... and the birthday goes on!

Well the week started with a trip to the seaside with Pepps to have an implementation meeting with a client. Actually managing to get on the train to Poole felt like a day’s work in itself. I was up on time but left the house late so I decided to be clever and drive part way as I had missed the bus that would get me to Waterloo by 0830. I then got stuck in hideous traffic so decided to drive back and get the next bus. I missed the bus. I drove further down the route but ended up abandoning the car and catching whichever random bus I could that was heading in the right direction. Once on the bus I rang Pepps to say that there was no way I was going to be at Waterloo by 0830 (it was 0800 by now and I was less than a mile from home having been traveling for 45 minutes). Pepps says “Neither am I darling. I’ve been traveling for an hour and I’m still in bloody Clapham!” I immediately felt much less stressed! Anyway, to cut a terribly boring story short we rendezvous’d on Platform 9 at Clapham Junction, caught the first train heading in the right direction and miraculously got to the meeting bang on time.

The meeting was a good one. We got taken to lunch, which included enough “curly fries” to feed a small army. I declined to eat them as my instinct was that anything unnatural as a curly fry has got to be covered in crap of some sort of another (see page 6 of this link). We caught a glimpse of the sea, had a wicked hot chocolate in a very seedy teashop, nearly missed our train back to Clapham, treated ourselves to a warm G&T (no ice …), had a fascinating chat about shoes, wet wipes, tupperware and a shared love of Lakeland Plastics catalogues (said conversation was punctuated by strange random sounds from the woman across the aisle who we think was talking in Russian under her breath …), sighed in resigned acceptance as the train sailed through Clapham Junction and eventually wended our way home from Waterloo!

Tuesday started early with lovely presents and cards and moved on to hours staring at project plans and specifications; it’s a shame us grown ups with no annual leave left have to work on our birthdays ... However, the day took a turn for the better when at 4pm there were more cards, presents and special wheat free cake courtesy of the office, plus a glass of fizz courtesy of me! I wasn’t sure how the ‘alcohol in the office’ thing would go down but as it happens it was a resounding success and I think a new tradition has been started. Now all I need to do is persuade the company to foot the bill and gently introduce the notion of vodka tomatoes on special occasions and mulled wine before Christmas lunch and I’ll know I’ve really made my mark! The evening was spent at home with a lovely Bolognese and ice cream courtesy of TH and 2 episodes of “Waking the Dead” on video.

Wednesday saw dinner with Lou in Clapham plus another card and a present – a beautiful sparkly and girlie handbag.



I have no idea when I might be able to use it – come on, someone invite me to a ‘do’ which requires wearing my favourite slinky black dress and my new gorgeous handbag! We had no idea where we were going to eat, so walked up and down Northcote Road checking out all the restaurants and bars. We discarded places like the Slug and Lettuce and All Bar One which were rammed and noisy and just as we were heading back for an expensive Argentinean steak restaurant we spotted what looked at first glance like a wine bar. Closer inspection revealed it to be an Italian restaurant and remarkably seemed to have stuff on the menu which catered for siblings with different restrictive diets. It was also being frequented by more ‘mature’ customers who looked like they were out for the purposes of eating good food rather than just ‘out’, if you see what I mean. Well, we weren’t disappointed. I’m quite difficult to please on the eating out front but this really was a case of yum yum.

Thursday saw my 3 month review in my new job and happily my probationary period has officially been signed off and I received lovely feedback from my boss about my achievements so far. Actually I’ve been feeling good about the job over the last few weeks – I finally feel in control and that I’m winding up to being able to operate at the pace I’m used to, which is important to me, and it was good to have outside validation of my feelings by my boss saying good things about me too. The evening was spent at Darbucka with TH and Catster at Steve’s Peel Day gig. I’ve never been to Darbucka before and I love it! What a lovely venue. The gig was really good too; I’ve not heard Calamateur before and really enjoyed him, Steve was on good form – I really must buy one of his CDs - and what we saw of Rise was also really cool. Fortunately the darkness disguised the fact that I nodded off at one point … What can I say? Steve’s music is just so soothing and relaxing, and that combined with the fact that I’ve been out pretty much every night for a week and am, frankly, getting too old for that, meant that at one point I was gradually sliding off my cushion and disappearing under the table! Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear all of Rise because being old and sensible meant that we ran to get the last train back to where the car was parked at the shark pad (well I guess its Catster’s pad now really …)

Friday dawned with the unhappy realisation that I’m coming down with some ‘orrible lurgy (hardly surprising as everyone seems to have it at the moment) so I’m now stocked up with Echinacea, vitamin C and zinc, Night Nurse and a good supply of non-scratchy tissues, which will hopefully see me through a weekend visit from the parentals and back into another week at work.

The Menu
Garlic olives to die for; a shared plate of melt in the mouth parma ham, roast artichoke and truffle oil; chicken stuffed with mushrooms, in mascarpone cheese & peppercorn sauce and broccoli; all accompanied by a wonderfully smooth in the mouth montepulciano.