RATTY RAT

MOST UNLIKELY STATEMENT FROM ME TODAY: I prefer DC to New York! But ONLY when it comes to a city to wander around. The streets and houses are nicer and walks are always pretty.

Happy birthday, Dan and Jilly!

After a lazy morning of 'The West Wing' and mooching around the flat, we walked into Georgetown in blistering hot sunshine to do some shopping and grab a movie and dinner. I love that we can do that from our flat.

The walk was really pretty, around the 'backstreets' of Georgetown (I hasten to add that these aren't backstreets like the mean streets of Philly or anything - they're pretty, tree-lined avenues of nice houses where people like JFK and Jackie lived).

The first shop we came across was Gap, and I had that nice feeling going in that I would definitely be emerging with some purchases. But unfortunately everything I tried on looked horrible! This did not bode well for the rest of the afternoon and I kind of gave up looking for nice things after visits to various places including Banana Republic (Maxy got some nice stuff), Zara (so confusing!), Reiss (so expensive!), Bandolino (such pretty shoes!), Diesel (I swear no-one is skinny enough to fit into their clothes), Urban Outfitters (you know something's wrong when I can't find anything there) and H&M (admittedly I did get a few things there, but not the strappy sundress I so desperately need).

Max managed to get some really nice shirts, so all was not lost as we headed down to the cinema to see 'Get Smart'. We both really really liked the movie - it was funneeee. Steve Carrell is great and who knew that The Rock could be funny?!

Despite it constituting two visits in as many days, I took Maxy to Leopold's for supper, because I wanted him to try their Wienerschnitzel - his very favourite food of all time. He assures me it wasn't as nice as his Mum's or the ones I make him, but we had a really tasty supper nonetheless.

On our way home, we were walking along a really narrow pavement near Dupont Circle, when I became aware of a commotion in the small group of people ahead of us. When I looked down, I saw a massive rat running towards the bear toes of mine and Max's flipflopped feet!

All dexterity and coordination abandoned me as I leapt onto Max, clamping myself to him like a koala! Unfortunately Maxy, who was carrying our shopping bags and I don't think had seen the rat, wasn't prepared for this incoming hefty missile and tumbled flailing to the ground, pleading, "what are you trying to do to me?!". It was hilaaarious. Or so the group of people ahead of us thought as we lay in a crumpled heap across the pavement, with the rat long-gone.

Unfortunately in breaking my weighty fall, Max hurt his big toe. I worry that he'll forever have a reminder of Rat Gate and in years to come, when it twinges as he bends down to pick something up, he'll remember my far-from-finest hour.

STELLAR FRIDAY

Anne and I convened early (well, 9.30am) for our exciting morning on the river, both of us assembling a bag of things we wouldn't mind losing/ruining were we to capsize, which we both felt was an inevitability (the logic of this was flawless, until we noticed that, alongside our worst sunglasses, makeshift wallets and most dispensable bags were our mobile phones, which we couldn't really substitute for less good versions).

We cycled to Georgetown, where we left the road and cycled into the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park. With trees all around, the Potomac on our left and a canal on our right, it felt like cycling through the countryside or at times reminded me of the wooded path from Barnes Bridge to Hammersmith Bridge in London.

A heady 3.5 miles later, we got to the kayak place and boarded our vessels to head out into the wild blue yonder for a couple of hours. It's been a really hot, sunny, calm day and the water was like glass. It became increasingly obvious that we were really in no danger of capsizing as we glided along the really wide river lined with trees. It was amazingly quiet and serene and there was something really nice about being so low down in the water, moving with very little effort (which after our bike ride was a welcome relief!).

We managed to spend most of our first hour on the water just floating and chatting, mostly about Anne and her boyfriend Hugh. I'm increasingly wondering if he's good news - he sounds a little bit useless. He's about 14 years older than Anne and doesn't sound like a massively supportive or with-it kind of a guy. They broke up last year and then got back together, since when Anne has been really into him, so I guess it's a case of different strokes for different folks (strokes - geddit? Kayaking? Hmm). Although she does think that Max is awesome, so I don't think the strokes she's after are that different to me.

