PHOTOS: PARTY PEOPLE

Click HERE for photos of our housewarming/Max's 30th party

HOUSEWARMING

SOMETHING I AM NEVER DOING AGAIN, AS LONG AS I LIVE: drinking - or even talking about - alcohol

Uuuggghhhh. I'm sick and don't think I'll ever recover...

Let me explain. Yesterday was really really fun. Anne has finished university for the summer and has every Friday off from the two jobs that she works. So, after an intense morning crafting the perfect party playlist on iTunes, I invited her over for lunch and we had a really nice time, eating a fancy lady salad and chatting.

Anne was grateful for the lightness of lunch, as she went to a wedding last night and was planning to wear an outfit so figure-hugging that it wouldn't allow for underwear, let alone a big lunch beforehand.

However, when Anne went to get said outfit out after lunch, she discovered it was all dirty, so came round in a whirl of panic, needing advice as to what to wear. She showed me her prom dress (which she can still fit into, the beast, and which looks a lot like a dress Julia Roberts wore to the Oscars the year she won - distinctly un-poofy and prom-like) and also an amazing lace teadress that used to belong to her grandmother but is still in beautiful condition. Apparently there's cinefilm footage of her grandmother wearing the dress, aged about 18, which must be amazing.

Anyway, it wasn't appropriate for the wedding, so I ended up bringing over all the dresses and fancy tops I have with me and Anne ended up borrowing one and the day was saved. Hurrah!

That disaster averted, I could get back to the extensive preparations for our housewarming party last night which was to double up as a belated 30th for Maxy. Max sent out the invitation and didn't really give me an idea of how many people he'd told or how many had replied, so I was a little bit shooting in the dark as I made THREE trips to the supermarket for food and booze (ugh).

My baking mojo deserted me once more as I made krispie marshmallow treats that were all krispie and no marshmallow, the icing for Maxy's cake looked a little it had been through the digestive tract of a living being and the corn syrup with which I had to panic-strickenly improvise because America doesn't 'do' golden syrup simply wasn't doing the job.

Everything just seemed to take ages and when Maxy's friend Mat arrived from New York, I was still tearing around the kitchen, trying to make sticky sesame sausages from a combination of recipes I'd found online - none of which agreed or were quite right - and with the closest things to sausages that I could find that turned out to be more like frankfurters. What's wrong with this country - would a straightforward sausage be so difficult?!

Fortunately Maxy came home and the two chaps help me whip up a greek salad and potato salad and we created a mighty table of supplies, with all the food (including little tortilla 'scoops' - crisps shaped like a teeny bowl, with which to scoop up salsa!) and drink anyone could ever need (complete with picnic cooler turned into an ice bucket and bowls of lemon slices and lime slices!). And I still wasn't convinced that more than 4 people were going to turn up...

But people turned up in their droves, led by Erik Love and his placid friend Kim. Fortunately Mat was an absolute star at holding the hosting fort while Max and I put the finishing touches to the food. Then Patrick and Leanna came, Whitters and some other BBC folks turned up and Alison came with her flatmate Emily, who we'd heard lots about but hadn't met before, a fun friend called Kara who was taking a break from her three kids for the weekend and a very boring chap called Stephen who looked far too much like my ex-boyfriend Gavin to be pleasant.

We were also graced with the presence of Paula from upstairs (the faux-Stompy! So embarrassing - she was so super-nice and even bought Max a present) and Giles and Dan from downstairs, all of whom we'd only 'invited' by way of letting them know there'd be noise going on, rather than expecting them to come. But Paula in particular seemed especially nice.

Ooh! And I completely forgot to reveal who the real Stompy is/are - it's only Giles and Dan from downstairs! Not the clompy footsteps - that must be Paula's neighbour - but definitely the loud TV and stereo noise and men's voices. I think I just assumed that the noise was coming from upstairs, but they had their garden door open the other day when we were being assaulted by really loud music and I put my head out of the window and worked out the music was coming from their apartment! So mystery solved. And Giles was kind enough to ask whether their noise disturbed us, so I could say most definitely yes. Woo - the future is bright! The future is quiet!

Dan inexplicably thought it appropriate to bring their two 'monkey-faced' (Max's expression) dogs with them, which was weird. And the very first thing he said to me was, 'do you drive?'. Thinking that he was going to give me tips for weekend getaways, I said that we don't but we hire cars from time to time and he said, 'Good - we can have your parking space then'! The cheek. Giles is in IT at the Discovery Channel and Dan is a pharmaceutical lobbyist. They were actually both very friendly and said we're welcome in their garden whenever we see them having cocktails.

Dan and Giles brought with them another of our downstairs neighbours called Kimber - a woman with the most drawly southern accent that she's quite hypnotic to talk to. And Max's friend from the Guardian - Oliver - also came and he seems really really nice. He also just interviewed Snoop and Marlow from 'The Wire' and has a preview DVD copy of series 5, so it was excellent to talk to him. I hope we see more of him (not just because he can supply us with 'The Wire').

Ailsa - one of the party stalwarts from the BBC bureau congratulated us on managing to have a party where BBC guests were outnumbered by real DC folks and it did feel really nice to have such a large and varied group of people there.

The party was a real hit, mainly thanks to the gargantuan amount of gin, vodka, rum, beer and wine that we put on and was duly necked. There was a healthy din of chatter and the music went down well but the AC struggled to keep things cool, so we had to bring in the fan, which made all the girls look like they were in a J-Lo video, with their hair flying everywhere.

I felt a little bit like I hadn't got much party time, as I was making pizzas in the kitchen and stuff, but had loads of fun and was just excited to see the flat getting so warmed by so many new friends. Emily is particularly nice and told us of the hilarious faux-English accent her boss inexplicably puts on, so we rang her answerphone to have a listen (it is indeed hilarious) and Erik Love just kept haranguing me to put some Usher music on. In fact he and Emily got quite militant as the evening wore on and I had to stand guard of the computer, to stop them messing with the meticulously crafted playlist.

Midnight came and went and there were still quite a few people here as the dancing began. I have vague memories of doing an interpretive solo dance to 'Flashdance' and have only discovered since going through my photos that Erik Love - esteemed PhD student and all-round funster - bore his midriff (right).

By about 3am, most people had left, but Ailsa and a strange man from the BBC were still here as Max and I started pointedly clearing up around them. They eventually got the hint and, with an unnervingly clean post-party flat, we hit the hay.

Then I hit the bathroom.

So I hadn't been that drunk. Fun, but not crazy, falling-over-being-inappropriate drunk (it really doesn't take much to make me do interpretive dance). Because all the preparations overran so much and once the party started I was forever running around topping up glasses and plates, I didn't manage to eat (except for a half hour towards the end, when I cradled a massive bowl of Cheezits in my arms and compulsively hoovered them up. Not so delicious and certainly not nutritious...). But I didn't get that drunk. Sure, I remember one moment when I took a swig of my red drink (I was on the red gin cocktails) and spat it out, convinced someone had put vodka in it, only to have Mat taste it and explain that it was gin but that I'd yet to put mixer in it, which is why it tasted funny. But I wasn't that drunk.

But I was that sick! Eeerrrggghhh. I just threw up for ages and ages. Max was really kind and stayed with me and, when rubbing my back made me feel worse, he just chatted to me. Though his conversation was limited almost exclusively to, 'wow! you're so tanned! I've never seen you so tanned! You have such a good tan!'. Which was nice to hear, but there may've been more appropriate moments than when I was barfing.

Ugh. I felt so extremely unwell. And then I woke up this morning and felt even worse. By that time, it was Max throwing up in the bathroom, and then I took my turn, too. We were meant to spend today taking Mat to the vineyard in Virginia where Alison has a Saturday job, but just the idea of being surrounded by alcohol all day made me want to cry. I have never EVER felt so bad in my life.

The usual course of action here would be to sleep it off and spend the day on the sofa, but things were complicated by Alison having left her car here last night, so that we could drive over to pick her up this morning and then all head out to the vineyard. She still had to go to work, so I had to get the car to her. Uuugghh.

