TENNIS & FRO-YO

WHAT I DISLIKE MOST IN THE WORLD: my bike. Sure, it looks pretty, but the chain fell off TWICE today, for no reason. I can't bring myself to get it fixed by the snotty bike snobs at the shop. Grrrr.

This morning was cool - I had my first ever webcam chat. It was with my friend Dan who lives in Chiswick and it was nice to see a friendly face and get a video tour of his new flat.

This evening, I played my second game of tennis from the website I signed up to. It was with a girl called Jean who works at the State Dept (foreign office) and learned how to play tennis during her 2-year posting in Bogota, where she had lessons on the ambassador's private tennis courts. Nice. Colombia sounds so nice - I'm sad it's so dangerous as I'd love to visit.

We played at courts right by the temporary apartment Max and I stayed in at the beginning of our time here and had to wait about an hour for a court, which was a real pain. But Jean seems very nice and we had a good knock about when we finally did get on the court, around 8pm. She's a little rusty, but definitely better than criminal lawyer Sarah. And the courts are really nice - it was pretty cool by the time we played and then floodlights came on as it got darker.

After supper at home, Max and I went over to neighbour Anne's flat to meet her Dad - Don - who's visiting for a few days. He's a Milton scholar and a really really nice chap who brought frozen yoghurt from a new place called Mr Yogatos down the street. We all got on very well and Don invited us to their holiday house on the Jersey Shore, which would be ace.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

BEST WHEEZE FOR ESCAPING THE CRAZY HEAT WE'RE HAVING: sitting *in* the fountain at Dupont Circle, like the man I saw this afternoon.

Mr & Mrs Deveson are 2 today! Happy anniversary, us.

It's been boiling hot today, so I wish I had managed to get Max's cotton-y (as befits year #2) gifts sooner than this morning, when I trawled many shops and the metro in sweltering heat. Fortunately I got him some excellent pressies and then met him for lunch in Dupont Circle.

I had great plans this afternoon for doing many busy things, but my morning of shopping in great heat had taken it out of me, and I found myself getting sucked into watching the movie 'Step Up' on TV. It's not worth much of a mention (but Channing Tatum is a surprisingly good dancer and the plot is really weak, even for a movie about street dancing), but made for an uncharacteristically relaxing afternoon - I quite thought more days would be spent like this here!

Maxy was home betimes for presents and gave me a box wrapped in cotton paper and a ribbon (all done by him!), with some Kate Spade thank you notes inside and a beautiful big green Kate Spade bangle, too. Turns out he dashed to the Kate Spade shop in Georgetown during lunch yesterday. What an excellent fellow! I'm also very excited by the box it all came in, which will be perfect for housing my all-too expanding stationery collection. I gave him a short-sleeved linen shirt and a pair of really nice shorts from Gap, along with a kickass epaulet-y shirt from Urban Outfitters which makes him look even more handsome than usual:

However, such casual threads wouldn't do for the fancy dinner we had planned, so we both changed into our glad rags (Max busting out the Italian suit again) and headed down to Dupont. Just as we left the house, it started to rain and - having felt sorry for the people beneath the angry red for lightning across the bay from Tilghman Island at the weekend - we learned what it was to *be* those people, as hardcore fork lightning started right about our heads. Torrential rain started shortly afterwards, so we jumped in a cab and emerged at Obelisk almost intact.

Let me rewind a few months. Soon after we arrived here in DC, we received a welcome gift from our friends Tom and Nina. They sent us an exceedingly generous voucher for supper at Obelisk, a restaurant we'd never heard of before but, on closer inspection of the guidebook, transpired not only to be just down the road from us in Dupont, but unanimously considered one of the best restaurants in the city. What a great gift! So we saved it up for a special occasion, hence our visit this evening.

It's a really little restaurant, with only about 30 covers and doesn't look at all fancy. Almost more like a casual canteen. But the food and service were amazing and we had a great evening. The menus are hand-written and you can only have a set menu of 5 courses. There are only two waitresses and they know the menu inside and out, so they explain it in great detail then shower you with seemingly endless antipasti, like stuffed artichokes, melt-in-your-mouth mozzarella, tasty bruschetta and even 'headcheese'. Max warned me that this was likely to be jellied brains, so I steered clear.

The subsequent four courses (starter, main, cheese, dessert) were all delicious and very fancy, though I was worried I wouldn't make it to the end, so full was I after course #2. A far more worrying development was that we had a glass of champagne each at the beginning of the meal - my first drop of alcohol since our party - and I didn't like it! Not the champagne - the mere drinking of alcohol! What has happened to me? This is a grave concern.