Anyways, it was really nice to float about and chat in these amazing surroundings but eventually we thought we should probably make some progress, so paddled down to Georgetown, under a really high bridge where we waved to people on top. It was funny to see Georgetown from the water, and amazing to see the Washington Monument in the distance on our approach. It was getting so hot that I welcomed the odd splash that came when I flipped my paddles over.

On the way back along the opposite side of the river, we saw lots of wildlife - herons and ducks and geese and just kept pinching ourselves when we thought about how we've spent so many other Friday mornings of our lives, stuck at desks indoors. And I guess that's where everyone else was, as we had the river to ourselves. I guess we *were* those people you see larking about when you're going to work, wondering who on earth they are that they're not in an office somewhere.

communing with nature on the other side of the river

Anne and a blue heron

another heron

your intrepid correspondent

Just as we were admiring a massive flock of geese, we realised that we only had 5 minutes before our rental time expired, so all serene floaty chats were over and we powered back to the boathouse. Turns out kayaking is quite the workout and I was so achy when we got back onto dry land (not very gracefully - standing in a kayak is tricky) that I was relieved to get back on my bike and use different muscles for a while.

We cycled back to Georgetown along the wooded pathway, feeling like characters from an Enid Blyton book or 'Swallows & Amazons', and hit Leopold's for lunch, the same place as I met Cindy ages ago. We rapidly undid all the good exercise work we'd done on the water by scoffing lots of tasty food, polished off by sharing a delicious pear and pistachio cake from the spectacular array of fancy tarts, cakes and desserts.

Despite refuelling, we had hardly any energy to cycle back to our building, calculating that we'd cycled a total of 7 miles and kayaked a total of 3 miles today! Not bad going! But it definitely made the hill to our house that bit more brutal.

As Anne bravely went off to meet a friend for coffee, I headed round the corner from our house to get my legs waxed on a whim. After the waxing disaster I had before our Montauk trip, I tried a different local place which was a third of the price and had been really busy when we popped in on Saturday for a price list, so I figured it must be good. And indeed it was better than the other place, in that the guy took *most* of my hair off. But he did so with the most scaldingly hot wax in all the world. Ouch. The search for a good place continues...

I was good for nothing other than collapsing exhausted when I got home, but soon had to jump in the shower to scrape off all the grody kayak/cycle muck with which I was plastered and head out to meet Maxy for Jazz in the Garden at the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery.

Every Friday over the summer, there's Jazz in the Garden and tonight it was Brazilian jazz, so we got a gang of people together, including Alison, Emily, Erik Love, Patrick and Leanna, to go along and sit on the grass listening to live music as the sun went down.

It was absolutely packed with many white middle class people quaffing wine on fancy rugs when we arrived and we weren't helped in our efforts to find Alison by the fact that the sculpture she used as a landmark in her directions was no longer there. But we eventually found her and I went to pick up a picnic hamper that we'd pre-ordered.

Unfortunately the picnic was kind of gross - the strawberries and grapes were really really manky and the cheese had a best-before date of October 2007. Thinking I was going mad, I had to get confirmation that we were in 2008, then Max manfully headed back to the cafe to exchange it (I say manfully because it was bedlam in there - queues upon queues of people clamouring for white wine and fancy eats).

Max had been gone so long that I had to go find him and on our way back (with some different cheese and a complimentary bottle of wine - score! If only I was drinking again...), who should we bump into but one of the guys that I was chatting to at tennis last night! Quel coincidence. He told me about a terrible row that had broken out between someone in the queue and someone who'd been on the courts longer than the hour maximum you're allowed when there are people waiting. I had to stop myself from pointing out that a signup sheet would solve such conflicts, for fear of being accused of being bad again.