I seriously don't have the words to describe how difficult Max and I found it to drive half an hour across town. For a start, I had to ring Alison to find out how to work the car and she had to remind me that the clutch is on the right. Then we just had to go really slow and keep breathing and keep the windows open and hope very strongly that we'd get there soon.

Alison was out to breakfast with Kara when we arrived, so we sat on her doorstep like a couple of crumpled casualties, which amused them both a lot when they got there. This really wasn't any normal hangover - those are sometimes almost quite fun in how rubbish you feel. This was some manner of poisoning, I tell you. I may even have been heard to ask whether I should go to the ER as we stumbled away from Alison's flat.

The metro clearly wasn't going to work for us, so we got a taxi. Unfortunately I didn't last so long in the swervy moving vehicle and we had to bail halfway home to let me sit on a bench and hold my head for some time. When we finally got a second taxi to take us the rest of the way, I did all I could to employ mind over matter, reminding myself that people in far worse situations do amazing things with the power of thought. But unfortunately my mind is weak and I threw up again as soon as we got home.

Mat had yet to surface when we returned from our tortuous voyage and I promptly passed out and slept for three hours. When I woke up I felt slightly better but distinctly shaky. Max and Mat had installed themselves on the sofa and were watching the Democratic Rules & Bylaws Committee on TV, deciding how to apportion the disputed Michigan and Florida delegations to the Democratic convention. It was exactly like far less geeky men watching a sports game, with Mat and Maxy shouting at the screen and getting childishly excited. But it was politics.

Seeping onto the sofa, I bravely flicked through magazines while Maxy fed me with restorative bagels. I was very grateful that we'd cleaned up so thoroughly last night, as there was no lingering alcoholic reminder of what caused my severe condition.

Once the politics geeks were satisfied, we sloped up to Adams Morgan for drinks on the roof of The Reef and then some comfort burgers (the boys managed Bloody Marys, too) across the road at a nice diner before coming home for some comfort 'West Wing'.

I am never drinking again.

TIME FLIES

MOST MISGUIDED USE OF SEGWAY: a really tall man was zooming around the supermarket on his segway yesterday, looking like an intimidating gliding giant. Then he queued up behind me and kept nudging my trolley with his massive segway, by way of rushing me along. When segways go bad.

I cannot believe it's going to be June on Sunday!! Where did the last two months go? At this rate, I'm going to start getting sad about leaving here, which seems ridiculous with ten months left, but if they're going to whizz by so quickly, I'll have no choice!

So my Softball Back (a syndrome that will soon be absorbed into everyday parlance) is only just clearing up, two days after that fateful throw. I was meant to have my first game of tennis yesterday, courtesy of the tennis partners website I signed up to, but had to cancel, for fear of making my back worse. Is this the future?!

Unfortunately Max had already made plans for last night, with the Guardian's Washington correspondent, who is apparently very nice, so that's good.

Talk here mostly revolves around Hillary Clinton's astonishing comments about how it's not weird that she hasn't dropped out of the race yet, because previous primaries have lasted until the convention. For example, Bill Clinton didn't secure the nomination in '92 until the convention and of course Bobby Kennedy got shot in '68, thereby prolonging the race. So essentially, Hillary's just hanging in there until Obama gets assassinated.

Aaaaarrrrrggghhh! This would be mammothly insensitive in any situation, but since there's been loads of talk about how Obama's biggest problem in his campaign is the very real threat that he might get shot, it's so unbelievably poorly judged. And according to the Washington Post, this wasn't the first time that Hillary made this suggestion.

I mercilessly stole that link from Justin Webb's BBC blog (much as I'd like you to think I monitor the Washington Post website closely), which also carries this clip of Keith Olbermann (we quite like him and used to watch him a lot before the days of the 'Wing) laying into Clinton. While his level of hysteria is a little much and his use of a different voice for the different cameras is really contrived, it's amazing to hear someone give a run down of all the terrible mistakes Hillary herself has made in her campaign. I can't imagine the list would be anywhere near as long for Obama, seeing as the biggest upset so far has only surrounded someone associated with him, rather than things Obama himself has said in error.

I had a very lovely leisurely day today. The weather has been just gorgeous lately - hot and sunny but not muggy - but I'm told by simply everyone that it will not last and we should enjoy it while we can, before the insane humidity sets in for three months. Woo!

Alison had a conference at the Hilton right across the street from us (the one where Reagan got shot in 1981), so we met up for lunch, which was really nice. Waiting for her, I was hypnotised by the beauty of the Hilton's outdoor pool, fantasising about spending my afternoons there reading and occasionally splashing around in the cool cool sparkly water that sits so invitingly just across the road from our flat. Mmmmm. But I looked into it a while ago and it costs loads to join the Hilton health club and there are no non-member rates, so it'd be a very expensive way to get cool. *sigh*

When I meet Maxy for lunch in Dupont Circle, we sit on a bench and eat packed lunches of bagels and crisps. But Alison doesn't do slumming, so we ate al fresco at a restaurant down the road called La Tomate. It's outdoors bit is very nice and umbrella-y, but I can't help but think of the pub on the roundabout at Swiss Cottage, as both are essentially eateries on massive road intersections, which doesn't make for the most restful eating experience. Anyway, it was very nice to be ladies who lunch and to wander back in the sunshine.

Then Alison came over after ducking out of her conference early this afternoon, too. We sat and chatted while stuffing our faces with toffee popcorn Alison had stolen from the conference's snack table.

When Alison headed home, I went to meet Max to go for cocktails at yet another roof terrace bar we heard about. It was the Beacon Bar at the top of a hotel just opposite our gym and we had a nice time watching the sun go down over the city. The view isn't the best of the myriad roof terraces we've now visited, but it was nice to sit out and spend time with Maxy other than in front of the West Wing, especially as he's working crazy hard at the moment.

STRIIIIIKE!

WEIRDEST THING I MISS ABOUT BRITAIN: Jonathan Ross. Eh??!

Maxy was sick today! Yeay!

Poor fellow. We think it might be a delayed reaction to Sunday night's Ruby Tuesday disaster, but either way, he's been home all day, never straying too far from the bathroom, poor chap.

But for me, it's been great! It's been lovely to have company all day and I've enjoyed playing nursie for him, while having an excuse to watch 'The West Wing' nonstop.

Fortunately he was feeling better by this evening, when I played my first ever softball game. Since Patrick invited me to join his team a couple of weeks ago, it's been rained off each Tuesday. But it's been super sunny - and incredibly humid - here today (it's the first day we've had to put our air conditioning on. All hail the A/C!), so softball was very much on this evening.

I thought we'd be playing in the shadow of the Washington Monument on the Mall, where I've seen lots of people playing softball. But we played miles further on from the Mall, right by the FDR monument on the tidal basin. The nearest metro is about a mile and a half away so we were knackered by the time we got to the monument, only to discover that the FDR monument is this hellish complex of waterfalls and statues and big marble slabs that seems to go on forever. So there we were - tired, boiling and running late - stuck in this neverending village of FDR remembrance. Gnaaah.

We finally made it to the West Potomac Park - with not a shadow-casting obelisk in sight - and met up with Patrick and the rest of his office team. Patrick's firm is really big, so it turned out that he didn't know half the team, either, so I didn't feel too much like a duck out of water. Erm, except for not having the team strip or knowing which hand to wear my mitt on (Alison kindly lent me her glove. Glove! What wimps these Americans are - a softball ball can't be any harder than a cricket ball, for goodness sake. Now granted, I played wicketkeeper, but *most* people don't need gloves for catching hard balls!).

There were mercifully too many people there, so I got 'benched' for the 'top half' of the game, to give me time to get to grips with what's going on. Turns out softball is nothing like rounders. I thought, because it isn't baseball, that it'd be nice and genteel - soft, you might say - like rounders. Alas, no. I really can't discern any difference between softball and baseball, other than they bowl underarm in softball. But you have the same bat, the ball's basically the same but a bit bigger and people wear mitts.

Our team was basically pretty rubbish. We had a few stars (of which Patrick was certainly one, which was surprising, because he's so elfin), but the rest were pretty rubbish at hitting and fielding.