PHOTOS: CHESAPEAKE WEEKEND

Click HERE for photos of our second anniversary weekend on Chesapeake Bay.

ST MICHAELS & ANNAPOLIS

COOLEST THING I SAW TODAY: two naval academy students walking through Annapolis in full, white 'Officer & A Gentleman' uniform. Love lift us up where we beloooong...

Tom was very sad to see us leave the B&B today, though I got the distinct impression that it was less because he liked us as people and more because he wanted to make as much money as possible. I discerned this from the fact that he kept telling us that. I'm most perceptive.

We were joined at breakfast by one of the only other couples staying at Black Walnut Point Inn and I was very proud that we chatted to them, as I'm usually not very good at being friendly to fellow guests. I ended up kind of regretting it, because we got into a discussion with the lady about race - she was insisting that there is no black or white and that it's just a state of mind, so you can decide what ethnicity you want to be. Even her boyfriend thought her a little loony and removed her from us, for which we were quite grateful.

We spent the morning by the pool (welt woman staying in the shade this time, firmly on mozzie watch), then headed into St Michaels for lunch. St Michaels is a twee and slightly more fancy town than Tilghman Island. Though just as unwelcoming. I am really enjoying exploring America, though. It's really nice to spend our weekends driving along these pretty roads in the sunny sunshine, seeing cornfields and little towns with funny signs and pretty churches and stuff.

It was just insanely hot in St Michaels, such that even Maxy was seeking shade. It's known as the Town that Fooled the British, because they got a tipoff that the British were coming during the war of 1812 and sent lots of ships out to sea, with lights on them. This fooled the British into thinking that St Michaels was much closer than it really was, so when they fired their canons, the attack fell very short of the mainland. Apparently one canonball did make it to the town and fell through the roof of a house which still exists, but we couldn't find it.

After a gruelling afternoon sauntering around the port and boutiques, we had some sherbet ice cream in an old school parlour and then headed back towards DC, as there was far less to see in St Michaels than we'd expected.

As we made our way back across the bay over the long bridge which yesterday had been wrapped in the thick cotton wool of fog, we got to see what we'd missed. Especially as the traffic was pretty bad, so we were kind of crawling along. It's a huge bridge spanning the bay, but shunning the usual straight-from-A-to-B quality that kind of characterises your average bridge - this one meanders all over the bay, sweeping round in a big loop.

Because we were running so early, we stopped off for dinner in Annapolis. Annapolis is much more built up than St Michaels - a little like Poole in Dorset - and is centred on the navy academy. We saw the capitol building, which is in 'The Wire' when Carcetti goes to see the governor, and wandered along little backstreets of pretty houses. Maxy said it reminded him of Cambridge.

We welcomed the a/c in a second hand bookshop we dived into as we were just dripping with sweat. We got chatting to the owner of the shop, who invited Maxy to a discussion group about the election that she's holding in a few weeks. I don't think he'll go, but her shop was lovely and dark and old and it was interesting to hear that she's going to vote for Obama, but her twentysomething daughter is voting for McCain. Most irregular.

We had supper in a restaurant called Pussers which topped off the trio of bad meals this weekend (the clue was in the name). Ugh. Then headed back to DC to collapse exhausted after what felt like a very long weekend. On our way back into the city I genuinely nearly killed us in an attempt to pull up behind a car with a Kansas license plate in the middle of speeding traffic, but hey we got it!

ISLAND GETAWAY

MOST FRIGHTENING SIGN OF THINGS TO COME: we were sweating within 3 mins of stepping oustide at 9 AM yesterday morning. Euch.

The most almighty heatwave descended on DC this weekend, so we were very pleased to skip town and head to Chesapeake Bay, to celebrate our second wedding anniversary yesterday.

We hired a car and headed out of town along the roads we last drove along on that fateful Saturday after our party, when I had to return Alison's car to her. Hdddrrdrddrr. Our soundtrack for the sunny, air conditioned ride was our new acquisitions of 'Soviet Kitsch' (which I didn't like very much) and the DeVotchKa album, which I looooved.

Tilghman Island is a couple of hours from DC, right at the tip of Chesapeake Bay. Much like Montauk, you have to drive through a fancy place (St Michaels, in this case - the Hamptons in Montauk's) to get there, but unfortunately there wasn't much of a view for us to see, as the whole place was shrouded in a thick white fog. We went over an incredibly long bridge which must have beautiful views across the bay either side, but could barely see the car in front of us, let alone the edge of the bridge.

Unfortunately the fog hadn't lifted by the time we got to Black Walnut Point Inn - our B&B. Again, it must have lovely views across the bay, but all that lay beyond the trees and lawn was a thick wall of white.