Back at our camp, the jazz was unfortunately terrible. It sounded like a long line of musical interstitials from 'Seinfeld' - lots of awful wiggly slap bass. If that's really the sound of Rio, they can keep it. Meanwhile, Erik Love got pooed on by a bird, which was pretty funny, and I guessed correctly that Leanna is pregnant! She and Patrick have been trying and are also in the process of buying a house, so this is exciting news indeed. Inna and Dimitri also turned up, with Kai (who was asleep AGAIN!). [those two people in the bottom right of this photo aren't the Russians - they're friends of Alison's]

Leanna and Patrick told me an amazing story about Patrick's best friend, who's in jail for attempted murder, torture and imprisonment of his girlfriend (now obviously his ex) while high on crystal meth. It was most extraordinary - Patrick and Leanna are the straightest, most devout Russian orthodox (not sure why - they're from California) people ever, so the thought of Patrick's best friend being a homicidal meth fiend is tricky to figure. Anyway, the amazing thing is that he's not allowed coloured pencils or felt tips in prison, but loves to paint. So he rubs the colouring off peanut M&Ms and makes it into paint, with which he apparently creates these incredible paintings! Isn't that crazy? The power of the human spirit and all that, I guess. Ooorr they've spun me a very elaborate lie. But they're just not tricksy like that, so I really think it's true.

Oh, so I completely forgot to mention that Jackie - the friend of the same friend who introduced us to Alison who we went for a painful supper with a few weeks ago and really didn't seem to like us too much and didn't respond to my 'nice to meet you, let's do it again some time' email the following day - suddenly got in touch last week, super-keen to meet up again, gushing about how much she and David would like to see us. So weird. So I invited her to Jazz in the Garden (safety in numbers), but they had some office party out of town to go to first, then they were going to meet us afterwards. Things seemed to be winding up at the jazz by the time Jackie texted, so we arranged for her to call when they got back into town and we'd go for drinks somewhere near our houses (she lives down the road from us).

So everyone slowly left the sculpture garden and because we hadn't heard from Jackie yet, we walked Inna, Dimitri and Kai to their car with Leanna and Patrick. Dimitri woke Kai up so we could see him and he's just adorable - all blonde curly hair - and he did that thing that sleepy kids do of just clamping himself to his mum. Inna let go of him at one point and Kai was still clinging to her, like a koala bear. Aaawwwww.

Wandering back to the metro with Leanna and Patrick, we passed the Hirshorn Museum (modern and contemporary art) where there was some cool-looking after hours event happening with cool lanterns in the trees and many beautiful people filing in. I've since found out it was this and am sad we didn't know about it, because i really enjoyed nights like that at the V&A back home.

Ooh, and we saw our first ever fireflies!! Man, it was amazing. These little darting things that glowed on and off, just buzzing around a bush near the Mall. Magical.

With still no word from Jackie, we headed back to our neighbourhood. It was so weird - she was meant to have been in touch about 2 hours earlier. It was nearly 11pm by the time we were approaching our house, so I texted Jackie to suggest it was too late to meet up tonight and perhaps we could do it another time. I soon got a mortified reply, explaining that they'd both fallen asleep as soon as they stepped through their door and my text woke them up! Huh - I've cycled and kayaked 10 miles today - what's their excuse for being so snoozy?!

TENNIS'S LITTLEST HOBO

MOST EXCITING PROSPECT OF THE WEEK: I'm kayaking down the Potomac river tomorrow! Anne suggested it on Tuesday and I can think of no better way to spend a Friday morning.

This week has been pretty uneventful so far. I've been doing more TV work for the London company, which went really badly on Monday - back to my old ways of finding it really difficult to get down to it. But things have been easier today.

The rest of the time, I've been running errands in the sunny sunshine, meeting Max for lunch in the kitchen of the BBC bureau (it's WAY too hot to sit outside) and even managed to go swimming for the first time on Tuesday. Unfortunately it wasn't very nice and I gave up after 5 lengths, because the pool was really busy and the lanes super-skinny, so I was perpetually bashing people. Also, I think part of the reason the YMCA gym membership is so cheap is because it's kind of grotty.

On the way home from swimming we decided to cheer me up with supper at a local restaurant we haven't eaten at before but often passed. Rosemary's Thyme is a bistro a few blocks down from our flat on 18th and serves pretty much anything you might want, from pasta and salads to pide and fajitas. The service was just teeeeerrible - I think the waiter might've transferred from Ruby Tuesday - but the food was nice enough and it beat cooking.

