Grand Times at the Rapture Picnic

Well, I’m still here.  Six-o-clock came and went, and as far as I can tell, everybody’s still here, exactly as I expected them to be.  We had an absolutely lovely day being left behind, and it was shared with some amazing old friends, and a whole rotating cast of new characters to keep the end times interesting.

I woke up early and wrote my Friday night blog (oops), and then headed off on an early morning walk to the grocery store to get provisions for the picnic.  A distinct lack of strawberries meant no breakfast smoothies, but I think we all survived without them.  I proceeded to make one of the prettiest pasta salads I’ve ever seen.  I loved all the different colors from the red bell pepper, the green onion, the yellow corn and the deep purple black beans.  All this swirling around spiral shaped pasta and glistening with a spicy lime vinaigrette was pretty tantalizing.  I wish I would have taken a photo.

I also baked up some jalapeno corn muffins, which were pretty tasty in my opinion, though Geoff didn’t like them.  I don’t think they’re used to corn muffins in the UK.  We packed all of this up, along with ham sandwiches, wine and those cookies from the night before and headed down to People’s Park which is right in the heart of the city.  I was worried that we’d be roasting in our skins at 3 in the afternoon, but we got lucky with some clouds in the sky keeping the heat relatively mild.  As we sat on our blanket feasting, Gill’s work friends came and went throughout the afternoon, many of them being treated to a cookie or a muffin, which they all seemed to love.

Afternoon turned into evening which distinctly became night before we finally abandoned our place in the park.  If I had a nice comfy cushioned chair, I could have stayed in that park all night.  The weather was gorgeous, and we were being treated to a variety of music of varying quality by people who just brought their instruments and a small PA to the park and started playing.  It was all very amusing, and the conversation was intriguing on all sides.  Finally though, some people managed to require food again, how I don’t know.  We headed over to Uzo with what was left of the picnic crowd.  I dispensed with all pretense and skipped the hummus and went straight for the brownies and ice cream.

It was lovely to meet so many people, with the exception of the old Taiwanese man who offered me a ring if I would kiss him.  Normally I get very nervous around new people, but being able to offer them something delicious from my oven seems to be a good ice breaker.  I’m thrilled that this didn’t end up being the end of the world as we know it.  I want more days like this.