Hand me the wine and the badgers

Yesterday morning I left the house to go to the Co-op for party munchies & was immediately greeted by the sight of a GIANT BADGER. Good party omen!

Thank you to (in rough order of arrival) nja, lnr & Mike, Pablo, Vince, fanf & rmc28 & Charles, fivemack, james_r, truecatachresis & squigglyruth, juggzy, djw, hairyears, Paul, tigerfort & Kathryn, brrm, crouchinglynx, vinaigrettegirl, barnacle, monkeyhands, sesquipedality & markbanang, emperor, atreic, imc, rejs and anybody I have missed off that list for coming to our birthday party! You are all fab. (The people who couldn't make it are all fab too; we missed you, let's hope even more of you can make it next time...) Thank you for all the lovely presents as well!

We seem to have escaped without any breakages, spillages, arguments, molested badgers, or tears before bedtime. Hurrah! (I can't vouch for there being no spitting, but I couldn't be everywhere at once.)

Highlights which I can remember include: fanf taking the Bickerton for a test-drive round the block, fivemack manfully fixing the leg which fell off the dining-room table (!), juggzy managing by some incredible alchemy to turn some ancient rum and half a bottle of Hock into a very tasty fruit punch, vinaigrettegirl a) being just as lovely in real life as on the internet and b) bringing a delicious lasagne, atreic showing up with some very impressive melons (actually, fanf produced a fairly impressive cucumber, too), and everybody apparently appreciating the cake (I should have cut bigger slices or given people some to take home with them).

I had completely forgotten about the flashing breast lights, which I guess were a highlight of sorts, until addedentry reminded me just now. Uh, sorry about that, chaps.

I woke up this morning afternoon with an epic hangover which remained completely impervious to my usual cures (sugar water and ibuprofen), so apologies to lnr, Mike and fivemack for being an invisible hostess this morning. I was finally enticed out from under the Duvet Of Fail by the lovely hairyears inviting us to afternoon tea at the Randolph. Having breakfast at 5pm - including champagne! - is the sort of life to which I'd like a chance to become accustomed. :-) In fact if I'd started making a list of "things to do before I'm 40" that would have probably been on it. Tick!

On the subject of age... I get the impression that the big three-zero is the sort of thing one's popularly supposed to say "oh noes!" about. One of the good side-effects of so many of my friends being older than me is that I'm surrounded by living proof that you can still be fun and cool and interesting once you've said goodbye to the supposedly-halcyon[*] days of your twenties... and just as much so when you've started making inroads into your forties or fifties or beyond. Hurrah for lovely people of all ages!

[*] no kingfishers were harmed in the making of my twenties.