It was followed by heading back to my sisters for a marathon Doctor Who DVD session. Six episodes of series four, a birthday present we all enjoyed!

A day full of Doctor Who and I have concluded that you can never have enough. If it wasn’t for having this blog to write, and getting to the point where I need matchsticks to keep my eyes open, I’d happily continue with my Doctor Who Day!

“Exterminate, Exterminate”

Double Davros

Bannakaffalatta – The second best thing about The Voyage of the Damned. Obviously Astrid (Kylie) was the best!

Brannigan from ‘Gridlock‘ and The Empty Child

The Ood and his translator device with Catherine and I

Struggling to decide on what to blog, considering the birthday of a three year old isn’t exactly the party to end all parties, I have settled on Disney Princesses. I am that tired that it has come to this.

For months my niece has wanted a Sleeping Beauty cake. She loves Sleeping Beauty. I wonder whether this will lead her to believe that when she’s older she just needs to have a good long lie in and a prince will come along and wake her up. It’s probably just because of the word ‘sleeping’, she is very fond of sleep. In my opinion though Sleeping Beauty and Snow White got it very right, have a kip whilst all the drama is going on, and then wake up for the big party with the gorgeous guy at the end. Of course that isn’t real life. If only it was.

My Disney Princess was (and I guess still is) The Little Mermaid. There can be worse role models. She went off and did stuff. Ariel didn’t wait about for some man to come along and rescue her. She was proactive and found a way to get what she wanted. Sure she got it a little wrong along the way, but she had amazing friends and it all worked out in the end. She was open-minded, inquisitive and friendly. Not to mention stubborn, determined and tenacious (Prince Eric was hard work though!). But for Ariel it wasn’t just about the man, she wanted to be human before his pretty face showed up, he was just an extra incentive to actually get on with making it happen.

Apparently I also used to watch Beauty and the Beast repeatedly. I’m not even going to start analysing that story versus my past relationships. But I’m not sure that it’s wise for little girls to repeatedly watch a story where a woman manages to “save” a man who seems to have some serious issues.

I have to admit that despite being an adult, and having developed a level of cynicism, there is still part of me that can still sit down and suspend reality for long enough to watch a Disney movie and thoroughly enjoy it. I know fairytale endings don’t exist in real life. Real relationships are far from perfect. You don’t meet the love of your life wandering through a wood, burst into song, get married and live happily ever after. You have to work at relationships and get through the ups and the downs. But every so often there should be a little magic. Surely that’s not too much to wish for?

The first is sunshine. Every year without fail it has been sunny for whatever birthday celebration or event is planned. When I was little it stayed dry for obsticle courses and treasure hunts. On my 16th I sat in the backgarden revising for a GCSEs. On my 18th we took a break from revision to have a BBQ. The day of my 21st I spent on Bournemouth beach. Not once in the past 26 years has it rained. And this year was no exception.

Secondly you can always guarentee that everyone will know it’s my birthday. Some people hate birthdays and hate the attention they bring. I don’t. I enjoy it. I like getting cards, presents and cake. This year I even requested that my family sing “Cumpleaños Feliz” (Happy Birthday in Spanish) as my niece and I are now learning it together every Thursday. My dad’s response was “Get lost!” but even he surrendered and joined in!

The third thing you can guarantee on and around my birthday is an abundance of parties and celebrations. I like to celebrate with my family, my close friends, my wider group of friends and if none of these events fall on my actual birthday a pint in the pub with friends is likely to feature too. For example last year I managed a party with my friends in London, a night out with my friends in Southport and a chinese meal with my family.

The party with friends has often been a joint party with others who have the good luck to have been born in May, but this year we decided to give it a miss. In fact I also gave the celebration with close friends, and the pub a miss too. In the grand scheme of things this year has been my quietest ever (I must have had two celebrations on my 1st birthday!) I ditched the big night out and the copious drinking for a lovely day with my family and one of my best friends. We ate a lovely Sunday roast prepared by my sister and then made the most of the sunshine by going for a wander in the woods. I would say it was civilised but we are talking about Thornber’s and their descendants so there was still a fair amount of noise and chaos!

Next year I might consider returning to the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle of previous birthdays – on the other hand I am very tempted to spend the weekend at the Hay-on-Wye book fair… I’ll save the partying for when I turn 30!!!

I also had the pleasure of turning twenty four, which so far has been pretty much the same as twenty three but with a better social life (again I think that’s down to the change of job not the age). As usual I managed to make sure that celebrations lasted as long as possible (3 days) Birthdays are a good excuse for people to party so I just like to let people make the most of using me as an excuse!

On the day of my birthday my parents and their best friends made it down to the big smoke, and we headed out for a meal in (you guessed it) Giraffe. Obviously I do love this place, but it’s my mother who’s become obsessive with it, you’d think there were no other restaurants in London. Other features of the long birthday weekend included the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, The Chelsea Flower Show, Kylie at the V&A, a fantastic 50s party and of course drinks at the pub, a few too many drinks. I managed to leave behind my bag containing presents and cards, but after a few seconds of panicking, when I realised I didn’t have it with me, turned back into my useful resourceful self and managed to sober up enough to call the pub when I got home, they kept it safe and sound. For a few seconds I was having visions of having to apologise profusely to people for losing what they had so lovingly bought me!

