On Wednesday after work I headed out down to Richmond to play squash against Lorenzo, who plays quite regularly out there. It's been ages since I last properly played, so wasn't expecting much of a game, and certainly turned out that way, with me losing all games quite badly. Definitely need to work on that and get my fitness back up. Hopefully can play again next week and won't take too long to get back into it again.

Even after a few good hot days, Thursday surprised us again with it being the hottest day of the year so far with temperatures as high as 34° recorded out near Heathrow. Unfortunately I didn't get to enjoy the weather as much as I would've liked with me being in work and stuck indoors (*sigh*), but decided on a braai in the evening to make the most of those temperatures. It really was crazy hot outside, especially standing around the braai, but nice to be able to enjoy the long warm evenings outside.

On Friday after work a few of us popped over to the #R3D Market behind the office for a couple of beers out in the sun and then I made my way back towards home and met up with Uns at the station and took a walk into Peckham to go try out Kerb Food Festival. It was described online as a pop-up-food-party, which is exactly what the Kerb crowd does - organise pop-up street food festivals. They've now got four hubs around London and have one mission: "to make cities taste better". Apparently the name Kerb comes from kerb (or curb) meaning pavement, hence the street food connection. They had a range of food stalls, a few bars and a DJ playing in the background, which gave it all an awesome atmosphere.

I had only found out about Kerb after searching for the Donostia Pintxos van which I'd spotted at the Open East Festival and saw that they'd be in Peckham on Friday night, so figured we'd give it a try. Landed up having a bit of bobotie and a burger for dinner, so no complaints about the food on offer! After some time at Kerb, we decided to pop over to Bar Story which had already stopped serving, so tried our luck at Peckham Springs which was open until midnight so grabbed a quick beer there before heading home. Will certainly be following them a bit closer online to see when they'll next be back in the area.

Most of yesterday was spent at home sorting and cleaning and trying to get things in order around the house. There were random admin jobs and things on my to-do list I wanted to get done, so spent a good part of the day getting those done. Then late afternoon, we downed tools and got ready to head out to Battersea to the Holi One Festival of Colour. The Holi One festival, which takes place in cities across the world, is inspired by the Hindu Holi Festival, which is usually held in the spring to celebrate the end of winter. Obviously we're in the middle of our summer, but still a good reason to celebrate. The idea was for everyone attending to arrive wearing white clothes, and leave in a slightly more colourful style. After a quick stop in at Steers for dinner, we met the others coming in from Putney, and headed into the festival in one large group, before the festival of colour began.

It was quite a hippy-themed festival I guess with the multitude of colours everywhere, but still a good fun evening out, and really cool being right under the iconic Battersea Power Station. Normally at a festival you get annoyed by dust in the air and people throwing warm beer, but here the dust was replaced by coloured powder and the warm beer replaced by diluted powder to make brightly coloured paint. Good fun! After the festival, once everyone else has started to make their way home, Uns and myself made our way to Clapham Junction and stopped in at Windsor Castle, a proper old man's pub on St John's Hill. They didn't stay open for long, at which point we grabbed something to eat from McD's and then caught the last train home. We certainly didn't go without a few strange looks, kind of expected judging by the state of us and our colourful white clothing!

This morning we started out trying to sort out the heap of colours in the bathroom, it certainly did look like someone had a murdered a clown in there :) Most of the day was just spent taking it easy at home, other than a walk to New Cross Gate and back to get a few things from the shops. Other than that we managed a few more hotel bookings and holiday planning for our U.S. trip next month, all very exciting!