I tried my best to keep up with how many strikes you're allowed (three) and what a 'ball' is (basically if the bowler bowls it wide or too low/high). Apparently if you get four 'balls' in a row, you get a 'walk' to first base, which is a Good Thing.

By the time it came for me to bat - I kid you not - my legs were really wobbly. All of a sudden, I couldn't work out how to hold the bat or how to stand at the batting plate. Do you stand side on, like on telly? Or face-on, like in rounders? (I soon learnt that the answer to any question about softball that ends with 'like in rounders' is invariably 'no'.) And how high do you hold the bat? In rounders, you just hold it with one hand out to your side, but in softball you hold it with two hands, up by your ear, behind your head. But I worried that I didn't stand much chance of hitting the ball with the bat all the way back there.

Anyway, with legs shaking and Maxy adorably shouting encouragement and whoops from the sideline (despite being poorly), I took my first ball. It fell down by my feet, but I went to hit it anyway. I got a strike and apparently if I'd left it, it would've been a ball. So it was a Bad Thing that I tried to hit it.

The bowler just keeps bowling until a) you hit it or b) you take three strikes and are out or c) there are four 'balls' and you progress to first base automatically. I managed to hit the second ball and made it to second base. Success!

In rounders, the idea is to get around the four bases just as soon as possible. So it's a sneaky skill to start running as soon as the next batter hits the ball - you get round quicker that way and free up bases behind you in case the next batter is very fast at running. So as soon as the next guy hit the ball, I ran to third base.

It turns out that, in softball, there are base coaches at first and third bases, telling you when to run. So they take care of the strategy and you're just the monkey, running when told to. I didn't gather this from the six innings I'd watched from the sidelines, so was merrily making my way to third base, despite a big burly man in our strip at third base telling me to go back and motioning with his hands. In retrospect, 'go back' might also have been what everyone was shouting at me from our team's camp. But I thought all of them - third base man included - were just kind of encouraging me, so I kept going.

When I got to third base, big burly man (who transpired to be the third base coach) was able to tell me close up and to my face to 'go back' but, with the arrogance of a rookie, I trusted in my mad wicked rounders skillz and just assumed he was being cautious/wrong.

Then I looked behind me just in time to see me get run out at second base.

Yes, this confused me too. What happened - I think - was that the batter behind me hit a 'fly' ball that looped up into the air and was caught by a fielder. In softball, you're not allowed to progress around the bases until the ball has hit the ground. So because I illegally left second base before this happened, I was eligible for being run out. Which I guess accounts for the now-wise shouts of 'go back'.

A softball innings lasts as long as it takes for three people to get out, so me getting out in error at the same time as the batter was caught out was a Bad Thing and I felt terrible. Patrick was kind enough to try to take the blame, for not explaining all the rules to me, and the team were very nice to me. But I felt so guilty, as they'd obviously done their best to stop me messing up by shouting so much as I was running.

I felt crushed at being out, much like I did when I was little. I was so pleased that Max was there to hug me, or else I may've sloped off and either sulked or cried a la the 10-year old Soph (probably the latter).

The other team soon dispatched of one more member of our team and it was our turn to field. Fortunately I was put where only a left-handed hitter with a very good eye would've sent the ball, so the innings was pretty uneventful for me.

Just as well because, not only can I not throw further than a foot in front of me, but when I was throwing a ball around with Patrick before the game, I was using the glove just like an extension of my hand, but he taught me that in softball, you've got to kind of put the glove in front of your body, twisting your wrist and arm left, which felt really unnatural.

I had one more undistinguished innings as a batter, managing to get round without committing a terrible blunder and making sure I listened to the base coaches very carefully (despite the fact that they kept using funny words that baffled me).

After our resounding defeat (which can't all have been my fault), I stuck around for some informal training from some teammates and was taught how to bat properly. It was really weird to have to teach my body how to do something for the first time in so long. I've been whacking stuff with rackets and bats for so long that I never had to really pay attention in PE when the teacher was showing you how to grip the bat, or whatever. But this time, I had to really pay attention as to how to hold the bat and where to put my weight as the ball came to me.

As is typical, I became really good practising with the nice teaching man, but as soon as I stepped onto the plate to hit some balls to the rest of the team in the field, all my learning whizzed right out of the ear it had gone into and my body went into counter-productive autopilot, swinging wildly at anything and everything that came near it. What's worse is, when I went out to do fielding practice, I had one opportunity to throw the ball and in doing so, really badly twisted my back and it still hurts now. I worry that I'll forever have a twinge in my back, reminding me of my disastrous softball debut.

I felt a little deflated and embarrassed as we bid farewell to the team and got a taxi home (it's SUCH a long way from the metro!), but had enjoyed messing around in shorts and a t-shirt outside and was so pleased that Maxy my cheerleader was there. We went for comfort food at the diner round the corner from our apartment, then cheered me up with some 'West Wing'.

MEMORIAL DAY

WORST COVER SONG UNCOVERED BY EXPLORING OUR NEWLY RESTORED iTUNES: Al Green's 'Say A Little Prayer'

Today is a bank holiday, for Memorial Day and the city is deserted. It's the weirdest thing - bank holidays are obviously done very differently here. In Britain, it's a chance to hang out and go shopping on a weekday and there's always loads of people milling around. But I can only guess that in DC, people flee the city for the whole weekend.

Seriously, most shops are shut and there's hardly anyone on the streets. I walked Maxy to work this morning and, where there's usually a throng of busy commuters, we could count the people we passed on the fingers of one hand. It was a bit like we'd fallen asleep and woken up after an apocalypse (but one that shopkeepers knew was coming, so they closed up first).

The reason Max is working today is that national holidays aren't included in his contract, so he has to take them as annual leave. This means he can work the national holidays - when the office is really quiet and he can go in late and leave early - and save up the holiday for our big roadtrip at the end of our stay here. Fiendish, eh?

On our way to his work, we saw a squirrel scampering around in a garden, then noticed a chirpy bird nearby too and thought it was like a touching scene from 'Enchanted', or something. Until we realised that the bird was terrorising the squirrel! Seriously - it was really going for it and the squirrel was running scared, taking cover whenever possible. It was amazing and we watched, transfixed, for quite some time. Ah, the violence of the natural world. But seriously - that squirrel could have had the bird - I don't know what it was thinking by running away.

I met Maxy for lunch, but we couldn't find anywhere that was open, so had to make do with a burrito at a Mexican fast food chain called Chipotle. It wasn't so nice. I look forward to restaurants opening up again after the holiday.

After a gruelling six hour day, Maxy knocked off and we went in search of one of the city's public outdoor swimming pools for a bit of late afternoon splish splash - it's still exceedingly hot here. We found the pool - just by the apartment block where we stayed when we first got here - but there was no water in it and it was closed. It was such a bummer and SO hot.

So we wandered home, planning to dump our stuff and head out to the movies. But when we got to the apartment, there was a note on our door from our lovely neighbour Anne, inviting us out to drinks up the road in Adams Morgan!

With a handy couple of hours to spare, we polished off series 2 of 'The West Wing' and then headed out to meet Anne.

We went to The Reef, which has a fantastic roof terrace, overlooking Adams Morgan (left) and down to the Washington Monument. Anne's boyfriend Hugh came along, so we got to meet him properly, having only previously met him in passing. Then Anne's cousin (and flatmate) Megan arrived with her boyfriend (and Josh Groban doppelganger) Jonathan.

It was such a fun night - they're all incredibly nice and terrific company and we just couldn't stop thinking how lucky we are that we live in this sunny city with roof terraces where lovely neighbours leave notes on our door to go out for impromptu fun drinks. It's a little like being back at university, in having total independence but very few responsibilities or cares.

One *slight* care that cropped up over the evening is that Megan is evidently the perfect woman for Maxy. Yeah, slight glitch there. She's really funny and is a speech writer for a very small, high-powered firm set up by two people from the Clinton administration. She's written speeches for George Clooney on Darfur, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates and other good and important people. She basically is Sam Seabourne and her bosses have said they'll help her get into Obama's administration, if he gets the presidency. Gnaaah.

Now none of this is particularly new - we've met super-clever political girls before - but Megan couples her high-powered political goodness with a great love of popular culture, owning a DVD collection to rival only mine and featuring staples such as 'Alias', 'Veronica Mars', 'Arrested Development' and of course, 'The West Wing'. Hmph.

