WINE WINE EVERYWHERE BUT NOT A DROP TO DRINK

SADDEST NEWS OF THE WEEK: Mum has had to go to South Africa for the funeral of her brother-in-law, Nando. Apparently she's keeping aunty Alice's spirits up, but uncle Nando died very suddenly and everyone's very sad.

I'm not really sure why, but Alison has a Saturday job at a vineyard in Virginia and yesterday we went out there to check it out with Emily and her friend Grace. Emily was late picking us up and we spent an hour like urchins, sitting on the steps just inside the front door to our building (WAY too hot to wait outside). While we were waiting, we bumped into Paula from upstairs who was on her way to see 'Edge of Heaven' at the arthouse cinema we've yet to visit, and also saw Jonathan. Twice. Once on his way out to get breakfast for him and Megan and once on his way back.

By the time Jonathan appeared, we'd had to fire into our picnic and were merrily scoffing the chicken nuggets (SO good. Seriously, forget fancy cold meats and cheese and olives - all Devo picnics from now on will only consist of cold chicken nuggets). Fortunately Emily turned up in time for us to have some picnic left for the vineyard and we sped off in her righteous ride - a sweet old convertible jeep. It was so hot yesterday that that's really the only place to be, other than perhaps submerged in a swimming pool.

It took about an hour to get to the vineyard, which is in a breathtakingly beautiful spot up on a hillside. Alison and Emily's other friends Kristy, Katie and Katie's sister were already there when we arrived, so we went straight in to do a bit of winetasting and watch Alison strut her stuff with the various flights of wine. I'm still not drinking and wasn't even inspired to fall off the wagon while surrounded by fine wine in a lovely setting. But it was fun to hear Alison's spiel and Max had a good time quaffing away. No spitting, though.

Once Emily, Grace and Max had decided on their favourite of the wines they tasted, we got a bottle of that and headed out to join the others outside, overlooking the vineyard. Then we just spent a really nice lazy, very hot afternoon sitting there eating our picnics and drinking wine (well they did). It was really nice and the other three girls were really fun. Alison's been in California all week (with Brewster! Things are getting serious...), so it was nice to see her again, but she was super-busy.

It became increasingly clear over the course of the afternoon that Emily has something of a predatory crush on Max, which got a little annoying. Especially as she insists on calling him Maxy, while everyone else seems to twig that that's what only people close to him call him. Anyway, far more annoying was a massive stretch limo that pulled up, blaring out music and deposited a massive group of women in garish t-shirts on something of a vineyard crawl. But they were soon squirreled away in a back room of the tasting building so didn't bother us again.

Because I hadn't been drinking, I drove us home in Emily's jeep (insurance here works so that anyone's insured to drive your car). Turns out it is a very sweet ride, but really tricksy to drive and the steering's kind of loose. But we managed to get back in one piece.

We decided to give 'The West Wing' a break for an evening and watch one of the NetFlix DVDs that arrived ages ago and have been mewing at us from the top of the TV ever since, as we constantly shun them for the trusty WW. We watched 'Sullivan's Travels', which came highly recommended by my most discerning friends/brother. But unfortunately - much like the only other Preston Sturges film I've seen, 'The Lady Eve' - I didn't really like it that much. It was ok, but not super-great.

Unfortunately last night we suffered the downside of the lovely collegiate feel of living next door to Anne and Megan and being able to flit between flats and have friends on just the other side of the wall - we heard Megan and Jonathan having sex. Hdddrrrdrdrrr. Fortunately our iPod alarm clock was loud enough to drown out the noise, but I'm not looking forward to the next time we bump into them! Awwwwwkward.

I came over faint AGAIN in church this morning. I don't know what's going on. But before that happened, I was amused by a cool little boy who had a telescope and scrutinised the vicar and readers through it.

After recovering from my funny turn (hooray for peanut M&Ms!) and a good chat with my sister, we took the metro miles away to Alexandria in Virginia. Alexandria is known as Old Town (there's a restaurant there which opened in 1967!) and is basically one long cobbled street that leads down to the waterfront and is lined with many quaint shops - excellent for antiquing, (if only I was into that). It's got a really nice feel to it and will certainly be on our list of things to do with visitors - it's lovely to just wander around and windowshop.

We took a really long time - including having lupper (the 'brunch' of the afternoon) at a nice grill restaurant - to get to the waterfront, where we were a little perplexed to see a bunch of parrots there, one of whom looked ready to eat a baby. Regardez:

But there was also a magician and a balloon artiste there, so they were part of the waterfront entertainment. Max bought me a massive ice cream and we sat and watched boats and ducks and a little boy terrorising the ducks.

After sauntering along the waterfront (not much to see), we took an old town trolley back up to the metro and went to Chinatown to see 'Wanted'. As we suspected, it was really pretty awful, but James McAvoy as an action hero - having been the most unlikely prospect since Keira Knightley as anyone alluring - was fantastic! He's such a dude. The whole thing looked like a computer game and I really liked a massively long shootout at the end, where McAvoy just dispenses with everyone in his path (I make no apologies for spoiling a film you really shouldn't be going to see anyway).