Helping my best mate propose to his girlfriend this weekend.

When he mentioned he wanted to propose at some point, earlier this year, I set to work making a scavenger hunt because his girlfriend is quirky as anything and my friend is far more pragmatic than creative. This has served us very well in our friendship so I don't begrudge him that at all.

So this Saturday we'll pretend to go to the gym for our usual training, and instead mission about town handing out clues to specified areas and explaining the situation to the staff at each place. The locations were picked A) for nostalgic purposes during their courting/budding relationship and B) to have her cross the entire city more than once to eat up time because the second I give her the first clue she will piece everything together in an instant - and I'll struggle to keep a straight face as she bursts into happy tears. So I need her to be busy for a good 90 minutes to 2 hours while my friend sets up the place he has booked for the night. Once she stops crying she will set about being incredibly determined and will want to finish in record time, so the longer she has to travel the better.

All going according to plan, she'll bounce around locations for 90 minutes then eventually the last clue will have her contact me at a certain place and I'll give her some address details + suggest she pack an overnight bag before heading there. Once she arrives, he'll drop the knee.

In other news, my partner and I are taking an extra step, not just living together with flatmates, but moving into our own wee spot of our own. A family friend owns this nice brick, three bedroom house I actually lived in when I was a student. It's been renovated nicely and they're looking for tenants once more. So we'll take over the lease, have the extra bedroom as a studio of sorts and enjoy setting up our lives entirely on our own terms.

Plus we're allowed a cat. Once we move in, first order of business is to head to the nearby SPCA and adopt a cat. Preferably one that has been there a while, we want to give a home to an animal that has been denied one for too long.

Our Japan trip is coming up! I've mastered saying "I'm sorry/excuse me" and have started sampling some vaguely Japanese food so I'm not entirely flabbergasted when we arrive. My partner speaks Japanese thankfully so I'll rely on her a lot while using my adorable foreigner charm to hopefully step on as few toes as possible.

Hope you're all well.