Anyways, her boyfriend Jonathan is really nice, too. He works for a think tank set up by Clinton but now supportive of Obama and he's hoping to get into the government if Obama wins, too. And I cannot tell you how much he looks like Josh Groban.

Drinks turned into dinner, during which Hugh bought some random guy in military uniform a drink, which was interesting, and Anne pointed out a 'typical DC couple' - a silver-haired old guy with a very young girlfriend on his arm. Apparently this is the norm in the city and it kind of grossed us all out. Never more so than when the guy left, leaving his 'girlfriend' behind and taking a woman who was quite clearly her mother/his wife with him! Whoops.

I had lovely chats with Anne, during which it became quite apparent that we're extremely similar and are going to be firm friends. She had to go home relatively early as she had work to do before tomorrow. So we left with her and helped her with the extremely boring data entry work she had to do for a while, but could take it no more and sloped home, clutching series 3 of 'The West Wing' in our sweaty palms.

PARK LIFE

CUTEST THING EVER: the little girl I sat next to in the cinema was so tiny (I reckon she was under 3 years old) that she wasn't heavy enough to make the flip-down seat stay down, so spent the movie kind of enveloped by the chair. Awww.

It's really quiet because everyone seems to've gone out of town for the bank holiday weekend, so there was no Stompy (whoever that is) to wake us up early on a Sunday morning, which was nice.

When I got back from church, we made a picnic and went to check out our local park for the first time - Malcolm X Park (officially called Meridian Hill Park). Turns out it's just a couple of blocks away and it's loooovely. The park itself is a steep hill with waterfalls running down it and a grassy bit to the side, where people sit amongst the trees. At the top, there is a flat rectangular open area with benches around the side - a little like small neighbourhood parks in Paris - but the grass was all closed off yesterday, for fertilising, or something.

It was soooo sunny and SO hot and we just lay out, as if on the beach. The crucial thing missing from this equation was the sea or a pool to dive into when we got hot, so I was pleased when Mum and Dad rang and I could chat to them from the shade.

While ranting at them about 'Atonement' from under a tree, an unsuspecting gay fellow cruised Max - setting up camp far closer to the shirtless Devo than was necessary (on the right of our green towel in this pic) and then just kind of staring at him. Max was unaware of all of this, as he was snoozing behind his sunglasses, but I felt bad when I had to return to the towel, revealing that not only was Max attached, but to quite the wrong make of person, too.

It was so relaxing to lie out in the sun, but the heat finally got too much and, in the absence of a pool, we headed to the next best thing for cooling off - an aggressively air conditioned cinema - to watch 'Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Skull', which we both really enjoyed because it was every inch an Indy film, complete with big stone cogs covered in cobwebs, turning to open a door into a big ancient vault, and stuff. Also, clothes hang off Harrison Ford really well - that's a skill.

We were starving after the movie, so made the mistake of going to a restaurant chain called Ruby Tuesday across the road. It just turned into one of those heinous meals where the service is terrible and the waiter forgets your order, everything takes HOURS to arrive and when it does it's wrong. But fortunately I got my whole meal free after kicking up a relatively small fuss, so it wasn't a complete disaster.

MALLRATS

As the pioneer of treacherous voyages from DC to Virginia, I was able to guide Max to safe passage as once again we ventured to the next door state to fix our computer (this time to solve the problems created by the person who was meant to fix it yesterday).

We made sure we visited a 'genius bar' at a different Apple store. This one was housed in Pentagon City - an enormous mall of fancy shops like Apple, Nordstroms and Macys. It felt a little like we were 14 year olds on a date, as we wandered around the shops and had lunch in the 'food plaza'.

We were fortunately able to find a slightly more competent 'genius', who told us how to buy a programme that transfers music from iPods back onto computers and that seems to've done the trick, so our 18,000+ songs have been restored and now all I need to go through is the tedious task of recreating our playlists. Ugh.

With our peace of mind restored, we hit the shops of Pentagon City and I was pleased to find that Max was in a buying kind of a mood. Sometimes when we go shopping, he tries lots of stuff on but never buys anything but it's way more fun when he starts splashing the cash. Especially now, when I can't really afford to go clothes shopping, so get to live vicariously through his extravagance.

Somewhat extraordinarily for someone who doesn't wear suits to work, Max bought four suits yesterday! He got a cool grey pinstripe one in the sale at a fashion-y shop, that will be good for bars and parties and for wearing the jacket over jeans. Then we spent hoooouuuurrsss in Macys where there was a gigantic Memorial Day weekend sale on and he snapped up two Ralph Lauren suits and one beautifully cut by Alfani for a tiny fraction of the price. So the money Max's folks gave him for a fancy suit for his birthday has gone a very long way!

With the computer fixed, many suits bought and Virginia no longer a strange and faraway place, we went home for dinner and a movie - 'Atonement'.

Mum had warned me that she'd walked out of 'Atonement' an hour in, and I don't traditionally like Keira Knightley or Joe Wright, but I heart James McAvoy and Dad said it's the greatest piece of cinema he's ever seen, so I felt it had to be done.

I am on Mum's side.

Aaaaarrrgghhh, I hated it SO much. Aaaarrgghh, it was so awful. Sure enough, Fishface Knightley bothered me - especially with the absurd BAFTA nomination she got for her performance. And it didn't help that I hadn't enjoyed Romola Garai in the production of 'King Lear' we saw last year (or that we were supposed to accept that her character wouldn't have changed her hairstyle from the age of 13 to 70something). And would someone PLEASE explain why on earth Saoirse Ronan was nominated for an Oscar??!

But the two things that annoyed me the most were Joe Wright's direction which, while looking very pretty from time to time, frequently made no real grammatical sense. He'd use effects for no real reason, some shots felt really random and the infamous long single shot just really irritated me, because it starts as POV James McAvoy, then veers off to do a general sweep of the vista, then picks up with McAvoy again. Which, to me (and I SO don't know what I'm talking about), seems like showing off for showing off's sake - if you're going to change the view from POV to a general shot, then surely put a cut in there to mark the switch.

The other thing that didn't work for me was the plot. I get moved by the most ridiculously small things - adverts, 'Neighbours', Chinese people... - but 'Atonement' left me absolutely cold. I wasn't at all sad at the end and didn't feel the impact of the sweeping epic romance that it was trying to be.

Max said that this was part of his frustration with it, having read the book - that the book isn't about an epic love story set in wartime, but rather storytelling and narrative. It's about the telling of tales - both in the sense of lies and in literally recounting stories. So to bring it to the screen as this big romance is missing the point of the book and can only fall short. Boo.

That green dress that Fishface wears is beautiful though, and James McAvoy was terrific and I liked the music, too.

Suffice to say, it felt good to cleanse our visual palates with a bit of trusty 'West Wing' afterwards.

TWO DAYS; THREE MEALS

Yesterday, I had to go on an intrepid journey to Virginia - a whole different state! - to get our computer fixed at the 'genius bar' of the nearest Apple Store. In fact, getting to Virginia just involved sitting on the metro for about four stops (with my bike! cool!), but it was a terrific adventure nevertheless. Virginia looks very different to DC. Erm, kind of.

Unfortunately it all turned out to be a massive waste of time, as not only did our computer behave itself like an errant child who no-one believes is a nightmare because they're always good in public, but the 'genius' actually managed to make things work and lose 80% of our iTunes library. I am only able to write this calmly having freaked out at length already. Gnaaah.

In the evening we met with another friend of the person who put us in touch with Alison. Hopes were high, as we'd hit it off so well with Alison, but unfortunately that law-of-averages thing that I thought would apply to Erik Love actually came into force on this evening. Jackie and David (both American) are management consultants. Jackie looks like Tina Fey and David wears tan suits and hangs out at Boujis when he's in London. They're both nice enough, but Jackie's just kind of hard work and hates DC, so is down on everything, while David seems just a bit to much of a sloaney networker.