Tom - the owner of the B&B was very welcoming and spoke with a thick southern drawl, rather than the cockney that Hugh had promised us. When we asked him whether he'd recommend the Tilghman Inn for a special dinner, he strongly warned us off it, explaining that, 'it's run by a couple of gays. Not that that matters. Erm, and the portions are really small'.

His recommendation was for Harrisons, a good, family establishment with big portions and great coleslaw. So we headed there for lunch, saving our Tilghman Inn plans for supper. Just as we walked into Harrisons, Hillary Clinton's concession speech was starting on CNN, showing in the bar. It was really interesting to see the contrast between her speaking yesterday and on Tuesday. On Tuesday, she was full of conviction and energy, but yesterday she was just reading off a pad and I didn't believe what she was saying. No huge surprise, I guess.

Harrisons was horrible. The waitress looked annoyed that we doubled the number of tables she had to look after and we attracted many glances of rank suspicion from the many very local people at the bar who obviously rarely see strangers. The food was awful, too - we both had breaded things and my prawns and Max's chicken were really dry and gross. But the 'slaw was indeed pretty good.

It had been unbearably muggy when we left DC and, although it was still incredibly hot in on Chesapeake Bay, it was a clear heat with a nice breeze. So we were glad to spend the afternoon by the pool, relaxing in the sunshine with no-one else around, reading magazines and dipping in the pool when we got too hot, as if on holiday. There was a massive cross at the end of the garden, which I guess was to warn fishermen or something, but which cast quite an eery feeling over the fog-engulfed water and empty grounds of the B&B, run by a scary-but-welcoming southern homophobe.

We had to share the pool with an automatic hoover thing that kept following us around and in fact heard Tom's wife tell another set of visitors that the pool's not open at the moment, but chose to ignore that as we hadn't been told directly and it was simply too boiling hot not to spend most of the afternoon submerged. I had a lovely snooze after my swim, enjoying the sensation of the warm/boiling hot sun on my back.

When I woke up, the fog had cleared a little bit and we could see a bit of the water of the bay, but not much. I had also picked up a handful of ginormous mosquito bites.

In the hope of celebrating our anniversary in style and exorcising the bad memories of lunch, we got changed into our finery and headed to Tilghman Inn for dinner. The reception there was about as warm as it had been at Harrisons and we had to wait until a table became free. We did so at the bar, where we watched a hilarious harassed barmaid enjoy getting herself really worked up about the tiniest tiniest of requests at her almost deserted bar. She was a middle-aged lady from Connecticut who's an events florist by trade (she's 'done' the White House, don't you know), but came here because she visited a while ago and 'liked the energy'. I can assure you she doesn't like it now. She's on minimum wage and it's all really expensive on Tilghman Island, because people mainly just retire there.

We made the mistake of engaging her on the election and learned that she's an aging hippy who's cross with everyone involved in the election and sees no-one representing her needs. Obama's useless, apparently.

We were quite relieved when our table became free, though not so much when the food proved to be gross again. We'll just have to save the proper celebrations for our actual anniversary on Tuesday.

Halfway through supper, I became aware of a light lighting up the whole sky and assumed it must be a lighthouse, as there was no rain or thunder and the light was really regular. It was still going as we drove back to the B&B, but we suddenly realised that it was lightning! No rain, no thunder, but the most amazing lightning I've ever seen. When we got to the B&B the fog had completely cleared and we could watch this incredible light show take place on the other side of the bay. Sometimes massive sheet lightning would light up the sky to reveal clouds that didn't seem to be there when it was dark, and other times there'd be this really vicious, angry red fork lightning pummeling the other side of the bay - DC and Baltimore, I guess. It was amazing and just went on and on and on, like the people in those towns had angered some primordial god.

I realised I was getting bitten to death, so we headed back inside, leaving the red forks to rain on the poor people. When we got to our room, we discovered that not only had I been bitten more, but my bites from earlier had developed into massive welts! Last year on our anniversary in the New Forest, we'd both got clinically sunburnt and couldn't bear to have a sheet on our skin, let alone each other. And this year I was welt woman, unable to stop itching for a moment. And so another romantic anniversary bit the dust!

CHEVY CHASE

MOST EXCITING DISCOVERY OF THE DAY: there's a nighttime frisbee league in DC that plays with loomy headbands and a flashing frisbee! I must track it down...

I finally got to play tennis today, with one of the 3-4 people I contacted through the DC Tennis website that puts you in touch with tennis partners of a similar standard.