As well as increased socialising I have found that I have managed to watch/record all of my favourite programmes recently, normally I forget but somehow I have managed to see every episode of ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘The Apprentice’… and even most of ‘Any Dream Will Do’ since I discovered it (and Lee Mead) mid series. Actually the ADWD final on Saturday night has regressed me to some kind of teenage state, having developed a big crush on Lee. Thankfully I have not got to the stage of putting posters up or recording every TV appearance (it’s a decade since I gave up that kind of behaviour with Boyzone), it’s only gone as far as posting messages on Facebook (which lets face it pretty much encourages teenage like behaviour, poking each other instead of doing work!)

But now both ‘The Apprentice’ and ADWD have finished, Doctor Who only has three weeks to go, at least it’s summer so for a few weeks I can enjoy having a social life on Wednesday and Saturday evenings. Whatever happens I am not getting drawn into Big Brother this year, and will even resist the charms of Dermot O’Leary (unless of course I have nothing better to do and so might catch a few minutes of BBLB to top up on Dermot loveliness). If the weather’s rubbish and/or there’s no social life to be had it looks like I’m back to Friends repeats on E4 and my Sex and the City DVD collection.

I think I am now going to have to go and reflect on the fact that my current TV watching trends seem to be dominated by who I have celebrity crushes on (apart from The Apprentice, Sir Alan doesn’t really do it for me!) I feel like I’m fourteen all over again!!!

That’s not going to stop me, I have a weekend of fun ahead, starting with heading down to Bournemouth for S’s birthday, once I have got work sorted out tomorrow. Saturday night is Godskitchen at the BIC – for those of you not familiar with this, it is in fact not a restaurant run by a deity held in a pen shaped building. It is a hard house night at the Bournemouth International Centre. I haven’t been to such a night for about five years (I think the last instance was a night at the Opera House in Bournemouth on my birthday which resulted in a rather annoying argument – that’s another rather funny story about how illogical us women are). I am hoping I haven’t turned into a granny before my time, I’m looking forward to it for a start, however I am concerned about my ability to stay awake until the wee small hours. Sunday is sleep and recovery (hopefully involving lots of sunshine, sitting on the beach and at least one ice cream) and Monday will be spent with S’s family in Southampton.

But as I was saying the Easter weekend kicked off last night, firstly by meeting N for a couple of pints over in East London. This time he’d located a decent pub mere metres from the exit of Bethnal Green tube station, which was fine by me, having decided to ignore the fact that my feet were killing from a day of walking many miles and deciding to wear pretty high heeled shoes anyway (They were new and I had been looking forward to wearing them all day!). As closing time drew nearer we contemplated going elsewhere to get a pint but as the only thing the barmaid and a drunken bloke at the bar could recommend was walking a couple of miles to Brick Lane, N decided that that was a little too far for one more drink, and considering his knackeredness it was quite impressive he’d stayed awake this long (I will assume my intellectually stimulating conversation was responsible). So with that he walked me the ten feet to the tube station and sent me on my way.

I got to Bank, got off the tube, walked to the Northern Line to head back home, when a thought struck me. What was I doing? It was AA’s birthday and they were probably still out. Which meant I could still have my fifth pint that I felt I needed. I headed back to the Central Line (and very nearly back to Bethnal Green – I realised I was on the wrong platform just in the nick of time) and made my way to Tottenham Court Road. From there I used my trusty phone (and the wonderful search engine that is Google) to get me to their location. I discovered it was shutting and so the bouncer wouldn’t let me in. I have learnt over time that fighting with bouncers is not a good move, generally shouting at them and telling them that they are wrong will in fact not get you any closer to your aim of entering the establishment that they didn’t want you to go into before you turned into some kind of annoying, and possibly aggressive, idiot. So I said that was fine, and that I understood, and that I would just get their attention from the outside of the door. After 30 seconds or so of me waving through the window like a loony and not getting anyone’s attention the bouncer must have realised I wasn’t actually going to leave until I did get their attention, so he let me – the insane one – in. I discovered that people were considering going home and it wasn’t even 12.30am!!! I was horrified. I had already consumed four pints – but goddammit I wanted my fifth, N had denied me due to his tiredness, and now it looked like the guys I thought I could rely on were calling it a night. Thankfully the birthday boy had some sense in him. AA and A (AA’s best mate) were off for a Chinese, and invited me along. So I went. One, so far that day I had existed on three cereal bars and four pints of lager so food was probably a very very good idea right now. Two, it was AA’s birthday and so far I hadn’t celebrated much of it with him (about 10 minutes of it in all) so it would give me an opportunity to make up for my crappiness. Three, most importantly, a restaurant would have more beer. Yes a Chinese sounded fantastic.

