So it all kicks off tomorrow: my summer holiday, that which I have been anticipating for a goodly long time. The World Cup. Ahhhhhhhhh.

Been playing football a fair amount this week, actually - proper, real football too, not Pro Evo, not Champ Man - a group of friends and a few crucial plus-ones and randomers, running around a lot and sweating shitloads. Obviously, I am more than prepared to go to great detail to fully illuminate the joyous highs and agonising lows of the matches on Monday and Wednesday - I've done so before - but choose not to. Suffice to say, on Monday I played like a tosser, and yesterday my first touch was a joy to behold (relatively speaking, anyway.) Both games were exhausting, dehydrating, and insanely satisfying.

Joel and me also had a bit of a barbecue last night on the roof - the most people we've had up there (so far), about 14 I think. It went really well, it had been ages since I'd hosted more than a dinner party but it felt really good to see lots of different conversations going on and people laughing and what-not - pleasure from other people's pleasure and all that. I made some homemade burgers, which always seem to take people aback because they generally taste really, really good - not because of any great culinary prowess of my own, you understand, but because they're a piece of piss to make, but no one ever does. Yesterday I threw in some red onions and blue cheese and, going on the one I had myself, it worked a treat.

We also had a variety of posh sausages (award-winning, apparently - courtesy of Rosie) and Effie dazzled once again with some mini, make-your-own pavlovas (individual meringues, then help yourself to liberal doses of cream and a few strawberries. Lovely). Adam brought his firestaff, which I'll post some photos of if I can because I got some great ones of him, myself and Dan having fun with it. (Myself and Dan are strictly amateurs. Adam, on the other hand, is really really good - he can make it go over his shoulders, under his legs, all over the place - I think he's taking it to the Glade, along with his spare... I'm very excited.)

In short, it felt like summer. Friends and rooftops and sunsets and fun things and barbecues and the smoke making your eyes water and working hard on a way to get music onto the roof before finally finding a massive speaker wire and looping it out of my bedroom window and friends and sunshine and laughter. Since my shit-I've-got-cancer episode on Tuesday, I genuinely have a newfound respect for life... and it really is little moments and stuff that make it all ok. Leaving the flat each morning/afternoon, you turn your face to the sun and close your eyes and bask, briefly, in the middle of the road... and it. Feels. Great.