Event 24: Steve the monkey and the Bella Itallia hellium balloons

Once a year you get to celebrate your birthday. Only once a year. So I like to make the most of it.

We have a very small house. Lou's series of dinner parties to celebrate the end of her PhD and her return to socialising tested out how many people we can fit in our front room. The answer is 10. Definitely not any more. 10 is less than the number of friends I have. So I had to find an alternative venue for my birthday party. We could have gone out clubbing. We could have played outside on parkers piece. We could have gone to London even. But as it was my birthday, I got to choose. That's the priviledge of having a birthday.

So more people than could fit in our front room all went bowling. We had 3 lanes. We were supposed to play with 6 people on the first lane, 6 people on the second lane and 5 people on the third lane. But no-one told us that. So we had 5 people on the first lane, 6 people on the second lane and 6 people on the third lane and the computer system did not like it. It did not like it one bit. The poor little bowling man stood with his head in his hands. A simple group of more people than could fit in our front room had managed, unintentionally, to completely bamboozle the bowling computer system. Poor little bowling man, if you ever read this, we're sorry. We didn't mean to.

When we finally got going (after having to shut down all the lanes and start again) it was good fun. Graeme turned out to be an exceptionally good bowler and beat the rest of us hands down. But it's all about the playing and having fun, not about the winning. I got my usual gutter ball, gutter ball, gutter ball, strike, gutter ball combo. Lou's bowling improved considerably after a quick lesson from James, but she still managed to throw her tooty fruities all over the floor (she blamed it on the machine they came out of).

Bowling makes more people than can fit in our front room quite peckish, so we headed to Bella Italia for dinner. That's where we met a large, helium filled, purple, smiling monkey balloon, which James named Steve. I like Steve. He's still hovering in our front room, although slightly less close to the ceiling than he once was.

There were lots of other helium balloons on the table and the geeky engineers and scientists I have for friends spent quite a while finding an exact counter weight for a bunch, so that it would drift along touching neither the ceiling nor the table. (if you ever feel like trying this, those little tesco clubcard keyfobs are the perfect weight when you just need a little bit more...). The fun with the balloons didn't stop there. Lizzie thought it would be fun to see how many balloons it would take to make me fly. The answer is more than Bella Itallia provided us with. As I tried to leave the restaurant with the balloons all tied to me, and Steve floating up top, I sadly managed to lose one whilst squeezing through the doorway and achieved a nice "aww" from the other tables. A few more made their bid for freedom once outside, which was probably a good thing because no more balloons would have fitted in Adam's car for the journey home.

I think this was the birthday with the most balloons yet. Thank you to the more people than would fit in our front room for coming to celebrate my birthday. I hope you all had as much fun as I did.