In good news, we discovered another lovely roof terrace restaurant and had quite nice sushi with them during a gorgeous sunset. But we were a little relieved when the night was over and we could slope home to watch 'The West Wing'. I got the impression they probably were, too - I got little sense that they enjoyed our company and think they were happy to get home to watch the UK's Prime Minister's Questions, which they enjoy every week.

But the balance was reset today when I had lunch with a really nice lady called Cindy. She used to work for Tiger Aspect when they had an office in DC and the head of production in London gave me her details. We met in Georgetown and were quite the ladies who lunch. It was lovely, to cycle through the sunshine to my lunch date in Georgetown, and me and Cindy got on really really well.

Before Cindy arrived, I was wandering around the nice restaurant she'd chosen, accosting any sole female and asking if they were called Cindy, when a nice old couple befriended me. We got chatting and it turns out that he spent 20 years in London, living just round the corner from where my friends and goddaughter live in Eaton Place. When the lady heard I was from London, she asked if I knew some person, who runs a hedge fund there and again - as with my first trip to Georgetown - I worried I'd been woefully mistaken for someone way fancier than I am! Anyway, they left and the chap - Lanny Carew - gave me his card and asked me not to be a stranger. Turns out he was instrumental in setting up BBC America (still not quite sure what it is he does), so perhaps he'd be someone good for Max to meet.

Anyway, Cindy's really nice. She's head of production at National Geographic, is probably in her early 40s and has been married for two years (her second marriage) to a chap called Jim who's a personal trainer and actor. We got on really well and seem similarly frustrated with the way that reality TV is replacing all the good programmes and that working in TV doesn't really do much good to the world as a whole.

We chatted and chatted and chatted and then had a ladylike saunter around the shops of Georgetown, including Dean and Deluca, where I found puff pastry but it cost $10 (£5ish)! Cindy has created a sort of co-op of production managers here in DC and offered to circulate my CV around, so it'll be good if I get a bit of work out of that.

Before I headed out to Georgetown, we were visited early this morning by our downstairs neighbour, Giles, who was complaining (very nicely and friendly-ly) that water was coming down from our apartment into his and that he was getting a bubble in his ceiling. We worked out that the water was coming from our bathroom and immediately called the management company to get a plumber over. He promptly discovered that there was so much water leaking behind our shower that the whole wall was rotted through.

The point of telling you this is sharing the utter relief that Max and I felt on realising it's not our problem. We've only been homeowners in London for a year, but are already exhausted by all the stuff you have to do when the property is your responsibility. So to be here and renting and able to just get a management company to sort things out is bliss.

This evening, we finally managed to have dinner with Geoff and Sarah, having made plans two or three times before but had them cancel. It was really nice to see them again, as they're kind of our original fun DC friends. But the whole evening turned out to be really stunted and difficult and - dare I say it - kind of boring! It was a real shocker - we seem to get on much better when drunk and bantering in a bar full of people, than when sitting round a table talking. It was a little painful and I began to worry that they probably think we're awfully dull, until I realised that actually it was them who were being weird and boring.

Maybe they were tired, or dying for a cigarette or something. But I'm relieved that we've made other friends here besides them. It doesn't look like we'll be going to the basketball game or getting the TeVo that Geoff promised when we first met on that fun night in the 18th St Lounge. Ah well.

DECLARING WAR ON STOMPY

COOLEST THING I DIDN'T DO TODAY: Max had to call 911 on his way home, when he saw a car blazing on fire on the street.

The rest of yesterday did not go well. I tried to stay awake for when Max got home from work late after the primaries, but eventually had to throw in the towel at 1am. However, when I got to bed, there was the loudest, most word-for-word TV noise coming from Stompy's apartment above our bedroom. Aaaarrrggghhh.

It was so loud and I so wanted to go up there, but I was just so snoozy I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed. I did compose a very angry note in my head though, which I wrote and took upstairs this morning. Stompy wasn't in, so I just put it under his door. The note made it clear that old buildings like this are obviously going to be rubbish when it comes to noise travel, but that to be woken up at 6.30am in the morning and kept awake until after 1.30am is deeply uncool.

With war on Stompy waged, I went to meet Max for lunch in Dupont Circle, where he told me he'd just seen a cool clip of a cooking travel programme starring Gwyneth Paltrow in which Gwynnie appears to be a really fun person! Who knew? I always thought she was kind of uptight and boring, not unlike a strict prefect, with her macrobiotic diet and dislike of interviews and stuff. But no, Maxy's right - check it out.

This evening, we went for dinner at the flat of Jonathan Whitney - news editor at the BBC Bureau. Apparently he's very important, but I just know him as Whitters, the chap who's super-fun and really friendly whenever we go out with the BBC lot. He's here for two years, but his girlfriend Katie isn't coming over until September. She's visiting at the moment and this was a chance for us to meet her, as she and I will hopefully become daytime buddies when she moves here.

Whitters' apartment is AMAZING. It's in an interesting part of town - about 5 blocks down from us, just off U Street. It's next door to Busboys & Poets, which is something of a DC institution (not sure why yet - will investigate). The reason it's interesting is because on his street, you can see the tidemark of gentrification. Literally, the wave of redevelopment kind of stops with his fancy new glassy apartment block and beyond it is rundown, paint peely tenement buildings.

The apartment itself is up on the 8th floor and is this really modern open-plan flat with exposed brickwork and big metal duct piping running around the ceiling. It's all furnished in blacks and reds and one whole wall is a window looking out onto a colossal balcony with a west-facing view from the Washington Monument right round to the National Cathedral. It's absolutely stunning and we watched the sun set behind the cathedral while drinking wine, which was lovely.

Whitters and Katie are away all July and have said we can have their keys and come up to the apartment on 4th July or for sunbathing. Awesome!

We had a really nice evening, with fun chat and nice food. Turns out Whitters was in Soham coordinating the BBC's coverage of that tragedy, and then also in Praia del Luz last summer, coordinating the coverage of Madeleine McCann story. We got interesting insights into both of those and I was amazed by how jolly he is, despite having been in the middle of horrible things. He spent a long time in Northern Ireland, too.

It wasn't quite as much fun as hanging out with Alison and Erik Love, but Whitters and Katie are really nice and I was very happy to discover that I've got my baking mojo back as we tucked into my first successful effort at brownies for dessert (third time lucky... I think the answer was the actual baking tin I bought the other day).

I was very proud that we were able to hop on a bus home, just like when we used to get the 94 home from Tom and Bambi's house if we were feeling snoozy. We're true locals! (erm, the fact that we just had to get straight down U St kind of diminishes our achievement).

We got home to find a long and mortified note under our door from Stompy. Except it very obviously isn't Stompy! The person who wrote the note - having received mine - is a lady called Paula who lives alone upstairs. I met her briefly a week or two ago, when she helped me get my bike through the front door. Turns out she is in the flat directly above us. But she can't possibly be Stompy, because the petulant stamping feet are definitely those of a heavy person, not a 5'2" lady and we regularly hear a male voice. Also, she mentioned in her note that she rarely listens to music, and we always hear music coming into our apartment. Oops! Paula was so nice in her note, totally accepting responsibility (despite the fact it very obviously isn't her who's disturbing us) and promising to take her shoes off when she walks around her flat. I feel awful and am now intent on finding the real Stompy.

MISSING: BAKING MOJO

MOST DELICIOUS NEW COCKTAIL DISCOVERY: the 'Blue Sting' - fresh blueberries, mango flavored rum, blueberry honey, crushed mint, limes and white cranberry juice. Niiiiice.

We saw Alison again last night, which was really fun. She brought along her friend Erik Love (who, for some reason is always referred to by his full name), a sociology PhD student and a friend of hers from when they were both teaching English in Japan after college.

I didn't really want to meet Erik Love. I figured we'd met enough nice people in Alison, Patrick and Anne and that surely our luck had to run out soon and we'd start uncovering boring people. But no! Erik Love is utterly hilarious and spectacular company.

Both the boys were late, which gave Alison and me time for chats before they arrived. Alison went on a date with a guy from her church last Friday who'd asked her out six months ago having never spoken to her, so she turned him down straight away. But then he asked again a week ago and, admiring his patience and persistence, she said yes and went on a date with him. His name is Brewster and he's 37 and works for Accenture.

