Seeing as my birthday was during the week, I decided to have my birthday celebrations at the weekend. When I first raised the idea with Rach we joked that it would end up with just me her and my brother George sat down the pub. As it happened the turn out was quite healthy with Ginger Matt coming up from Wales, Nice Andy driving over from Chester, deputy_dug (who put up the aforementioned rascals for the night), George, maviscruet, bitvacuous, Mike of my masters course, keefybabe and Rach, who all turned out for the meal at Hansas, and grannyannie and Rich who joined us at the pub.

I got an impressive amount of presents, which quite frankly blew me away. Thanks guys 🙂

deputy_dug as usual got a rather bizzare present. One item for the present house (a scrubbing brush with a leopard skin finish!) and one for the next, a rather bizzare bamboo plant which I’m not 100% how to look after.

Ginger Matt got me “The Complete Book of Pocket Positives”, small door wedge of a book, full of positive sayings which will fuel a positive quote of the day from me on this lj for a good couple of months.

keefybabe gave me a copy of his new album “The Widnes redevelopment project”, which will probably get played to death on the train to and from work. Had a quick listen this morning and it was cracking stuff

Finally maviscruet got me a copy of ” Katsuya Terada’s The Monkey King Vol. 1″ a manga version of the Chinese Epic Journey to the West which I’m so found off. Not the innocent almost fairy tale of that I’m used to, a more dark violent and sexually explicit take on the tale, which actually is an intelligent retelling.

Hansas was as tasty as ever, but we got a bit short-changed on the banquet that we ordered, since they didn’t give out enough of the main meal and certainly didn’t tell us that we were entitled to a refill!! Also I had a light bulb explode on me, as George merely brushed past it!! The disasters continued when the waitress dropped a couple of our starters. Everyone was on form, so that more than made up for the sloppy service and the minor mishaps. But I think I’ll be going back to it being one for quiet nights with small groups of people. After the meal I walked Rach to the car, since she had to be up for work today. I think next weekend is the first that she hasn’t worked one day in about a month. We are still settling into the routine of her job.

Met people at the Templar’s arms down the road, then dragging deputy_dug away from the footie on TV, we stomped across town and settled down at the Queen Vic. There we took over one of the back rooms sank into the leather chairs and sunk pints of Hobgoblin (me favourite pint 😀 ) and talked various shades of nonsense. When that closed down we went over to O’Neils for a lovely pint of Guiness. At this stage I should have gone home. I had more booze than I can remember and I had been tired during the day. But no going down Sandanastas seemed like a wicked idea! Unfortunalty I was too tied to appreciate the lively atmosphere, and it all came across as a really bad crowded school disco. I had a face like murder most of the time, and eventually escaped outside to have a chat with Ginger Matt. After this said my goodbyes and gathered up George before getting the taxi home.

Overall a great night out, lovely to catch up with so many people 😀