After an extended long weekend, Piers and I have now settled down to the familiar rhythm we had established the last time I was here.

In the morning, he goes to work at the office while I stay home and work on my blogs and stuff. He gets home at 5:30 pm and we spend the evening together, eat out or cook, watch a movie at home or at the cinema, or go to Wing Chun, or play on our iPads, or sit on the sofa and chill out to nice music and candlelight, during which he inevitably falls asleep on me.

 

 

Yesterday we celebrated one of our little “anniversaries”.

You know how new couples always find all kinds of reasons to celebrate all the time, silly things like “1st monthiversary” or, “50 days since we first held hands”, etc.

 

From Urban Dictionary:

Monthiversary: Similar to anniversary, but occurring every month. For people who are overzealous about a new relationship.

 

We also do “weekiversaries” but we don’t go crazy about it. I think it’s just a way to mark the passage of our time together on a regular basis to remind ourselves to appreciate each other.

 

Weekiversary: When a couple has been dating for a week and the girl finds it necessary to celebrate. However her boyfriend doesn’t remember so he gets himself into some deep shit.

 

Contrary to the Urban Dictionary definition above, Piers actually remembers more weekiversaries than I do, which means I couldn’t ask for a better boyfriend.

 

 

A friend recently challenged me to name 10 things I like about Piers, thinking I would find it a struggle, because he’s a bit doubtful about interracial couplings. But then he got bored (or maybe sick) and changed the subject when I was only halfway through my list.

I hadn’t even told him all the little things like how Piers always makes sure there are tulips in the apartment because he knows I love tulips.

I found these sitting in a vase awaiting my arrival on Saturday morning:

 

 

There’s also the fact that we both love food. Especially junk food like burgers and pizza and döner kebabs and popcorn. I can always count on him not to groan when I suggest having dinner at McDonald’s.

Recently, though, I acquired a taste for more premium burgers, so we celebrated my arrival on Saturday with a juicy beef burger at a nice restaurant.

 

 

So much to celebrate.

Last night, we went to a restaurant near his place which doesn’t have the best food but which we like for the romantic ambience.

(It’s hard to find romantic restaurants in England because all the tables are packed so close you can’t have private conversations.)

We took the short walk to Alcatraz Brasserie at 8 pm and got a nice corner table.

Unfortunately, near to summer, it’s a bit hard to have romantic dinners because the sky doesn’t start to darken until after 9 pm. And it doesn’t get full dark until maybe about 10 pm.

There was candlelight but there was no darkness to set it against.

 

 

I had marinated olives for my starter. Piers had cocktail prawns.

He always insists on us having two starters to share so we can have more varieties of food to pig out on. Sometimes, starters are as filling as main courses so we end up killing ourselves with food.

 

 

 

Piers is by now very used to me taking photos of our food before eating, and he always waits patiently, and sometimes helps me hold up my little pocket light when it’s too dark.

Won’t have any light problems now, since it’s always still bright when we have our dinner.

My main course was steak. I hurriedly took my photo so I could do Piers’ next. I always feel bad making people wait so I don’t spend a lot of time arranging and photographing my food like professional food bloggers do.

 

 

When I photographed Piers’ pizza, I included him in the shot, to his chagrin.

“Why am I in the photo with my pizza but you’re not in the photo with your steak?!” he protested.

 

 

“Because,” I said, “Pizza is so boring to photograph.”

Which is true. There are only so many ways you can photograph a pepperoni pizza. (We always order pepperoni.)

So we ate and drank and got a little bit drunk. We walked home, put some music on and slow-danced to two songs.

Then we sat down on the sofa and promptly fell asleep.

Our lifestyle, I’m afraid, is rather bland.

But it is only when food is bland that you can taste its true flavour and characteristic, isn’t it?

This life, bland or not, I could do for a long, long time.