Well, this weekend, anyway.

It's a long week of birthdays. It started on Saturday with our next door-neighbour's son's (and good friend to Max), Jacob, sixth birthday. To celebrate we all went to the Sunderland Air Show. Which was a pretty much miserable failure, due to the incredible amount of fog that managed to lie over the coast. Two hundred yards inland, it cleared completely and the sun blazed down - so much in fact that Jacob's mother, Helena, got quite badly sunburnt on the fifteen minute walk to the Metro station. So, that was a bit of a let-down. It wasn't really helped by the fact that Max had stayed over at Jacob's on the Friday night and neither one had managed to get to sleep until after 10pm. So they were both very tired and, as a consequence, somewhat grumpy.

Candy's mom arrived from London to stay with us this week and the first thing we did was get her to babysit Max while Candy and I went out to a party. It was a party for Debbie, whoI used to work with when I was head bar-man at teh Tap and Spile pub, back when I was 19 or 20 - yes, that's right, 17 years ago. She now works with Candy, because she is a languages coordinator for one of the primary schools that Candy visits. That was extremely weird. She had barely changed and it was really like I'd only her seen her last week rather than 18 years ago.

Sunday was another party day. This time for me! We had a barbeque for my birthday - and also as official Grand Opening of the back garden (which everyone was very impressed with!) I got several lovely presents, including a beautiful necklace from Pete and Lesley, a lipstick and matching nail varnish from Julie and Alex, this from shewhomust and durham_rambler, flowers from my big bro, this from my mom and some utterly gorgeous, girly clothes from Gail-Nina and I will really need to get photos of myself in them.

Oh, by the way - weight update, I have lost two stone 1.5 lbs (or 29.5lbs) since I started Weight Watchers, taking me down to 14st10.5lbs (206.5lbs) which beats my initial target. I think I am looking to lose another .5-1st (7-14lbs), but I'm just seeing how it goes. And I look great! I am down from 40" waist trousers to 36" and I am lighter than I have been in, literally, two decades (ironically, pretty much since I last saw Debbie.) Although I think I've fucked this week with the barbie yesterday...

So, it's my birthday tomorrow and Max's birthday on Saturday (which will have yet another party!) and I will be having a party where I get to wear a skirt (or maybe one of the gorgeous velvetty LBDs that Gail gave to me) at the end of August.

Is it me, or does it appear that I am having a life at the moment? Shurely Shome Mishtake...