It's interesting, being religious isn't a big deal here. Religion features so much more casually in conversation with people our age than in the UK - not as some great evangelical proclamations, but just as informing everyday life. It's no great mystery - more people our age are religious here - but it's nice for me to be able to mention faith in casual conversations without it being awkward, or sticking out a mile. It feels like in Britain, if you talk about it then you're defined by it and it is a thing. But here, you can just drop it into conversation and nothing is really thought of it.

We had dinner at a nice place called Zola, where we the wine flowed freely, as did the conversation. All of which led Max to order a $24 plate of cheese for dessert. You've never seen one person eat so much cheese.

It was nice to make another fun friend in Erik Love, though we're sad he's going back to California at the end of June, when his course here finishes.

It's the Oregon and Kentucky primaries today, so Max is working late tonight. But that meant I got to hang out with him this morning, as he didn't go to work until 4pm, which was nice. Unfortunately for him, most of the morning was spent at the supermarket, so I could take advantage of an extra pair of arms to carry lots of stuff home.

We can add puff pastry to flannels and duvet covers on our list of Things You Just Can't Buy In The US. I searched high and low for puff pastry, but there just isn't any. Apart from if you want to make baklava and, considering how disastrous my baking attempts have been so far, I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon. Problem is, puff pastry is the corner stone of my signature dish, so any dinner parties we give (we're having Sarah and Geoff over for supper this Friday) will be sunk without it!

I was meant to be playing my first ever softball game tonight, but it got cancelled because there'd been a lot of rain at the weekend and the pitch was still soggy. I was secretly relieved, as I'm getting increasingly nervous about my softball debut - it's been years since I played rounders.

Like the good housewife I am, I decided to make the BBC troops some cupcakes to get them through their long night. But I've lost it. I've completely lost my baking mojo - it's official. Two bad batches of brownies and now some disguuuusting cupcakes - the stats don't lie. I don't know what it is, but can only hope it has something to do with butter tasting different here, or something. *sniff*

PHOTOS: MONTAUK & THE HAMPTONS

Click here for pictures of Maxy's birthday weekend at the tip of Long Island.

SUNDAY IN THE HAMPTONS

MOST MONEY THING WE SAW IN THE HAMPTONS: a DeLorean driving down the main drag of East Hampton

It feels like we've been away a lot longer than just a weekend. Perhaps we have Son o' Stompy to thank, as we were up and about, making the most of the day, earlier than perhaps we'd have liked, having been woken up by lots of noises from the surrounding rooms.

We spent the morning wandering around Montauk, heading off the main street a little bit and pootling in and out of the shops. The atmosphere reminds me of little seaside towns we used to visit in Norfolk. We found an actual bakery, so were mercifully spared the clingfilm-wrapped croissants for the second day in a row.

It was another beeaaautiful morning, so our chosen breakfast location was the beach at Hither Hills state park which again, was an amazing sprawling deserted beach - this time with cool dunes at the back of the beach and those spindly wooden fences that I have in my head as being typical of Hamptons/Montauk beaches.

Behind the dunes, there was a handful of campervans and tents and I can imagine it's a really great place to camp - the beach is enormous and beautiful and then there are 'walking dunes' and woodland to wander through right there, too. Unfortunately you're not allowed to swim off Hither Hills beach, though. The waves were really big and angry - it was brilliant to sit and eat breakfast watching the shore get a pounding.

The light in the sunny sunshine was just amazing - like on a photoshoot with those silver reflecty things. So as we strolled down the beach, I indulged in something of a photo frenzy.

Bidding Montauk goodbye, we headed to East Hampton, to rub shoulders with the fancy folks. With good tunes on the stereo and beautiful wooded roads to drive through, the half hour drive did not suck.

The main bit of East Hampton is quite small - just a kind of high street (albeit one with Tiffany, Ralph Lauren and Gucci on it) with a couple of little streets going off it. But it looks as though it's manicured with nail scissors - it's all extremely fancy and just so and I found myself approaching the visit more from an anthropological perspective than feeling in any way at home!

Having had no t-shirt joy in the nice little ramschackled beach shop in Montauk, Max made a bee-line for Ralph Lauren. You may think Max is a happy-go-lucky, laid back scruff of a chap, but he LOVES his labels! He doesn't buy many clothes, but when he does, they invariably bear some cool brand and were on sale for half the price they should be. He also loves a bargain.

And apparently there were bargains to be had in Ralph Lauren. I saw a lady trying on the most exquisite evening gown - a full length black beaded number with a kind of fishtail skirt and really deep v-shaped halterneck top - that was on sale for... $16,000!!! Reduced by 20%, or something!! It did look absolutely amazing - it'd outshine anyone on any red carpet anywhere - and it was fun to finally find out where people buy dresses like that. But as the woman trying it on pointed out - she could get a car for that money.

Max found a really cool t-shirt for $20, so was very happy to be able to wander down the high street of East Hampton, swinging a Ralph Lauren bag around. There wasn't too much more to see, other than fancy shops and a nice windmill plonked in the middle of everything. We certainly couldn't find any restaurants (judging by the size of the lady trying on the Ralph Lauren gown, eating isn't high on the list of priorities in East Hampton), so we decided to go to Sag Harbor for lunch.

To get to Sag Harbor, we had to drive through a few of the other Hamptons, all of which were perfectly nice and picturesque. Max got the iTrip working like a dream and we fittingly listened to a Josh Rouse album (he sings a song called, 'Winter in the Hamptons'), which again made for a nice sunny driving soundtrack. The iTrip is amazing - it allows you to broadcast your iPod on a radio frequency, then tune the radio of your car into that frequency, so you pick up the music from your pod! I'd read bad things about how weak the signal from the iTrip can be and how the iPod needs to be right up against the radio to work, but it was great for us. Woo!

Sag Harbor is loads nicer than East Hampton. It's still quite fancy, but in a less hardcore way. It feels more lived in and organic and was really nice to walk around. The weather started clouding over, so we had a nice light lunch in a Belgian place and then decided to make our way slowly back to LaGuardia, via the Paumanok vineyard.

We foolishly decided against using Polly to get us to the vineyard and got a little lost and then when we got there, it was raining. So Max just gulped down a flight of four wines and we left. I planned to get Max a bottle of his favourite wine as his final birthday present, but he reminded me of ChampagneGate at the airport and pointed out that the same thing would happen on the way home.

So we just drove back through the rain - this time with Polly guiding us. Unfortunately the iTrip started picking up loads of static and then Polly led us on a merry dance when we realised we could programme the satnav to take us to the nearest gas station and we ended up in the middle of suburbia, nowhere near anything resembling pumps. Technology was failing us by the second!

Yet again, our plane was delayed and we sat on the tarmac for about an hour because there was a traffic jam of about 8 planes ahead of us, which was an unusual sight.

Just like when we came back from New York, returning to DC felt pleasantly like coming home, though it was lovely to feel like we'd been away for ages. We had a quick bite at Raku (rapidly becoming our traditional post-weekend-away first stop) and then went back to the apartment, where Max had some more gifts to open that had been too heavy for us to take onto the plane as hand luggage. These included the complete DVD boxset of 'Seinfeld' from Max's brother which - in my eyes - not only made up for the Phil Collins CD he also gave him, but has assured us of many nights of pre-bedtime fun once we've polished off 'The West Wing'. Woo!

ETERNAL SUNSHINE

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE DAY: being woken up by Stompy's envoys next door.

It is to my shame that I've often looked at adverts for Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch and Tommy Hilfiger with a pang of longing, as beautiful people lark around in lovely clothes on amazing beaches, the like of which you just don't get in Britain (as beautiful as those beaches are).

Well all those adverts must've been shot in Montauk! The beaches are AMAZING and we found three of them! Actually, one wasn't so nice. But two out of three ain't bad.

After our noodley day indoors yesterday, we decided to get up and at 'em early, so headed into Montauk and picked up some clingfilm-wrapped croissants (weird) from a shop which also inexplicably sold British sweets, so I excitedly stocked up on Crunchies, Twirly Wirlys, Smarties and Turkish Delight for Maxy. Then we headed to the beach, which turns out to be just the other side of the shops and things - the beach is very much in Montauk.