Yesterday, I met Alison for lunch because she was working in town again. She was excited by my offer to make her a packed lunch but, in my efforts to make her a super-deluxe bagel, I didn't realise that people don't 'do' cream cheese with meat and she was a little bit disgusted by my pastrami, ham, cream cheese and pickles supreme. Whoops. Things are still going well with her and Brewster, though she's finding the slow smooching pace a little tricky to cope with!

I went straight from there to play tennis with criminal lawyer Sarah, which was ok, but she abandoned the game we were playing halfway through because it was kind of boring. Which it was - neither of us was taking any risks and the only exercise we were really getting was from running to pick balls up. But tonight, I played the best game of tennis of my life! It was SO cool.

So having gone miles uptown on my bike and metro to play Sarah yesterday, I cycled up to Howard University, about 10 mins' cycle away along U St, this evening, to play a new person called Caroline from the tennis website. I'm really enjoying discovering new parts of town through my tennis games and the area around Howard University is really different to the other areas I've been. It's a bit more rundown and predominantly black (the majority of Howard's students are African American) and the most pleasing find was a massive swimming pool that is apparently open at the weekends and rarely busy. Woo!

The 8 courts there are really nice and have recently been resurfaced. As ever, there was a queue for courts, but Caroline was running late anyway. I got chatting to a couple of guys who joined the queue after me and moaned about the turn-up-and-wait system at the DC courts. They tried convincing me that it's good - democracy in action - but I maintained that an equally democratic system would be signup sheets. But then they somehow took from that that I'm a fascist and that it's a small step from signup sheets to only letting the 'right kind of people' sign up. I was a bit relieved when Caroline turned up.

Caroline is a 30-year old real estate developer from Chicago whose sister is moving to Horsham next year after marrying an Englishman. Caroline is also by far the best player I've met through the website and we had just the best game ever. She hits really hard, so if I just put my racket in the way, then I hit a hard shot back at her. I was managing to run all over the court and even when we played an actual game, I was volleying and taking all sorts of risks I wouldn't usually take (and certainly didn't with Sarah yesterday). It was absolutely fantastic. It was the first time Caroline's played all year, so I know once she gets her eye in properly she'll be miles out of my league, but in the meantime, I was just really enjoying being 'in the zone'.

And when I got back to the flat, Max had whipped up grilled halloumi and couscous - what a lucky girl I am!

NEW THEATRE

It was always going to be hard for whatever activity followed our tour of the West Wing, but the play we went to tonight was really, really awful.

It didn't help that it was at a university arts centre all the way out in Fairfax, Virginia - at the end of the metro line. So it took aaaages to get there and then we found out that buses don't run from the metro station after 5pm on a Sunday, so we had to get a taxi for the remaining 20 mins of our journey.

One consolation was that we shared the taxi with a chap who was going in the same direction as us (though luckily for him, not to the same play). In keeping with our year-so-far of great encounters with random people, this chap had just come back from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and was in town for a conference before heading back to the Congo, where he's a teacher! So on Friday morning, he'd watched the sun come up from the top of Mt Kilimanjaro and now he was in a taxi in Virginia! Far out.

Suffice to say, it's apparently amazing to get to the top of the mountain and see the sun came up. And it's also probably redundant to say that it's exceedingly cold. He met a girl on the way up who hadn't been able to go any further, so asked him to take her camera to the top and get a photo for her. Once at the top, the chap took off his gloves just long enough to click the camera button and his hands froze. Aye carumba!

Unfortunately we didn't have any longer to chat before we got to the theatre, which seemed to be completely deserted. The play we went to see was 'Two Bit Taj Mahal', a new play based on the true story of an ongoing FBI investigation into the murder in a small Missouri town of the local bully. The reason we went is because the bully is played by Jim - the husband of Cindy, who I had lunch with in Georgetown ages ago and who works at National Geographic TV.

The theatre was really small and reminded me of the one at Edinburgh. The set was pretty cool, with real corn in a kind of field at the back of the stage and lots of bric-a-brac everywhere. There were only 5 people in the cast and it was all very serious, but I just haaated it. It's quite difficult to explain without going into the plot, which is kind of boring, but it was just everything I don't like about new theatre, if that conjurs any universals which will give you some idea of what it was like. I was excited to see that the actor we liked the most has been in 'The Wire', though didn't recognise him. And one of the ladies looked like Marg Helgenberger from 'CSI', which was mildly diverting. But there was a girl behind us with THE loudest laugh which made an already unpleasant experience twice as annoying.

