lived) I felt sufficiently generous to let him feed his book addiction in The Works, and he soon emerged with a very heavy and boring-looking volume on the history of the world, or some such
I got home pretty early, which gave my parents a bit of a surprise, but Babel had to go and visit another friend, and anyway we’d definitely had the best of the day’s weather It was a nice relaxing day - it makes such a difference to weekends Babel both having a car and not having to work Sunday was actually okay too - my little cousin came to visit in the morning, and in the afternoon I interspersed progress with La Lada Tambureto with surfing the net for career ideas. I didn’t find anything terribly interesting for myself, but I did accidentally find that the job Babel was waiting for to come online now has, and hopefully by the time I’ve posted this he’ll have submitted his phd application, and things will be starting to work out
Tags: stratford