Last week I are mostly was having a birthday.

It was my birthday precioussssss. Last Saturday (24th June) to be precise, and it was a good day. I had started the celebrations early with a drink or twelve on Thursday evening with a few esteemed colleagues. Needless to say, I felt rough as feck on Friday. Bleeurgh. I made it through most of the working day with the judicious application of coffee and carbohydrates until I could decently crawl back to the pit from whence I came. A few hours later I was soothing the pain with dinner at Phenecia with Helen and Emily. The hummus there is surprisingly good for hangovers by the way, or maybe that’s just because it’s yummylicious at any time?

My first birthday greeting on the big day itself came in the form of a text from Bruce, at freaking half past seven in the morning! My text alert at the moment is a sound clip of Podge and Rodge so I was woken by a screech of “Are ye making the teeeeeeeeeeee?” I suppose I have nobody to blame but myself for that. Bah. The upside is that I got to spend the rest of the morning blissfully drifting in and out of sleep and really spending some quality time appreciating the wonderfulness of my bed. Mmmmm! (Oh, and if you’re worried about Mr Hadden it’s ok kids – he was on his way to bed, not getting up.)

After an afternoon of pottering and lazing about I went out for dinner again. Well, it was my birthday :oD

As I couldn’t get booked into Phenecia this year (I’d been meaning to book for weeks but hadn’t got round to it. Curses!) so I picked another interesting-sounding BYO in the area – Fenwick’s on Salisbury Place. The List Guide review appeared favourable, citing it as a favourite haunt of the fictional detective, Inspector Rebus. “Well,” I thought “if it’s good enough for a fictional character then it must be good enough for me!” Another odd thing about the review was that the minus point listed was that the bread was a tad tedious. If that was the worst thing they could think of to comment on then that seemed promising.

The staff were very friendly but the chairs were a little too high, or the table a little too low, and our starters took a noticeably long time to arrive. When they did they were a little underwhelming and the bread (that we had to ask for) was, indeed tedious. The main courses and desserts more than made up for these deficiencies though. I had pan-fried duck breast with roast parsnips on a bed of balsamic vinegary puy lentils. That duck breast was gorgeous! It was moist and slightly pink in the middle and utterly delicious. The red berries crème brulee that I had for dessert was absolutely beautiful as well, though I did fancy the champagne jelly with melon accompanied by blackcurrant sorbet. I think the fact that nobody offered anyone else a taste of their pudding is testament to how darn tasty it all was. By the end of the meal everyone seemed impressed with the place and any restaurant that has jelly and ice cream on the menu is ok in my book.

Then it was back to Marj Towers for drinkiepoos and intelligent conversation… well drinkiepoos anyway. We had a fine old time but, fear not gentle reader, it didn’t get too out of hand. That bottle of Absinthe remains, untouched and dusty, upon the fridge still. Mind you, how different things might have been if Barney hadn’t been on call that evening...