Lauren turned up this morning bearing birthday salutations and gifts. Gifts that required super-human strength to extricate them from the packaging, but which smelled very nice. I’m not sure what’s happened the rest of the day. With a bit of rain and wintery darkness outside I tend to switch off, even during the week, thinking that evening has come at half past three in the afternoon. And so just now I was to be found snoozing on a bean bag with The Simpsons on TV playing to an inattentive audience.

The plan for tonight involves a shower before snoozing in front of watching “Erin Brockovich” on TV and continuing to reknit the hat I wasn’t 100% happy with. And maybe rearranging that sentence so that the preposition isn’t at the end. Of course this is all somewhat dependent on the lethargy lifting … and I’m just not sure it can be bothered.

06:37

beep beep - beep beep

My phone wakes me. I’ve been here before. A text from my dear cousin: “Happy birthday. Sorry so early, but some of us start work before 10am!”

Oh ha-di-ha.

09:50

John rings on the home line; I’ve turned the work phone over to the guys for the day. He wishes me a happy birthday and then says “that’s it”. “Oh, I wasn’t sure if you were about to say ‘can you just…?’”, I say. “No, I’m not going to make you do any work,” he replies. “It’s hard enough at the best of times.”

A little love and respect on one’s birthday is always nice. Or so I hear.

This was my lunch today. I’m feeling a bit under the weather and didn’t feel hungry until I was over-hungry, meaning that by the time I’d got this made and the cheese had melted, I was all jittery and needed some sugar inside me, stat!

The surprise from Suzy yesterday turned out to be a trip up to London for very yummy Mexican food at Wahaca and then off to the Apollo Victoria to see Wicked.

We ordered the Wahaca selection to share, eliminating any need to make the difficult decision as to which dishes to order; this way we got a bit of everything. Now if a Wahaca chef could bring me a fresh huitlacoche quesadilla (chestnut mushrooms, melted cheese and huitlacoche) every day, that would be just dandy. A glass of that utterly drinkable wine would also be good.

After our leisurely nosebag we took the tube two stops to Victoria and it still wasn’t until we were stood in front of the theatre that I knew what my surprise was to be: the huge “Wicked” hoarding outside the theatre revealing the secret as large as could be.

It was a wonderful show and I was very jealous admiring of the powerful and impressive voices, especially that of the Wicked Witch herself. The finale of Act 1 was my favourite part. I thought it was incredible and it was pretty difficult to get to sleep last night with “Defying Gravity” running through my head over and over. Though admittedly I probably didn’t help matters by watching it in various versions on Youtube before finally heading off to kip.

On the train ride home at the end of the evening a pile of drunk boys literally fell into our carriage, singing, arsing about and generally being loud and, well, pretty funny. Their rousing anthem was that “Tonbridge boys are on the piss again”, which one or the other of them would then try to change to “Sevenoaks boys” in order - unsuccessfully - to cover their tracks. One boy settled down next to the family in front of us, which was fortunate for him as when we reached Tonbridge they were the only ones - eventually - able to persuade him that this was his stop and he needed to get off here. Meanwhile one of his friends was busy shaking hands with me and Suzy while we tried to shoo them off the train before it set off again for the next stop.

Mum and Dad were waiting in the car for us outside the station and as we drove off down the hill, Suzy spotted that one of the boys from the train was indeed keeping the promise he had loudly proclaimed back on the train. That he was “going to urinate everywhere“. Ah, the youth of today.

… meaning that I have no notion what’s planned. Suzy’s taking me out for an early birthday treat in a while. I need to look fancy and be at her house at about 4pm. Then we’ll be catching the train to … somewhere. To do … something. But I know we’ll be back after midnight, hence the early - though fathomless - post to make sure I post today for NaBloPoMo. I’ll add in a “Tiny Moment” photo when I’m back.

Later: it was a trip to London to see Wicked!

Mo … hair. While rain falls outside, my morning has pretty much been spent watching old Daily Show videos and knitting a few more rows of a mohair scarf. Not for me, no the idea of mohair around my neck makes me want to throw the ball of yarn away. As does the idea of having to cast on again with it.

I went to the cinema last night with Suzy and her 1950s wife, Clara. Clara is actually Suzy’s landlady/housemate, but her habit of getting home from work before Suzy and making dinner for them both has earned her the title of Suzy’s wife. Though I’m not sure she knows that yet.

We went to see High School Musical 3 and - having missed the first two films - I’m very glad that the ridiculously-named Sharpay eventually made reference to the fact that the choreographer chap was her twin, otherwise I’d have been confused even longer as to why the slighty catty one was being so nice to the dweeby one.

Clara’s a fan of the feel-good factor (and of Zac Efron, who only had the 2nd most ridiculous hairstyle, so that’s ok) and I did indeed come away from the film wanting to go back to school for one more dance lesson. A large group of people bursting into song and choreographed movement really would brighten up the working day, don’t you think?

Lauren and I went to the zoo just over a week ago, shunning work for a gloriously sunny day outside, looking at giraffes and eating ice lollies. Damn, being a grownup is awful. But do you know what is the best fun? And I’m sure Lauren will only concur: going to the zoo with someone who walks around the zoo saying, “I saw these in the Galapagos”. All that money to spend a week in an archipelago halfway around the world and I could have just hopped onto a train and spent £17 to see a damn penguin in London. Though it wouldn’t have been a Galapagos penguin. They’re a special type of penguin. More expensive.

We saw all sorts of wild beasts, including a couple of lions, who chose to do the wild thing right in front of us, leaving the small group of visitors outside the enclosure to get all British and flustered, not knowing quite where to look. There were the gorgeous giraffes, so content just chewing on lovely, lovely sticks (I’m expecting one of those giraffes for my birthday, by the way - gift wrapping is optional), zebras, a variety of crazy birds, gorillas, burrowing owls, warthogs, creatures great and small, cute and ugly.

There’s also a “meet the monkeys” enclosure at the zoo, where you can walk around in the same area in which black-capped spider monkeys are climbing and jumping about all around you. Jumping into a kid’s pushchair as that Starbucks paper cup he’s holding looks as though it might just contain food - thank you, that’s so thoughtful … damn it, that’s just a cup of pebbles. What the hell, kid? It’s best not to hold  your phone out at arm’s length to take a photo of the monkey who’s staring at you from his branch either, because as the warden warned the man doing just that, you risk having the phone swiped from your hand by the cute little thing you’re trying to photograph. Fortunately a D80 is too heavy to snatch, so I have a few photos to share.

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