Birthday weekend

I just had a look back to see what I'd blogged about on my birthday last year, and it seems I didn't. However, a little digging through my email from this time last year reminds me that Sam and I went up to Derbyshire for a weekend, which was most pleasant. Enough about that though, and on to this year's birthday. On Friday, Ali arrived from Darkest Lincolnshire, and as Sam was feeling migrainous we stayed in and had spag bol and no alcomahol. We played the fantastic Motorway game and followed it up with a go at The London Game. Sam won by choosing to close Covent Garden which was one of the stations we needed to collect, although he had no way of knowing that so he wasn't being mean.

Saturday dawned fair, and after breakfasting I drove us to Redbridge just off the end of the M11 to park up and take the Central Line into London. We did lots and saw lots, although most of what we did was just wandering and taking in the various sights, and pretending we had to take a Hazard card every time we changed lines on the Tube. We met Claire off her train at Euston, and then saw some more sights. I'm glad we went to the National Gallery; I hadn't been for quite a while and there was a very good (free) impressionist exhibition. *insert compulsory Rory Bremner/Alistair McGowan etc. joke here* I am very fond of Impressionist art, and they had one of Sam's all time favourite paintings on display - Seurat's Bathers at Asnières. The low point of the day was realising I'd left the lovely chocs Claire had brought for my birthday in the cafe where we'd paused for a drink. However, on retracing our steps (with some major bitchin' at Sam because I was stressed and am a Bad Girlfriend) we found they were still there so all was well. (And I did lots of apologising for being Bad, and Sam still loves me, so that's OK.)
Saturday night consisted of pizza instead of cooking, and a game of Taboo, as well as lots of music and good conversation.

Sunday also dawned fair. We didn't have chocolate pudding for breakfast, because that would be WRONG, and we don't do WRONG things like having pudding for breakfast, m'kay?
After a stroll round Dunmow and some friendly fun with the ducks, we headed into Stortford to my favourite cafe there, Yerbz. They do fantastic melts and even nicer caramel slices. I treated myself to a couple of CDs on my wanted list when we were in Woolies, because it's my birthday, and they were cheap. After that, alas it was time to head to the station to drop Claire and Ali off for their train. But we found an exciting route to drive home, including running over a stick which made exciting scrapy noises by wedging itself under the car so I had to stop and crawl under to get it out. This would be less blogworthy if the exact same thing hadn't happened to Sam 2 weekends ago. Maybe my new career should be retrieving sticks from under cars.

The rest of the afternoon passed all too quickly, although Sam didn't have to abandon me until after dinner, as he wasn't doing hostipal radio today. One of the nicest things about today has been the number of birthday wishes I got, from chatroomers, facebookers, family and friends. Two people with whom I hadn't been in contact for probably 5+ years got in touch to wish me many happy returns. I used to hate being an April Fool, but it's nice to know that it's such a memorable date for people that they pause and think of me and take time to send me a text or email.

No photos yet I'm afraid; I took them with the real camera. I am planning to get them developed before we go away on Thursday though, so I shall blog a couple once I've scanned them.