Andrew Brennan

Had an excellent dinner at Dottie and Bianca’s new place near Whitechapel on Valentine’s day. Keats, Tab, Tony and Carl B. also attended. My favorite bits of the evening were Bianca’s avocado spring rolls (fortified with bacon!) and the passing around of appropriate/inappropriate love hearts.

 

Manniversary (13 February)

Anthony and I have been going steady for two years now, somehow, so to celebrate we went to The Wolseley for dinner. They apparently keep track of your reservation history (which, um, maybe violates EU privacy laws?); this worked to our advantage as we got a very nice table in the corner. Anthony had these amazing scallops with black risotto, and I had the steak frites and an avocado and bacon salad.

 

Abercrombie and Kent Party (11 February)

Emma is currently working for Abercrombie and Kent, the ridiculously posh ‘private travel’ agency (they invented the concept of the safari, apparently) and she invited a bunch of us to the launch of their new branch in Harrod’s. After monopolizing the champagne and canapes, we went to the afterparty that Robin organized at Maya and had a bit of a dance.

 

Murder Mystery Oxford (5 February)

Yannis invited us to the Oxford Gastronomy Society’s murder mystery dinner, which took place in the McKenna room at Christ Church. The traffic out of London wasn’t bad and we managed to make the dinner on time. The murder took place in 1920s Chicago and after warming up to our characters — I was US Congressman Darrin Toosteal — we had a very nice time. The food was good too.

 

Snow (2 February)

London got a little snow and CHAOS ENSUED! Seriously, nearly everything closed. I managed to trudge into work in my wellies no sweat–Percy Street looked nice in the snow.

 

Tough Guy (1 February)

Never again. This ridiculous event was actually fun for the first half–it was a cross country course with climbing and jumping obstacles. It was freezing cold but Ben and I were still smiling (Rob and Robin, whose idea it was to do this, both cancelled, blaming rugby and skiing-related injuries); I had enough layers on and was starting to sweat. When the sun came out briefly, I naively thought, “Hey, maybe it will be nice to cool down in the water.”

Oh how wrong I was. The second half of the course, where we trudged and swam through streams and pools, was perhaps the most painful physical experience of my life–ten times worse than the last 250m of a 2k rowing race. It was unimaginably cold and kept getting worse. First the water was thigh deep as we jumped into and climbed out of a stream, back and forth in an S pattern about eight times. Then it was waist deep as we alternated between ponds and running through flaming bales of hay. Then it was chest deep until we were completely submerged for the underwater tunnel and later the ‘death plunge.’ I managed to hold it together and finish in just over 2 hours, but Ben started shaking uncontrolably somewhere around the flaming bales of hay and had to be pulled out by the medics. It took me several hours to completely warm up again after the finish.

The only good thing to come out of this madness: knowing that every athletic competition I do in the future will be easier than Tough Guy.