The weather was just gorgeous - all blue skies and sunshine - but there were very few people on this incredible huge, sweeping beach with white breakers and big sky, with the odd beachhouse dotted along the dunes. We sat on a log and ate our breakfast, marvelling at the waves and sunshine and neverending beach.

breakfast in Montauk

After breakfast, we consulted Max's excellent guide to Montauk (seen here, through the windscreen) and had high hopes for Gin Beach. But unfortunately it was not so nice and had lots of caravans on it, so we drove to Ditch Plains Beach, which is famed for its surfing and was again, just breathtakingly amazing and pretty much deserted.

We had to almost consciously make ourselves just stop and enjoy the view, rather than dashing on somewhere else, and so took a gentle stroll down the beach, coming across the odd rockpool, looking longingly at the beachouses with private staircases down to the beach and watching some sea fishermen catch a big fish.

After walking for ages and seeing some cool rock formations in the rocks at the back of the beach, we finally found the beachhouse that we're going to buy one day when we're living in New York, and sat down looking out to sea, staggered by how lucky we are (even luckier when we have the beachhouse!).

Casa Devo, circa 2030

As we got to the end of Ditch Plains Beach and rounded a corner, we found ourselves on Breakfast Beach, so needn't have done all that driving after all! With great difficulty - and spurred on by our rumbling stomachs, we headed back along the beach, trying to take everything in as much as possible, to store up as an antidote to dark grey autumn afternoons in an office in London.

We headed to Gossman's Dock for lunch, driving along in the sunniest of sunshine, listening to Vampire Weekend (EXCELLENT driving music) and pootling along these roads of nice little houses.

Gossman's Dock is vaguely hilarious - it looks a little like a theme park based on a village of yesteryear, probably in England. We hadn't realised, but today was its first day of the season, so had we come last weekend, it'd have been all closed up. Embracing the 'when in Rome...' spirit, we decided to have an enormous lunch of fresh lobster and I got ridiculously excited when we were supplied with authentic lobster bibs, as I've only ever seen those in the movies.

Me and lobster before the carnage - just excited by the bib

Unfortunately, the love affair with all things lobster came to a definite and abrupt end when I couldn't get out of my head the anatomy of it all. It was one of those times when I couldn't separate the food I was eating from the animal it once was and there was something almost surgical about ripping the legs out of their sockets and stuff. I did my best to ignore this and eat the tasty lobster, until I pulled the head off and this massive slug of black matter - which I can only assume was brains - slopped out of the head cavity and onto the table. Ugh. I nearly barfed. Ugh. I feel sick. So that was the end of me and lobster. It was wonderful to be eating outside in the sunshine, though.

After lunch, we wandered around the twee little boutiques of Gossman's Dock, where I bought myself a baseball cap for my impending softball game next Tuesday. I also tried on a bunch of nice summer clothes, but then remembered that I was paying for the weekend, so left them all behind.

We tried to get to Andy Warhol's estate after leaving Gossman's Dock, but it was an extremely private road with a gate across it and we weren't feeling brave enough in our very-obviously-not-suited-to-offroad-driving hire car. We did however see a foal drinking from its mother on Deep Hollow Ranch - the oldest cattle ranch in the US (thanks, Maxy's Guide To Montauk).

We headed over to Montauk Point State Park and to New York State's first lighthouse and the fourth oldest active lighthouse in the US (will the deluge of facts never end, Maxy's Guide To Montauk?!). We climbed all the way up to the top (137 steps) and the view from the top was pretty cool, but Max was a little frightened and we were only allowed onto a tiny bit of the viewing platform. Our visit this weekend coincides with the fourth annual Long Island Lighthouse Challenge, where you visit all 9 lighthouses in Long Island and get a little passport thing stamped at each place. So there were lots of breathlessly excited challengers up there with us.

In the giftshop, Max told me there was something that would make me cry and that I wasn't to go over to a particular corner of the shop. Convinced that nothing could be so bad in the giftshop of a lighthouse, I defiantly wandered over, only to find my bottom lip quivering as I saw a nice old man standing with a pile of books smiling hopefully at every passer-by who ventured to his corner of the shop. He'd written a book about the lighthouse and was there for a special book signing event. Except no-one was buying his book and he was standing all forlorn. Max knows me too well.

From the top of the lighthouse, we had seen a massive - and somewhat sinister - radar thing poking out of dense woodland, so knew our next stop had to be Camp Hero.

Hddddrrrdrdr. It was so weird. It's another state park, so quite a lot like driving through the New Forest. There are even little picnic spots among the trees. But there's such a weird atmosphere there. Not helped by a man with long silver hair, bearing striking resemblance to the terrifying Uncle Bob from 'Twin Peaks' who was just walking along the road. Sinisterly. Then we drove for what seemed like quite some time, turned a corner and there he was again! Time travel, I tell you.

The whole place was freaky weird, with the big radar thingy towering above the trees and lots of scary boarded up bunkers that looked like the setting for a teen horror film where friends dare each other to go inside and are never seen again. Hdddrrrrdrdrrr.

it's sinister, it's run by the government, it's a compound
(and it says, 'DO NOT ENTER BUILDING. CLOSED TO PUBLIC' on it)

Laying down rubber as we got the funk out of Camp Hero, we headed back to the hotel and had a swim before going out for the evening. I wanted to watch the sunset while drinking cocktails in a nice bar, but Max wanted to sample the delights of The Movie so we went to see 'Iron Man'. Which suuuuuucked.

But the evening was saved by another fantastic meal, this time at East By Northeast, which again had a great atmosphere - all contemporary and cool - and deliiiiicious food. It's owned by the same people who run the place we ate last night, so it was with great trepidation that I asked our waiter whether they by any chance have the same sorbet as Harvest on Fort Pond. Not only did they have it, but it's made there! So the Harvest guys nick it from them!

Oooh la la, dessert was a delight to behold and Max didn't make the same mistake twice - he got himself a serving too and we were both in fizzy citrussy heaven. Mmmmm.

A HAPPY BIRTHDAY

THE GREATEST BIRTHDAY GIFT OF ALL: a good night's sleep - no Stompy in Montauk! Zzzzzz.

Even if I do say so myself, Max has had a pretty kickass birthday.

He awoke to a pile of cards and presents from his folks, brother, my folks and me, then we headed into Montauk town (such as it is) for a fat breakfast.

Montauk Manor is just beyond Montauk town and, in the daylight, we discovered that we'd driven past a big lake last night and Montauk's HILARIOUS cinema, called 'The Movie', that looks a little like a shed and only plays one film. Though, to its credit, at least that film ('Iron Man') is on current release - the cinema in Wareham tends to get films months after they've come out.

Unfortunately it was really crummy weather - really cloudy - so Montauk was not looking at its best. But it seems to be made up of a plaza based around a roundabout, then a main drag with a really seaside-y big shop of miscellany like dinghies and t-shirts and snowglobes and some little convenience stores and bakery, etc.

We had breakfast at John's Pancake House and were going to explore afterwards, but it was pouring down with rain, so we just ran across the road to the big seasidey shop to try to find Max a t-shirt, as for some reason he'd only packed shirts.

It was still raining when we got back to the hotel, so we just had a noodley afternoon indoors. I booked Maxy in for a massage at the spa and then - with Max all floppy and smelling of massage oil - we watched the DVD of 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' in our room (I gave it to him because some of it takes place in Montauk). I'd forgotten what a wonderful movie it is, though fell asleep halfway through, so its jumbled chronology and dreamlike structure were doubled as I tried to work out what was going on when I woke up!

SPOILER ALERT! I always find the ending of the film really bleak, but Max thinks it's the most romantic thing ever. I just feel like the optimism that Joel and Clementine feel at the end, in spite of the tapes they've listened to, is only going to be dashed when they inevitably come to feel the same frustrations with each other as they did before.

Anyway, it was really lovely to watch on a rainy afternoon, and we got very excited about finding the beach from the movie. We then started watching it with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kauffman's commentary, which was really interesting. Michel Gondry's really fun and both of them really love Kate Winslet.

