Birthday-ness and Jasper

I am now (just about) over the shock of becoming 25. Had a marvellous day ... at work. However, it was a nice enough day and taught me one very important thing : there is some kind of correlation between my (lovely) migranes and the managers. Wednesday = no migranes and no managers. Suspicious, isn't it? Ha ha.

On Thursday I decided to behave like an intellectual and, along with the aforementioned and lovely LB, went to a book signing event at the City Library, where Jasper Fforde was promoting his latest book "Shades of Grey". He is a very funny man, and a big bag of crazy. My favourite part of his speech was the bit where he told us how he goes about writing his books. You would expect the author of a very witty and intricate book to have had a suitably detailed outline plan, right? Wrong! Jasper goes about writing his books by setting himself a series of writing "dares". The "dare" which inspired his latest creation being: "There is a spoon shortage. Everyone is having soup for dinner. The Rules state that you cannot pick up the bowl to drink from it. Write your way out of that one". It sounds like a terribly sadistic English essay question to me!! Second only to the essay question which CA had to answer when she was at school: "Describe the inside of a ping pong ball". Some English teachers are just not well in the head.

Following Jasper's speech was a short Q & A session in which some of the audience attempted to make themselves sound much cleverer than they really were, and in which Jasper informed us that the best question he was ever asked was by a school child who, following his speech, put his hand up to ask "exactly how many kilos do you weigh?". Hillarious!!

We then headed back to CA and LB's where Mr B and CA had ordered in Dominos - the fourth emergency service. Yum. Followed by a rather delicious hot chocolate cake and cream and a glass of wine and presents!

By way of celebrating my 25th (as though the above was not enough) Mr B and I went to a Belgian restaurant for a lovely meal. There is nothing much to comment on. The meal was lovely. The only mildly irritating point (and it is a point which irritates me every time we eat out) was all the waiting between finishing the meal and getting the bill. Waiting between courses is fine - there is something left to look forward to. However, when I've finished my food, I just want to go home. Immediately. Inevitably there is a (long) period of sitting around waiting for the bill. Then when the bill arrives you sit staring at it (as though it is either going to disintegrate or turn into something significantly more interesting) and then you have to attract the attention of the waiting staff so you can actually pay the bill before leaving. No thank you. I would much prefer to just leave. So if all my favourite eating establishments could hurry along and invent some kind of "pay at the table" device, that would be just marvellous!!