And it didn't help that we then had to get back from the middle of nowhere late on a Sunday night. We got a taxi (the same driver who'd dropped us off), then the metro, but the metro was all snarled up when we got back into the city. So we decided to brave the buses, which we've yet to do. We tried to decipher a map and walked to the place where we were pretty sure a bus going in our direction would go from, but the information at that bus stop was even more confusing and there were no buses in sight. For a city arranged in a grid, DC has a stupifyingly and unnecessarily confusing bus system.

Loathe to get our third taxi of the night, we walked for ages, then eventually gave up and got a cab home. If only the play had been worth the odyssey!

PHOTOS: THE WEST WING

Click HERE to see pictures of our visit to the West Wing (we were only allowed to take photos outside and in the press briefing room. boo.)

THE WEST WING

COOLEST THING I SAW TODAY: eeeeeeverythiiiiing!

I make no apologies for this being even longer than usual - today was the day we went on a private tour of the West Wing, courtesy of Alison's flatmate Emily. It was awesome and it's out of the question that anything we do this year will top it.

What wasn't awesome was having to adhere to the strict dress code on what must be the hottest day so far - closed-toe shoes, no t-shirts or vests and respectable skirts or trousers. I was dripping by the time Max and I convened after I'd been to church and he'd had breakfast with friends of his folks who were in town for the weekend.

Much to my chagrin, we were to be joined on our tour by 4 other people, but I guess it's kind of a big deal to get inside the White House, so I rapidly learned to share. As you might expect, we had our ID checked several times, had our bags scanned and then got visitor passes like the ones people wear in 'The West Wing'. Ours were red because we're foreigners.

Emily was a very good tour guide, skipping the history and factoids to give us an insiders' view of life in the White House. She's been working there for a couple of years now. First she was an admin assistant, working in the Situation Room a lot, making sure paperwork was in place for briefings and stuff, then she got promoted to the Africa desk of the National Security Council. Her office is opposite the West Wing, in the OEOB (for all you 'West Wing' fans out there).

One of the most interesting things Emily told us was from her time as an admin person, when she had to read the transcripts of all the president's phone calls. Apparently Bush's calls with Blair really stood out because, whereas Bush was always extremely formal and protocol-y with all the other world leaders he'd speak to, with Blair he was incredibly relaxed and informal and it was apparently obvious that there was a genuine friendship there - one which will last beyond either of their terms in power. Hmph.

The most striking thing once we went inside the West Wing was the number of photos up on the wall. POTUS has 5 official photographers with him most of the time and the many many framed pictures on the walls of the West Wing get changed regularly to reflect something that's going on either in the president's world at the time. So the pictures today all reflected Father's Day - lots of photos of Bush Sr and Bush Jr and some of Cheney and presumably his grandchildren.

There were also lots of photos of Bush Jr (insiders refer to them as '41' and '43', for to distinguish between father and son because W is the 43rd president and George Bush Sr was the 41st) at his ranch in Texas, which made so much more sense to me than the ones of him in the White House, which just made me sad that he's the leader of the Free World.

At first, I thought the photos of him hacking away at the forest were him mucking in with environmental workers doing necessary pruning. But it turns out he's actually clearing a mountain bike path that he can ride along. Emily told us that there are four chainsaws available and members of senior staff know that they're in W's goodbooks if they are one of the four who gets to use one. Apparently the president is a super-speedy mountain biker and his staff struggle to keep up with him. If anyone lags too far behind, they suffer the indignity of being scooped up by a secret service van to catch up with the group.

We saw the Mess, where only senior staff, military people and invited guests are allowed to eat. And we saw the door to the Situation Room. I was quite overwhelmed by the idea that we were standing in a corridor where for years, men would've walked with hugely serious decisions on their mind. We were standing where presidents have walked on their way to commit troops to wars and stuff.