Before getting changed for dinner, we had a nice splash about in the pool and chilled out in the jacuzzi with a man who lives at the Manor during the summer.

Dressed in our finery, we headed out for dinner. I did lots of research last week and made reservations for us at the best restaurant in the area. The rain had become absolutely torrential by the time we set out and my white dress, makeup and strappy sandals were utterly soaked by the time we got to the car and didn't dry out before we got to the restaurant, where I managed to park next to a gigantic puddle (after dropping birthday boy off at the door).

The restaurant was wonderful, though. After a bellini and martini at the bar, we headed to our table and had one of the best meals of our lives. The atmosphere was lovely - all bustling and twinkly - and our waitress was great (and the meal was reeeeally cheap!). The portions at the restaurant are purposefully enormous, to encourage sharing among big parties. So it's really more of a family restaurant, where four of you get two dishes and all share everything.

So we just had one starter and a main course between us, both of which were amaaaaazing. We had a calamari salad to start with, which had an unexpectedly divine miso dressing on it, then a big steak with some of the tastiest fries I've ever had. Mmm, it was just fantastic and we had a really really fun time.

The highlight was the dessert, though. For a start, it was nice to have room for a dessert, after only eating half a portion (kind of), but secondly, it was genuinely the most astonishing lemon sorbet I've EVER eaten. And I eat a lot of lemon sorbet. Max went for his favourite, tiramisu, but had to concede from the mouthful I gave him that the sorbet was extraordinary. It almost fizzed on the tongue and tasted really lemony and wasn't at all frozen and icy like some sorbets and not too tart, either. Mmmmm, I shall dream of that sorbet.

To top off a great day, we watched a 'West Wing' at the hotel, then went to bed, fingers firmly crossed that the weather improves, so that we can explore.

UP, UP & AWAY

PERSON I'VE SEEN MOST THIS WEEK: the UPS man who makes nearly daily deliveries to our flat with presents for Max.

Most of today was spent creating a magnificent guide to Montauk for Max's exciting secret birthday weekend. All the guidebooks seem to stop at East Hampton in their descriptions of Long Island, so I spent hours collating information from websites about nice places to go and things to eat and writing it up into a nice bound book (kind of).

The coolest thing I found out is that Andy Warhol had an estate in Montauk (now on sale for $50million) and many extremely cool people hung out there, among the most frequent visitors were the Stones. In fact the Memory Motel from the Stones song is in Montauk. But the song isn't about a Montaukian lady who bewitched Mick, but rather Annie Liebowitz, apparently.

Montauk was designed to be the Miami Beach of the northeast when Carl G. Fisher bought it in 1926 (how do you buy a town?) and built Montauk Manor - where we're staying. But then the Depression happened and Fisher's vision wasn't realised so it's now the poor relation to the Hamptons, which you have to drive through to get there, right at the tip of Long Island.

The most frightening thing I discovered in my guidebook compilation is that there's a Sinister Government Compound in one of the many state parks there - Camp Hero. First, I have to explain that Max and I have a thing about Sinister Government Compounds. Whenever we come across a weird an incongruous building or structure - like on a deserted mountain road in Greece or whatever - we always say it's a Sinister Government Compound (occasionally abbreviated to SGC if we're going for brevity, but not very often).

Anyway, Camp Hero absolutely is an actual SGC!! After it was decommissioned as a military fort where lots of radar technology was pioneered, it became the base for the Montauk Project - a series of secret government projects developing powerful psychological warfare weaponry that could 'drive an enemy insane, inducing the symptoms of psychotic disorders and schizophrenia at the touch of a button'.

Legend has it that Congress refused to approve the project, so the researchers approached the DoD, who agreed to fund it in top secret, using Nazi gold! And then the internet crazies start going on about time travel and time portals, but that's just silly.

With the guide, in all its technicolor glory, completed, I dashed off for an all-important leg wax, which was easily the worst of my life (the lady spread the wax UP my leg! I think her mind had been fried at Camp Hero), then went to meet Maxy for his voyage of mystery and wonder.

As proud as I was of my bespoke Montauk guidebook, it turns out that Max has had a slightly more impressive day - 230,000 people and counting have read his piece about who is able to tell Hillary to throw in the towel. Hmm, well done.

Max did very well on our ride to the airport to be excitedly curious about where I could possibly be taking him, despite the fact that I gave him a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories last week by way of preparation, he suggested Montauk in the first place and he booked our flights to La Guardia (the BBC has a great deal with US Airways, whereby tickets are 100% flexible, so if you miss the flight you're booked on, you can just get the next one).

All went very well at the airport, despite us arriving only 30mins before departure (I managed to stay uncharacteristically zen on the way there, despite everything taking ages, safe in the knowledge of the BBC deal). We didn't even really need our passports, because internal flights are just like buses, according to Max.

Unfortunately the smooth streak of luck ended when we went through security. Standing in the queue, I never connected the clear bags of mini bottles of shower gel and stuff being presented by people with the socking great bottle of champagne I had in my handbag.

Unfortunately the security man did and ripped the bottle out of my bag. I tried for a while to insist that there surely wasn't a problem as long as it was all sealed up (I'm a logistical genius!) and ask whether a flight attendant could look after it for me until we got to New York, but the jig was up and I grumpily had to wish the security men a fun night on my special birthday champagne and slope off to the gate, with one of Max's surprises spoiled and no champagne to drink on arrival.

Just as I had to stay zen about running really late for the flight, I had to suppress the grump/sadness that would usually set in in this situation and be fun Birthday Monitor for Max. I had the opportunity to wallow when Max nipped into a shop, but then a man walked past and complimented me on my new 'Little Lebowski Urban Achiever' t-shirt, which cheered me up.

The flight of dreams, which didn't cost much, didn't require a passport and to which we could rock up really late, ended up being delayed by 30mins and we had to sit on the runway. But we watched 'Pushing Daisies' on Max's iPod, so it wasn't too much of a hassle and we were soon at LaGuardia, riding a shuttle bus to the car hire place.

Max enjoys navigating whenever we drive anywhere - he loves the maps - but I got a car with satnav this time, so Max wouldn't find out where we were going, and so that he could enjoy the ride. I also presented him with his first present to open - an iTrip, which lets you play your iPod through your radio. This is something he's been quite obsessed with for a while and all champagne contraband was forgotten as a robot (we named her Polly) guided us out of the airport and Max got excited about his iTrip. Technology is great.

It turns out that the good citizens of upstate New York don't need sustenance on their roadtrips as we couldn't find one service station to eat at on the 3 hour drive to Montauk. It became something of a desperate mission - we even dived off the road at one point, following a sign promising knives and forks, but got totally lost and nearly melted the satnav as it constantly had to recalculate our route. Tell you what, though - satnav is incredible. I'd never driven with it before, but can safely say now that Max and his maps are obsolete - it's me and Polly all the way.

Finally, at about 11.30pm, we saw an oasis of neon in the darkness and were never so happy to see a diner that probably made omelettes with eggs from a carton. We ate and ate and ate and then hit the road again, me trying to distract Max from the enormous signs directing us to Montauk and then, as we drove through the Hamptons, trying to pretend that there might be something other than Montauk beyond them. Long Island is long and thin, so this was woefully unlikely.

Maxy was very excited as we entered Montauk and we finally managed to find Montauk Manor, despite Polly saying we'd arrived when we were in the middle of a deserted road. It was gone midnight and it was a little eery to walk through the dark, stone lobby of this big faux-Tudor manor house, where a random man was sifting through bits of paper at a random desk. The night receptionist (different from sifting man) was a gruff fellow of few words who looked a little like a fisherman and, I suspect, shared many mental qualities with Jack Torrance from 'The Shining'.

For all the grandeur of the hotel, our room looks a little like a chalet from 'Hi-de-Hi!' - kind of outdated and basic. But the layout is really cool. There's a kitchenette and sitting room on the ground floor, then a mezzanine level across half of the room, with a bed platform and little bathroom. So there's a ceiling across the kitchenette, but then the sitting room's ceiling is basically double height and there's a huge floor-to-ceiling window, which will flood the place with light in the daytime. Unfortunately said window has no curtains, so I suspect we'll be seeing said daylight sooner rather than later...