Birthday surprise

I’m having a fantastic weekend because it’s my half year birthday! My partner told me to keep this weekend free and was extremely mysterious as to why. This is perhaps not as unusual as it sounds, early into our relationship and continuing even now we take each other on dates. It could be a restaurant, comedy, music… and sometimes we keep what we’re doing a secret until the last minute. I don’t want to be one of those couples that forget how exciting and lovely it is to treat each other well and to be spontaneous, creative and romantic.
I was to meet her in Tottenham Court Road at 5:30pm and this I did, which is where she greeted me with birthday balloons! I should explain. My birthday is on Christmas Day – long over looked by even old and dear friends, it’s just something I’m used to now. But everyone else of course gets meals and parties and surprises. Try organising a birthday party round Christmas time, or ask anyone to remember anything other than all the CHRISTMAS presents they have to buy for friends and aged relatives. Like I said, at 32 (and now half years) you tend to be a bit stoic about it all and count your other blessings of which I have many.
So you can imagine the look on surprise on my face when given my birthday balloons. It was lovely! But that wasn’t all; she took me to a lovely French bistro and gave me two envelopes. The first envelope I was allowed to open after we had ordered. It contained a birthday card and… two tickets to see the musical Footloose. Footloose is my FAVOURITE film and one of my favourite soundtracks. When I had seen the posters for the new musical I was really excited and filed it away as something I really wanted to go and see. So I was genuinely thrilled to be going to see the show. The second envelope she let me open a little later and in it was another birthday card and a wish list. As today (Sunday) is my new birthday I could do ANYTHING I wanted. Absolutely anything at all. She provided a list of alternatives including a Duck Tour of London (the amphibious vehicles that go on the road and on the water), a visit to a butterfly house, the afternoon in a pub, the day in bed!, a woodland walk etc., etc. Well I was finally able to make a choice… I had breakfast in bed this morning (except I was too fidgety and got out of bed!) and this afternoon we’re going on a woodland walk with the dog. You might wonder why I’ve chosen something relatively humble when I could have gone into town and gone a bit mad but I racked my brains and really, I just wanted to go for a nice walk and then maybe have a pint in a lovely pub. And that, dear readers, is exactly what I’m going to have!

The show was fantastic – so high energy. Afterwards people were singing, laughing and dancing as they left the theatre. And the dancing on stage was out of this world! There were lots of people my age there, all of us chattering away about the film. If you want something fun, a bit nostalgic (don’t let that put you off if you hate / weren’t alive / were to drunk to remember the 80s), and a surprisingly good story then Footloose is the show for you…

Anyway, this is my birthday so no more blogging for me. Oh, final thing, the sponsorship manager and myself as press manager, landed £50,000 worth of sponsorship this week for our rugby club. Not bad!