After an unsuccessful attempt to get a table at the Crispy Duck on Wardour St (I recommend you do try – it’s just very busy at midnight!) we ended up at the Red Dragon Restaurant and Karaoke on Gerrard Street (however when we enquired they said that tonight it was not karaoke, just Red Dragon Chinese, they played none stop Chinese karaoke songs so we had no chance of joining in). D, T, C and TM joined us (they missed the last tube and Chinese was a more appealing option than a night bus to Brixton). So we ordered lots of food, it was very good. Do not take this as a sound recommendation, please bear in mind the amount of alcohol consumed, and that sometimes after that much alcohol, kebabs are considered haute cuisine. It may have been very good though, I will go back when sober and confirm. And I got my beer. Which was definitely very good.

As we were paying (careful not to let AA part with a penny of his money) and finishing the last of the green tea, the Backstreet Boys turned up on the karaoke screen, which I pointed out with great glee. An English karaoke song! A and I decided to start singing, and soon after so did (most of) the rest of the table, and then everyone else on the first floor of the restaurant (about twelve or so people) joined in too. Even the waiter who had told us “no karaoke” was singing along! I had an enormous sense of wellbeing, we had created a wonderful moment of togetherness and fun for all of us in the room. I’m not sure AA quite saw it that way, I think being sat between A and I singing didn’t help matters, however we made him sit through it right until the end, when everyone (probably lead by A and I) cheered!

And so we stumbled out into the night, and through China Town and Soho to find a bus in Trafalgar Square, which proceeded to brake down the other side of Trafalgar Square. We found another bus… and eventually a bed, and then crashed out and had a lovely long sleep.

All in all a good start to an Easter weekend. Alcohol, sleep and fun. Plus today has been chilling out, sun and reading (‘Yes Man’ Danny Wallace, from what I’ve read of it so far I definitely recommend!) Will report back on the rest of the weekend… hopefully it will just get better and better!

Firstly my housmate and I said a sad goodbye to Meggie the Parrot. We gave Meggie a home in January as we had decided it would be nice to have a third housemate around to keep us company and provide entertainment when either of us were home alone – however after two months we decided that actually between the two of us we spend so much time working and socialising that poor Meggie wasn’t getting enough attention or time to hang out away from her cage and so we gave her up for adoption. On Friday she moved in to a nice family home in North London where we hope she will be very happy!

Happy Birthday to E for tomorrow… although last night were the official celebrations. It was all lovely and wonderful – Birthday cake provided by Mrs W (E’s Mum)… Thank you! We started off in the lovely pub with the wonderful horsey wallpaper (By E’s direction it’s the pub south of the cow bins on Great Eastern Street – take your compass!)…

…and then once turfed out after last orders ended up wandering round the streets of Shoreditch behind one of E’s friends until he found us a suitable club… which he did – Coast to Coast at On The Rocks . If you like Ska, Soul and Reggae you have to check it out! I was in my element, since I’ve left Bournemouth I haven’t really got further than rock or general mainstream clubby nights out… which could explain my new found granny status of prefering a nice meal, or a good old pub to rocking it out on the dancefloor. One exception to this is Madame Jojo’s (Brewer St, W1) on a Friday night (I must go back soon!)… Anyway back to it. I very rarely these days am in somewhere I want to live it up and dance my socks off – and last night despite arriving feeling like I would prefer to be in bed, within five minutes I was smiling ear to ear and dancing away. Once those that had decided the place was a bit too off the musical beaten path for them had left, the rest of us got on enjoying it – with me mentioning that before I was in uni and became aware of a Ska band (who became good friends) I hadn’t a clue about Ska music… Thank god I got to know them in the final months at Uni, my musical life could have been deprived of this wonderful genre.

Anyway dancing away I notice a guy with dreadlocks really going for it… on second look I recognised the guy – wasn’t it G from the band? After far to much wine followed beer I couldn’t trust my judgement… but there was E too! I couldn’t believe it, I had randomly ended up in a Ska club in Shoreditch and bumped into the guys from the band – it must have been two years since I last hung out with the guys and their dog (well actually it was a picture of a dog) in their lounge, whilst we were all still in Bournemouth. After many hugs (it’s been too long!), short but loud conversations and birthday wishes for E (Another birthday night out both for E’s – one male, one female!) we got on with dancing. In fact last night it seemed there were very few people in the place that didn’t know someone celebrating a birthday… the DJ had so many requests that our request for E’s Birthday (our E, the female one, the reason I was out) shout out didn’t make the cut!

After a wonderful night, walking home wasn’t nearly as pleasurable… My feet killed. Had I known I would be heading out to really dance I would have had sensible shoes on (though at one point I decided to forgo the shoes for the ability to dance – thankfully there was no glass on the floor!) so by the time we left the club I was hobbling with the burning of the balls of my feet. I know you can buy those gel things, but I’ve tried them and frankly they seem to displace themselves so I still end up with sore feet and blisters added in just for good measure – I’ll take the pain without the blisters thanks. I do know some people swear by them so I have just come to the conclusion that they are like marmite – you either love them or hate them!

Anyway fabulous weekend – Columbia Rd flower market today (looking at my beautiful flowers right now) with pastries and a nice cuppa in the rain and now home… work to do later (boo hiss)…

But what can I say… It’s been a bobbydazzler of a weekend :0p