I had to travel up town to Tenleytown, which involved taking my bike on the metro and cycling through a leafy suburb based around a Wholefoods (the mark of fanciness). The whole DC friendliness thing turned a little creepy on the metro station, when a weirdy man started talking to me. But maybe he wasn't creepy - perhaps he was just being friendly - but I think he was creepy and was sad when he got out at the same station as me.

I was also sad when, feeling very proud of myself for finding the courts so efficiently, I called what I thought was my tardy partner, only to discover that I was at the wrong courts and that she'd been waiting for me somewhere else. So I hotwheeled it through more leafy suburbs to a pretty crummy court, where I met Sarah - a criminal lawyer probably in her early 40s.

Sarah has two little children and seems quite a busy person, so I should imagine it was quite annoying to her that I was in the wrong place (due to a misunderstanding over email. She hadn't been clear. Not very good skills for a lawyer). But we had a nice knock around and it was good to be hitting a ball again.

Sarah was amusingly competitive, in getting cross with herself if she missed a ball. I was playing like a mook, with big loopy shots, but think that I'd be better than her if we played a game. She's had lots of lessons as an adult and I think playing her must be like what it's like for most people playing me - ie: I'm not terribly good, but manage to fluke getting the ball back over the net a lot, which is quite annoying.

It was INSANELY hot and I looked like a tomato after just half an hour or so of playing, when Sarah had to leave for her son's swimming lesson. Though, she pointed out, there was no tearing hurry, as the lesson's just in her back garden! They have a pool. I hope we become friends. I cannot tell you how boiling it's been here today. And Sarah's husband is cycling 100 miles tomorrow! He's a lawyer too. I guess they must all be super-driven.

By the time we finished, it was what the metro classes as rush hour, so I wasn't allowed to take my bike on the train and cycled aaaall the 3.5 miles home. Fortunately it was all down hill, and I felt very virtuous, playing tennis then pedaling home, even if it did only serve to make me look more tomato-like. I had to cycle across a really enormous bridge that's miles up over Rock Creek Park, way above the level of the trees, so you're just looking down into this huge ravine. It was really cool and I would've taken a photo, but for the zooming stream of traffic whizzing by me. Plus, it was really boiling and I was dying for a Calippo.

Two hours later I was almost back to exactly where I'd been, as we went to dinner just one metro stop further north, to Friendship Heights. This was an extremely fancy area, with a Bloomingdales and lots of fancy shops - like St Johns Wood on a larger scale. I even saw Lord & Taylor! This will only mean something to a maximum of four people reading this, as throughout my childhood, my Mum's shopping bag was her 'Lord Taylor' bag. Only years later, on idly examining the swirly writing on the bag did I realise it said 'Lord & Taylor' and was from a store, rather than bearing the signature of some olde English dignitary. Well the store, in all it's really weird 80s-ish faded glory is up in Friendship Heights! I felt almost emotional!

We went to dinner at the house of Michael and Marie, who are Canadian friends of my friend Jacqui (Kelly's Mum). They live in Chevy Chase, which is in Maryland, so once again we intrepidly crossed the state line. Chevy Chase is extraordinary - it suddenly felt like walking through a Dorset village, with really twee little picturesque cottages/houses and children playing on bikes on the very quiet roads. It's the sort of place I should imagine looks magical at Christmas. It's surrounded by lots of trees and just feels totally separate from the city, like a residential Brigadoon.

Michael and Marie's house is lovely - it looks like a little white cottage from the outside then inside is really big and open, with a screened deck at the back that smelt just like our honeymoon in the Maldives - that mix of humidity and wood.

We had delicious tapas, which is apparently their way every Friday night, and chatted all about how we're finding DC, their application for green cards (they've lived in the States for years and years but are both retired now, so need new visas to stay) and met their gorgeous Norwegian dog who has way too much hair for this insane climate.

Most of the evening was spent talking about US politics, and I was excited to find that I could contribute to the conversation. Both Michael and Marie were very welcoming and we felt very looked after, which was nice.

Something else that was nice was getting a ride home in their convertible car! Michael took us the scenic route home, down Embassy Row and around the National Cathedral, which looked amazing at night. It really is the only way to travel on a crazy hot summer's evening, getting to look up at the sky as you pootle around.

Just as we got out of the car, our neighbour Anne was coming home and we stood chatting for ages. Then her boyfriend Hugh turned up and we chatted some more until someone made the bright suggestion of actually going inside and having drinks! So they came into our apartment and we had a really fun time, just chatting away and listening to music before someone pointed out it had got to 1.30am and we went our separate ways. It's been a night of two nights.

