I flew in to London Luton to visit Sarah for the weekend on Friday. I don't write about her very much, but she's far and away the most important person in my life, and yesterday was our one year anniversary.
Rather than chilling out or going to a restaurant or something like that, we decided to go to Thorpe Park for the first half of the day with Sarah's brother and his girlfriend and then to Nottingham with a friend of hers to see bands play.
It was seriously the best day I've had in so long.
It was a Saturday so Thorpe Park was pretty busy. We managed to go on most of the "big" ones though. We started out small, going on a rollercoaster in the dark, that went backwards called X:\NO WAY OUT. There were, in fact, a lot of ways out of this one, and it wasn't good. From here, however, everything was awesome.After a 70 minute queue, we went on Colossus, which was incredible and had 10 loops (a world first, apparently) including an unnerving lazy corkscrew.
Next we went on Stealth, which has a very misleading name, because it's set in a sort of 50's speedway, and the cars are shaped like cars. This went from 0-80mp/h in less than 2 seconds before going through a 90 degree vertical turn, and up 205 feet in the air.
After lunch, James and I went on Detonator, which is one of those vertical drop rides, before taking the fastrack onto Nemesis Inferno, which was awesome. James and I went on Rush, which was like a giant swing, but infinitely more dangerous while Sarah and Nicola went on Quantum, which was a magic carpet style ride that looked and sounded like it could fall apart at any minute and Flying Fish, which looked like fun, but we were over queuing by the time we got to it. Time to head on...
After we got back to Northampton, Sarah's friend Rob picked us up and we went straight to Nottingham for the Never Again/Said and Done show in The Central. We missed the first band, Grazes, but the rest were pretty good. No Reality sounded a lot like Harms Way, and given a year or two, they'll probably be amazing. Times Together were fantastic, and the singer had excellent dance moves. I can see why Chris loves them so much. Never Again are going to be the biggest band from the UK in next to no time. They're seriously so good. Said and Done were a bit dull, unfortunately. They had some good riffs and bits, but don't seem to be able to string them together into solid songs. Their Leeway cover was great though.
After hanging out with the Notts crew for a bit, which is always fun, we headed back to Sarah's. I fell asleep in the car and woke up when we pulled into the driveway.
Today, we had an absolutely incredible meal.
The main course was a smoked tofu, mushroom and marinated shallot tart in a puff pastry, with a balsamic glaze, served with purple sprouted broccoli and hasselback potatoes. The potatoes deserve some explanation because they were so great. They were cut in half and then sliced almost through before being roasted for 45 minutes, then brushed with an orange zest glaze before being roasted again for another 10, so they were super crispy and had a delicious citrus taste. The whole dinner was served with a closed cup and chestnut mushroom au poivre sauce.
Dessert was equally incredible. Earlier in the day Sarah prepared poached pears, which were served on a Swedish ginger biscuit, with a scoop of vanilla icecream, crushed biscuit and the sauce from the pears. 
