I can't believe it's the festival for the end of Passover already. I have packed all kinds of things into this week, most importantly seeing some of my favourite people.

Seder night went well. All things considered there was a lot less pre-festival panic than I would normally expect. My Dad's cousins who usually join us decided to have their own Seder this year, so our only guests were Mum's aunt and her husband, and my first cousin J (but not his parents or sister). Everything went almost disappointingly smoothly; there was some token discussion but no real ring-a-ding arguments, and we didn't forget any part of the ceremony or even spill any wine.

Thuggish Poet managed to forget the date of Passover and therefore had poetry-related commitments he couldn't get out of. Although he isn't religious I think he was a bit disappointed to miss the actual Seder, and very disappointed indeed that Screwy and I had committed ourselves to heading off very soon after the earliest time he was able to get home on Tuesday afternoon. As it was we were both delayed by his lack of organization. Anyway, I was glad to see my brother however briefly, and he gave me some spices he had brought back from the actual India.

Anyway, I made it to the Pembury successfully, to meet up with ewtikins with pfy and hairyears, and doseybat and a new cool person, pplfichi *waves*, and even timeplease was able to leave the bar and hang out with us, which is always good. There was good conversation and tasty food even if I couldn't have beer and they had sadly run out of cider.

I went home with ewtikins and we managed to resist the temptation to stay up all night chatting, but instead put chatting off until the sensible time of Wednesday morning. We had lots of teeeeea and talked about everything and there was a very pretty cat. Yay! Lunch with daneres who found a nice salad bar called Vital Ingredient. A useful place for someone with a difficult diet as their gimmick is that you pick your own ingredients, and they label everything clearly. Anyway it was very good to catch up with daneres.

More tea and conversation in the afternoon, this time chez lethargic_man. curious_reader joined us, and we had a pleasant walk. After she'd left we even managed to get to bed at a sensible hour, though we did less well at waking up in the morning. I was only a little late to meet the parents and doseybat at Kew, though, and that was mainly the fault of a crazy lady who accosted me and tried to tell me in detail about her views of the Middle East situation. Thuggish Poet decided to join the expedition, which was great because it gave us a chance to catch up properly, while doseybat was giving us her tour of the fascinating backstage bits of Kew herbarium and library. We also had a very delightful picnic in the gardens; it's a very good time of year for that sort of thing!

I will leave until another post the second half of Passover, where I brought Bat back to Sweden with me and we did touristy things. Also I should process and post some photos, and write lots and lots of book reviews (a combination of travel time and some amount of leisure time means I've read rather a lot of books this week).