Neil Diamond and I have many things in common

Particularly a love of red, red wine.

Apologies for the randomness of today's entry, I may still be drunk. I ought to be.

I've just realised I won't have to buy a winter coat before I go to Japan as I already have one (I'd forgotten I had it...). I didn't think I'd be able to get one in Japan as the Japanese are so small and I have shoulders like a swimmer. What a relief. Things are finally coming together, I just need to be told when and where I'm going now. Having to tell people Tokyo some time in September is just so boring now.

My birthday weekend passed without serious event. Friday night was lovely, a good turnout with a nice mix of faces old and new. Positively 4th Street was lovely - its art deco interior would serve well as a set for Poirot, although if it had really been the 1930s, I would have appeared as the buxom serving wench, rather than a demanding customer draped with frills and frippery. The food and cocktails were delectable, although the very beautiful waitress defied the limits of incapability with her thorough incompetence. When you look that good, perhaps it just doesn't matter that you don't know how to pour a lime and soda or not sneer at customers... After cocktails, we got turned away from AKA for being too drunk and went to Bar 101 to sober up before returning to the End. This time I was allowed in, although they were no longer serving alcohol, which made the ragga quite hard to deal with. I had a small nap on the sofas, before leaping up for Mary J Blige and the Game - if Danny hadn't got me such a brilliant gift, I think that would have been the highlight of my birthday. On the way home I made friends with a creepy architect who tried to make me drink his milk (not a euphemism, thankfully) on the nightbus. Saturday Bek and I watched Donnie Darko in Princess Diana's favourite gardens (I wonder if she'd also have liked the film...) and I got had to queue for an unfathomable amount of time for an over-priced burger (50p for one Kraft cheese slice?!?) and got incredibly cold - I hadn't thought to take a sweater or a picnic. Yesterday Mike and I went to see the magnificent Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, drinking wine in the cinema, and then had pizza with wine, before watching Poirot and having a few more glasses of red and then stuck on Election and opened another bottle. I am surprised I don't have a ribena smile, considering how much I drank.