Event 13: My birthday weekend in Cambridge

I think it's quite appropriate that this is event 13. I, unlike most people, really like the number 13. Perhaps it has something to do with being born on the 13th. And this year my birthday was a friday. I love it when that happens!

So, I braved the bus to Cambridge for my birthday and spent the weekend partying and having coffee with friends. I loved seeing friends again. And all the things I miss so much about life in Cam: custard, Eat, taxis, the singing man with his dogs, the fire alarms in the middle of the night... And I found a new love... for the citi 7 bus! Try it guys, it's so much more exciting than the citi 4.

It was Mr Drake's birthday that weekend too and between us we managed to have 3 parties. The first one was joint, and then we had one each. So that's fair isn't it?! At the first party we had cheese fondue, champagne tasting and lots and lots of cake. I love it when the boys go all posh and pretend to know what they're on about and put their piece of white paper behind the different glasses of champagne to compare the colours. What more entertainment do you need? Well, that and seeing the 40 odd champagne flutes lined up when there were only 9 of us there! And the cakes, well, what can I say. In line with the escalating tendency to outdo each other with large deserts, they were, er, large! And multicoloured. And had our names on top. Everyone sang happy birthday and then we blew out our candles and Mr Drake covered me in the icing sugar off the top. Wonderful. The cakes were very large indeed and try as we might we could only eat half of one between all of us. I'm glad that I didn't go through with the challenge to eat all of my cake before Mr Drake ate all of his!

The following afternoon Mr Drake went to visit his grandmother for a birthday tea. He came home with a cake and a bottle of champagne. He very much appreciated these because he hadn't had much of either for quite a while... I never want to see cake again.

The second party was all mine. We went out for dinner. Nice and civillised. We ate lots of curry and annoyed the waiters by asking for strange things like mango chutney with our main course. Ruth asked lots of waiters for mango chutney, fearful that she wouldn't get any and would have the horiffic experience of eating naanbread without it. But it's ok, they were sympathetic with her strange tastes and gave her some. Then we headed back to college for some partyage. I never knew it was possible to get candles to stick in apple crumble but it works very well as a birthday cake and I would recommend it. Especially with lots of custard. It was even a desert that Chris liked, which pleased me lots, even if he did have it sans-custard.

And then Mr Drake had a party. His friend Posh Alex kindly organised it for him. The plan was a meal at the Maypole, Life and then the river Cam. So just the sort of evening Mr Drake would enjoy. We had a great time at the Maypole. Mr Drake got a present from Chris and Mark. It was a large present wrapped in shiny blue paper... and several hundred layers of newspaper. Like pass-the-parcel, only he opened all the layers himself. How rude. Inside the middle of the parcel was a small pair of wind-up walking lederhosen. Just what he always wanted. We drank jugs and jugs of fantastically coloured cocktails. Mr Drake bought us a jug of non-alcoholic pink cocktail which was apparently pina colada (containing coconut, pineapple and pink) which tasted, er, pink and sweet! Chris, Alice and I decided to give Life a miss, and after instructing Posh Alex to not let Mr Drake drown we headed home. We were disappointed (or relieved?!) to find a very un-wet Mr Drake arrive home shortly after claiming he had been too tired for dancing and swimming.