We're going away for the weekend tomorrow, to celebrate our second anniversary. It all came together at the very last minute - we only booked our b&b yesterday - but we're really looking forward to it. We're off to Tilghman Island on Chesapeake Bay and Hugh says that lots of people have a cockney accent there, because they didn't get radios or TVs until the 70s, or something. Oi oi!

THE LONDON DEVESONS

TEMPERATURE FORECAST FOR THIS WEEKEND: 97°F. Aye carumba!

We were woken this morning by a call from London, asking Max to go on TV! BBC World News wanted an online expert to discuss the response of the blogosphere to Obama's win and who better to ask, but Maxy, who reads blogs for fun?! And what better timing than just after he's bought three fancy suits?!

So off Max went to work, all smart and nervey. It turned out that they never used him in the end. He was kind of on call all morning, and then it became clear that they were dropping the item, much to Maxy's relief.

But it was handy that he was in his suit already, because this evening we went to the Young Smithsonian Benefactors' Polo Kickoff Party at the Argentinian Embassy!! Fancy Danielle, who I met when having a manicure in Georgetown, has been including me on group invitations to many swanky dos on Facebook, which I've duly deleted and forgotten about.

But then I remembered that this is the year of saying yes to unlikely things and thought that it might be fun to get a peek into her world. So when she sent through this invite to the Argentinian Embassy and we saw it was only $60 each (which we figured was cheap for that kind of bash), we got a couple of tickets!

The embassy isn't on Embassy Row - the cool street of embassies that are in the style of their home countries - it's just down the road from our apartment. Having said that, I still needed to get a cab there, as my strappy shoes were hurting me before we left the flat.

Coincidentally, Danielle happened to be on the phone right by the welcome table, but hilariously didn't recognise me as I gave her a kiss hello, until she clocked the accent. We then met her girlfriends who all seemed nice enough and in very fancy dresses.

I wasn't really up for a night of being shiny and fun, but Max was on excellent form and held the Devo fort as we met a bunch of people. The embassy was disappointingly un-Argentinian and not that amazing - just kind of rococo fancy, like a small French chateau, or something. The party was across three rooms, with a big landing in the middle, and pitifully little food. I'm still not drinking, so the free bar held little delight and there were a lot of men in blue shirts and slacks there.

There were a couple of speeches - one by Danielle's friend who'd organised the event and one by a representative from the embassy who a little bit made me cry, because he was being all nice and sincere in a

room full of people I got the impression didn't really care much what he said. Then there was a slightly tame tango performance and then we wandered around the three rooms, wondering what the equivalent scene in London is and concluding that it's probably the Bouji's circuit and agreeing that we'd probably not be as welcome there, but our accents made us entirely acceptable at such a swanky do here. We did look the part, though, as this photo that wouldn't be out of place on the society pages of Tatler shows! (erm, the actual official photographer passed us by.)

We met back up with Danielle, but I found it a little difficult to think of things to say. I think it was a combination of me just feeling a little blah and us genuinely not having a lot in common. We did talk more to Justin though, a chap we'd met when we arrived who was sweating more than I've ever seen a person sweat - whether after strenuous sport or just on a hot day. It was crazy. He was obviously very high, but I just thought it so odd that he would do that when it makes him so conspicuous amongst the distinctly dry, non-sweaty crowd. He was literally dripping.

Anyway, he was trying to get Max on board with the hedge fund he's just moved back to DC from NYC to start up. Or at least in the record label he's started on the side. Danielle later told us that DC Magazine named Justin one of the 'Top 10 DC People To Know' and explained that he's in love with her friend who organised tonight's event, who's also on the list. It's a match made in heaven. And now we just need the other 8 in the set...!

There was talk of an 'after-party' in Georgetown, but I was so bored and so ready to leave that we made our excuses and got out of it. But Danielle's very keen that we go and see the 'Sex & The City' movie together, which I couldn't really wriggle out of. Just as we were leaving, two Japanese fellows allegedly called Ming and Kong got talking to us. But they were a little strange and I swear they were making up everything they were telling us - from their names to their story of how Ming had driven from Canada today to come to Kong's wedding that's happening in a hurry at the weekend. Just as we were leaving, we noticed that there was more tango going on in the other room, which this time was much more impressive, so the night wasn't a total bust.

I was very happy to leave and jump in a cab for the four blocks home, just in time to catch the grand finale of 'Step It Up & Dance' - a competition I've accidentally seen all of, thanks to endless daytime repeats that distract me from my work. We were also excited to see Kristen Schaal (Mel from 'Flight of the Conchords') as a new correspondent on 'The Daily Show'. She was really funny, but the whole programme has been on fire recently.