On our way to the Rose Garden, we walked along a corridor with three excellent Norman Rockwell cartoons on the wall, entitled, 'So You Want To See The President!'. These are the best reproductions I can find online, which don't really do them justice. Rockwell spent I think a month observing the areas of the West Wing where people - from journalists to military chiefs to the winner of Miss America - wait to see the president.

Next stop was the Rose Garden, named not after the flowers growing there, but after Rose Kennedy. Fact. It's just like in 'The West Wing', with all the columns and covered walkways. Emily showed us where Marine 1 - the president's helicopter - lands and explained that whenever POTUS travels in a helicopter, there are three helicopters in total and just as the one carrying the president is about to land, the two decoys peel off.

On our way back to the Rose Garden, we passed a wall of photos of Bush with fairly obscure world leaders and Maxy acquitted himself very well in attempting to name them. He certainly knew more than Emily.

We were offered a loo break and I figured it'd be foolish to pass up the opportunity to use the West Wing's facilities (my aunty Merry taught me that you get the best measure of a place by assessing its loos). I kind of wish I hadn't though, because I had the distinct impression I was being watched during my time in the surprisingly pokey washroom! Those wily secret service agents...

Next stop was the Oval Office, which really blew my mind. I'm so sad we weren't allowed to take photos (but the guard didn't look too alert - I way could've got away with it). The Oval Office is much smaller than I imagined and it's really light. Each president is allowed to decorate how ever they (or, more often, their wife) wants and W apparently wanted somewhere light and inspiring (he needs all the help he can get!). So the walls are all cream and the carpet - which in 'The West Wing' is dark blue - is light yellow, with sun rays radiating out from the middle. Like in 'The West Wing', there are two sofas and two chairs and the big desk of the president.

The desk was hewn from the timbers of the HMS Resolute, which got frozen in the Arctic and, after it thawed, went back to service and then eventually got decommissioned, was broken up and made into two desks, one of which was given to the USA by Queen Victoria, the other stayed in Buckingham Palace. Emily pointed out to us a line about 2 inches from the desk's base and explained that shortly after Reagan got into office, his assistant asked how he was getting on in the Oval Office, to which Regan answered, 'fine, but I keep hitting my knees on the desk' (he was 6'1"). The next day, the desk had been raised by a couple of inches. Classy.

I was disappointed to learn that there is not a door directly linking the Oval Office to the Chief of Staff's office, like in 'The West Wing'. Instead, there's one that leads to an office of five executive secretaries and one to a private bathroom that may or may not also have a dining room in it - Emily couldn't remember. Sounds odd.

I was very excited to see that W has the same bucking horse statue as is in Bartlet's Oval in 'The West Wing' (apparently it's a Remington statue and has been there through many administrations. That photo is of a replica in some museum somewhere). I can't remember if the president has the pick of all the art galleries in the US, or if there's a big repository of art for the White House, but I know he gets to choose from a huge range of fine art busts, statues and paintings when he moves in.

Did you know that the president isn't allowed to use a computer? Apparently everything he writes has to be handwritten, so that it can be suitably destroyed and completely unhackable. He also has nothing on his desk except that which

It was when I was looking into the Oval Office that it dawned on me that this wasn't just George Bush's West Wing - it's where lots of presidents have gone before him. This was an unfortunate time for such a realisation, because my mind immediately skipped to what Clinton and Monica Lewinsky got up to behind that hallowed desk but still, once I'd managed to banish those thoughts, it was a thrill to think of who's been in that office. Hey, and get your money on Obama now - I swear I had a vision of him sitting in the chair behind the desk.

We saw the Roosevelt Room, which I was excited to recognise from 'The West Wing' and the room where the cabinet meets. On the back of each chair is a little plaque for every cabinet position that person has held. Cheney has the most. Bleurgh. And the back of the president's chair is about a foot higher than all the rest. Double bleurgh.

