adore amy

end of a (half) century!

In addition to being both my birthday and Chinese New Year, today is apparently National Hot Sauce Day, National Polka Dot Day, National Blonde Brownie Day and the (inordinately twee-sounding) Celebration of Life Day, but I didn’t find these out until just now, so the brownie will have to wait until I’m next passing Konditor. C’est la vie.

The last few months of my forties have definitely been some of my better ones; seeing Prodigy at Brixton Academy on a July evening so hot I wound up dancing in running shorts and a bra just like we did the nineties only without the gear. Also without the broken collarbone I sustained falling off a speaker stack the first time I saw Prodigy in 1992 (when I was nineteen, and thankfully more bouncy than I am now). Hopefully they’ll be back soon, although Lord alone knows what’s happening with Brixton.

Other highlights include the pork pie from Mrs King I bought at Borough Market on Thursday 22nd December and had already demolished by bedtime on Christmas Eve (it was not a small pork pie), ditto unexpectedly finding out that I live in palatial luxury, rather than a lovely but otherwise unremarkable 1 bed flat – admittedly with aircon – a discovery made when viewing other ‘luxury apartments’ in the same price range a few weeks ago. But my favourite thing without a doubt, has been my gym. Worth every penny of the (not inconsiderable) membership fees if only for the means to wash my hair somewhere with a water softener, and throw weights around without being glared at by Serious Weight Training Men. And less than five minutes’ walk from my front door!

Not that I’ve spent much time there this weekend; I decided to start early with a Friday night walk over the bridge to check out the new(ish) Everyman cinema at Borough Yards and Babylon, which turned out to be even longer than one of my favourites of last year – Elvis, which took me two attempts to get through without falling asleep (the 8.30pm start was a definite rookie error). Despite Babylon having no plot, wafer thin characters and some seriously woeful rippings off homages I thoroughly enjoyed it, and this is bearing in mind I hated La La Land to the extent that I kept my coat on for the first twenty minutes in case a sharp exit was necessary to avoid wasting any more of my life on Damien Chazelle than I already have. The setting (including superior toilets, presenting the German Gymnasium and The Wolseley with some stiff competition) definitely helped, as did the hot dog and ice cream sundae delivered to my armchair.

A scant twelve hours after getting in, I was on my way up to Farringdon station armed only with my Oyster card, a bottle of Evian and a reliable pen for the TfL treasure hunt – yay! This also took me through Paddington, Edgware Road, Baker Street, Great Portland Street, Euston Square and Kings Cross St Pancras looking for clues; since the latter is the only one I’ve spent any amount of time in, many exciting discoveries were made and after a couple of hours exploring I was finished, answers checked and ready to claim the bounty that is my new Love The Tube shopping bag (above). Hopefully there will be more events – there were plenty of others joining in and after a pit stop at the big M&S on Moorgate (which also gave me a change to try out my new bag) I was back by four o’clock, and asleep on the sofa after a mug of tea and a couple of scones by five. Result!

At the time of writing, I’m preparing to head off to Trafalgar Square for some New Year celebrating and a dragon or two – possibly. After a late night on Friday, over twenty thousand steps yesterday and given my advanced age, the sofa and well stocked fridge may turn out to be the best birthday options after all. The clothes are on, the water bottle is filled and the bag is packed, but the wavering has started. Update next time.

Song Of The Week has no particular birthday connection – I just picked an all time favourite which came on the radio earlier, because I’m in a rush, it’s my birthday and anything with Mark E Smith is pretty celebratory, after all. And I’m old enough to have had the Inspiral Carpets cow T-shirt back in the day.

More soon! One way or the other I have dumplings to get on with, whichever way it turns out.

Subscribe to blog feed.

Leave a Reply