10 posts tagged “birthday”
Have a friend who is living and working in Moscow at the moment. Her birthday is at the end of November so I sent her a small present and card to her work address copying it from her email signature.
It never arrived.
Stolen I thought.
Then yesterday it turned up in my office, in London, card and gift opened but intact. The return address I'd put on it was my home address.
So where has it been for the last five months?
I know it's been bouncing around south London for a while because of the scrawls of different postcodes written on it. My return postcode was a little unclear and, as I'd reused a padded envelope, a postman with initiative had partially ripped off the Moscow address to reveal the original label which was to me at my work address.
But there are no clues as to whether it got to Russia and why it came back.
Once I received a postcard a friend had sent while on holiday in Italy a year after she got back.
Is it a case of it maybe falling down behind the sorting bench and being forgotten about until someone decides to do a thorough tidy up or do posties play postal roulette and if the bottle stops on your package it get lobbed in the corner for six months?
What are you most looking forward to this weekend?
The perfect combination of some time to myself to indulge in a few of my favourite pastimes followed by preparing and enjoying a boozy, long lunch on (bank holiday) monday with a group of good friends to kick-off my birthday celebrations.
What are your neighbors like? (The ones you live near or next to, not the ones in your Vox neighborhood!)
Andrew and Francesca live in the flat opposite and are great neighbours. They moved in about a year ago and we started chatting when we bumped into each other in the hall. They came over for a drink on my birthday last year and Mosh and I went to their wedding reception. At Easter we all had dinner together, preparing a course each.
They have a set of keys to my flat for when I lock myself out, we lend each other stuff and are all going to the theatre together in June.
Francesca is a knit wear designer and gives me free samples. Andrew is a bus driver and is full of amusing stories about the menagerie of passengers he encounters and tips for how to get the drivers attention when you are running for the bus.
And to top it all, they don't have loud parties.
Saw two disappointing films at the weekend.
First there was Shine A Light the Scorsese directed film of the Rolling Stones in concert on Saturday night. If you've seen the trailers, like me, you may have been led to believe that this was a behind the scenes rockumentary made by one of the leading film directors about one of the most famous rock bands.
However, what it is, is a nicely shot equivalent to a 'live DVD' with a bit at the beginning which is all 'woo the Rolling Stones are being all skitish about the details and Scorsese's getting worried about whether he can have a moving camera or not' followed by pretty much the entire concert with a handful of old interview clips sparingly edited in.
Yep there are some good guests which expose the weakness of either the guests performance (Jack White is a terrible singer next to Mick Jagger) or the Rolling Stones (Christina Aguilera is a superb singer next to Mick Jagger).
It is a charity gig so the audience is obviously made up of rich gits who may have heard a Rolling Stones song once and the Clinton's who are just embarrassing. (Why didn't Scorsese get the camera to pan around on them during the gig so we could all see Bill dad-dancing as he inevitably would be).
OK so the songs are great and I'm sure it would have been amazing to have been there but I quickly got bored and it was only my fascination with Keith Richards face (please tell me he's a muppet) combined with the large glass of red that sustained me.
Why on earth Scorsese wasted his time on it I do not know. Surely the man could have wangled himself a ticket and a back stage pass if he was that much of a fan?
He directs and stars what is actually a direction-less movie. It wants to be so many things but succeeds in being none.
You could call it a romantic comedy about a girl that is hard to get but the whole American Football thing pulls it more towards fact-based sports drama about the underdogs succeeding and how American Football became the game that is played today or something. But then there is also the media question which stops it being a sports drama and the 'what is a hero' question which stops it being about the role of the media. I could go on.
Renee Zellweger or hamster face as I like to call her (just look at how she smiles, if a fat hamster smiled it would look like Renee Zellweger) and Clooney smolder together which is about the only positive thing I can say about the whole film. Oh and the bit where Clooney gets punched in the face and falls over which is what I wanted to do by the end. Actually that was the only bit that made me laugh.
If you want to eat popcorn and ogle George for a couple of hours then it might be worth parting with hard-earned cash but otherwise I wouldn't even bother recording when it makes it onto the telly.
What are you looking forward to this week?
The weekend. It's Mosh's birthday on Saturday and we have lots of things planned starting with going to see The Cult on Friday night, Mosh wants to start his 40th year with ringing ears and for me seeing them is a trip down memory lane as they were the first band I ever saw when I was a teen.
On Saturday I'm taking birthday boy to a restaurant of his choice for lunch and then he's having a bit of a do in one our local pubs to which he's (hopefully) invited loads of our friends.
Have got some other stuff planned but if I write about it, it won't be a surprise...
Thanks to Nadia for recommending this recipe out of her Jamie Oliver cook book, which I made for lunch yesterday. It was simple and delicious. Basically you put all your veg and tatties in a roasting tin with a browned leg of lamb and some herbs.
Chuck in a bottle of white wine and a bottle of water. Cover in foil. Bung in the oven and forget about it for five hours:
My sister bought me these beautiful roses for my Birthday tomorrow and Mosh's mum bought me one of those pots of miniature roses too. I love getting flowers, particularly when they are delivered. My flat looks real pretty. *big smile*
OK so its my birthday this weekend and as anyone who knows me will tell you: I love my birthday. Don't get the whole depression about being a year older thing, I say good excuse to have some fun, get together with friends, spoil yourself and Mosh has to be nice to me. If I'm good I'll get some pressies too. What isn't to like about that?
As it falls in the middle of a bank holiday weekend the celebrations start today. Yay!
But birthday aside I was looking at my calender and I've got a lot of good things in the diary for this month. There are two concerts: Apples in Stereo and Manic Street Preachers.
A bit of comedy in the form of stand up Michael McIntyre.
I'm going to an awards ceremony which is black tie so I can wear my posh frock - my magazine has been nominated but I'll be extremely surprised if we win.
Then there is reunion with some of the people Mosh and I met in Thailand and Cambodia a couple of years ago and Mosh's fives dinner at the fantastic Indian restaurant Sadya.
There is a mystery evening that Mosh has bought us tickets for - all revealed on Sunday, I hope.
And to finish it off we are going to visit our friends Nick and Sophie in Cardiff for the weekend.
If I get my arse into gear there may be one or two theatre visits thrown in for good measure as there are a couple of plays on this month I really want to see. One is an adaptation of Vernon God Little which I thought was an excellent book.
I'd say June is going to be an anti-climax but June is Muse month...
Is tonight. Why? Because it is the eve of the long Easter holiday weekend.
Tomorrow is Good Friday or Great Friday as I prefer to call it, because most of the working population of Great Britain, me included, gets the day off. The weekend starts now and it's only Thursday.
And if that isn't good enough we get Monday off too! Four whole days off work without taking any holiday.
That is why this is my favourite night because I have that prospect stretching ahead of me. And no I'm not going to be joining the multitudes sitting in traffic/railway stations/airports for the great Easter weekend getaway. I'm staying here in London (apart from Saturday when I'm going to France for a lunchy, booze-choose) for some R&R, perhaps a little bit of cultural stuff around the capital, plenty of good food and wine, and hopefully some good company.
Oh and my favourite night of the year? My birthday eve of course...
Do you like surprises?
Nice surprises, absolutely. Like I hate knowing what present Mosh is buying me for my birthday. I don't like making a list of what I want because it just seems wrong to expect people to buy you stuff. And it makes the gift all the nicer if it is even just a little bit unexpected.
Mosh once told me he was taking me out for dinner on my birthday and when we got there he'd invited a bunch of my my friends - I loved it because it made me feel all the more special that he'd taken the trouble to organise it and that so many people had come along.