There are really strict rules about the president receiving gifts. I'm a bit confused, but think it's that he can only accept gifts under a very low amount. Anything over that amount has to either be bought back by the president himself, be re-gifted to someone else or bequeathed to the White House. So Clinton wasn't allowed to take with him a Norman Rockwell painting that Steven Spielberg gave him - it was part of White House history. I'm a little sketchy on the rules, but the point is, Bush was given some really fancy pedigree dog by Scandinavian royalty, or something, and when he was told it cost $7000, he elected not to buy it back. But all presidential presents have to go to a warehouse for a couple of weeks, until they're processed. Obviously a dog couldn't sit in a warehouse until the paperwork was done, so it lived in the Situation Room for two weeks! And the secret service agents had to wait until dark to take it out for walks, in case the press got photos of a fancypants dog coming out of the Sit Room.

The final stop on the tour was the press briefing room - CJ's stomping ground in 'The West Wing'. Unfortunately it has recently been refurbished and the podium is now super hi-tech, so we weren't allowed to go behind it and have photos taken. But we did get to take photos anywhere else in the room. It looked just like in 'The West Wing', if a little lighter. It was built over the site of a swimming pool that FDR had built. I hoped the floor could slide back to reveal the water, like in 'It's A Wonderful Life', but alas no. Turns out the Situation Room was the site of Truman's bowling alley, too! Nixon had another one built elsewhere, but we didn't get to see that.

I was interested to see that each chair in the press briefing room has a plaque declaring which media outlet sits there. The BBC doesn't have a seat. And at the back, there's a bank of monitors and tripods for cameras. After extensive mucking around at being CJ and pretending to take questions from the press, our tour came to a sad end. We wandered outside to take a look at the outside of the West Wing and residence. There's another press area just outside, where reporters stand if they want the White House in the background (again, the BBC don't have one - they make do with a green screen back in the Bureau). It was nice to be on the other side of the gates from all the tourists taking photos from the outside, like we had done back in April.

I was very sad to leave and wanted to see lots more, but unfortunately even the private tours of the West Wing are limited to a very specific route. It was such an amazing experience, and one that very few Americans get to have, let alone Johnny foreigners like us, so we felt it was a big privilege.

To cap it off, we were spared a swealtering trip home on the metro by Emily running us back in her wicked jeep. I'm finding it hard to believe she's a republican, because she seems really fun and likes 'Arrested Development' and Ryan Adams and Wilco. This is not the behaviour of a republican. But I guess views on personal freedom, the economy and education define someone's political stance more than the TV they watch and bands they like. Ho hum.

FRIENDS WHO LUNCH

REALLY?? R Kelly is completely innocent of all underage sex charges brought against him, based on a video of him - err - having sex with an underage girl? Really?

So I've been doing more work this week for the company I was working for when we left London and it's going much better than my previous attempts at work. Far less procrastination and associated blueness, which is a relief.

We went to see 'What Happens In Vegas' in Chinatown on Thursday. We were hoping to grab a meal at one of what we assumed would be many chinese restaurants there, but were a little bemused to find that there aren't so many chinese places in Chinatown - mostly lots of chains like Subway and Starbucks with chinese signs.

Turns out 'What Happens In Vegas' could've happily waited till my next trip on a plane, but it was alright. Cameron Diaz is looking ooooold, in that too-much-booze-not-enough-sunblock way but Ashton Kutcher is kind of astonishingly handsome. I realise I'm coming very late to the party, but seriously, he is hot. Fortunately so is Max, so I wasn't sad to not be taking Ashton home after the movie.

I was a little relieved when criminal lawyer Sarah cancelled our game of tennis yesterday afternoon. It's really hot and I had a much nicer day with our new friends. Max and I met Alison, Emily and Erik Love for lunch because Alison was working at the downtown branch of her company (as opposed to the one way out in Virginia). It was really nice to have a gang of friends to hook up with and we had tasty sushi while planning a strategy to ensure Erik Love came to Alison and Emily's 'seersucker and sundresses' party tonight, despite having a prior engagement.

While the others scuttled back to work, I went for frozen yoghurt with Alison and chatted about the famous Brewster, who she's still going out with since their first date a few weeks ago and who's hardcore, hardcore religious when it comes to dating, which is presenting Alison with some intriguing challenges!

When I got home, Anne popped round to give us a spare key for her and Megan's flat and we got chatting for ages. Then we nipped over to her flat to look at some photos she was talking about, then she came back over to ours and we sat chatting and chatting over cans of Dr Pepper. What a lovely way to spend an afternoon!

Anne is really great. We have crazily similar personalities and freaked each other out on several occasions yesterday, talking about things we've done or how we feel about stuff and realising we are exactly the same. It's lovely for me, because we've kind of skipped the first few stages of getting-to-know-you friendship and seem to have jumped straight to a strong bond that enables to lots of long chats about things you rarely discuss with anyone other than your closest friends. The divviest similarity is that we're already getting sad about not living across the hall from each other, despite that being a long 10 months away!

Today was a classic Saturday in DevoLand. We mooched around this morning reading magazines, watched a bit of 'The West Wing', then did some chores and made cookies for Alison and Emily's party tonight (another baking disaster. I blame it on the Australian cookbook I was using that called for vegetable oil rather than butter. In COOKIES).

It started tipping it down with rain as we made our way to a mediterranean restaurant for dinner with friends of my friend Annabel. We saw our first ever motorcade on our way - it was enormous. There were 8 motorbikes, many black cars with blacked-out windows, an ambulance, lots of police cars and a jeep carrying men in black with big machine guns, looking mean.

I doubt they had the difficulties we did when we got to Dupont Circle and found it jammed with people lining the streets for Gay Pride, which we'd completely forgotten was happening today. Slipping and sliding in our flipflops in the torrential rain, we had to play chicken with a big truck carrying a drag queen as we dashed across the road to the restaurant.

Annabel's friends Neil and Val were really nice. Neil is British and Val is his American wife and they have two children and live in the Virginia suburbs. We had a really nice meal, though our waitress seemed a little annoyed to be serving us. Neil, Val and their kids have just come back from Alaska, which sounds terrific. I only wish we'd got them to take a photo of a numberplate while they were there - I can't imagine how else we're going to complete our collection!

After dinner, we headed to Alison and Emily's sundresses and seersucker party, which was a kind of odd affair. All the lights were on in their flat, there was no music and everyone was just kind of sitting around very politely. I worry that my interpretive dancing at our dimly-lit housewarming party must have shocked our American guests, if Alison and Emily's party is typical of DC fiestas.

I'm still not drinking and the lack of atmosphere didn't really help fill the gap in getting me into the party mood. Max held court very successfully in the kitchen all night, which was funny to occasionally pop in and see. It's fun being the celebrity guests here, with the unusual accents.

I met a nice girl from Alison and Emily's church called Becky who put my entire life to shame. She works with babies and toddlers at the world's only deaf university here in DC. She taught me how to sign 'you look nice' to Max (which he did), but he unfortunately thought I was trying to tell him he had dandruff when I tested my new skills. Whoops. Anyway, when Becky isn't helping deaf babies and their families, she spends her summers working at an orphanage in Nairobi. Yeah, I really need to get on with that whole plan of spending time here volunteering...

Erik Love never did make it to the party, which was a crying shame, and Patrick and Leanna didn't come, either. So I had a load of conversations with people I wasn't that interested in speaking to (while marveling at fake-Gavin's entirely seersucker suit) and trying to perfect my exit strategy for such situations.

I did enjoy meeting the famed Brewster, who seems really Nice (note capital N). He looks quite a lot like a Richie Cunningham-era Ron Howard and just seems a thoroughly good chap, if not necessarily one to set the world alight. He took an instant liking to Max when Maxy referenced 'Chariots of Fire' while taunting Emily about working on Sundays. The reference was lost on a mildly offended Emily, but Brewster was in ecstasy, as it's his favourite movie ever and he behaved like it was the tiniest, most obscure film that no-one else has seen. I think he'll be Max's friend for life now.

I was very ready to leave when Max left his kitchen audience begging for more. As we were going, so were Alison's Russian friends who've just moved here from San Francisco. Max had had great football chats with Dimitri who has a funny face - like a cartoon Russian drunk man - and seems very fun. His wife, Inna, is whippet thin and I can't imagine where she fit a child, but sure enough they have a little boy called Kai who was sleeping upstairs through the party and looked sooooo sweet, wrapped around Dimitri when they left. I demand to babysit, which I gather would be quite welcome, as Inna's mother only lived a couple of blocks away in SF and they're feeling a little stranded here in DC.