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Catie's birthday and the kids had made cards. Phoebe was annoyed that we had a romantic weekend in London planned which she was not invited to and the message in her handmade card read "Happy B-day - Hope you enjoy leaving us on your B-day" with a very impressive angry face beneath (the front of the card was also Catie as a cat-lady - inspired by the Simpsons - to imply she was old, which I enjoyed until I realised I was even older). I can't love her more. Though I think that often and discover that I can.
Ernie's card was less judgy and more celebratory "to mumy, hapee brofday" which is about as adorable as you can get. It's a case of getting pretty much everything wrong is more impressive than getting everything right. This was him alone, working out how to write his own message, and somehow channeling his inner Dick Van Dyke to phoentically spell brofday. I can't love him more. Though clearly I will, at every possible juncture.
It was sad to have a day away without the kids, especially given how sad Phoebe was about the whole thing. But also ace obviously.
I had things pretty nicely planned (except perhaps that our hotel was by St Pauls but everything we were doing was at Oxford Circus (only a couple of tube stops away mind). We went for a posh taster menu lunch, in which I gave up on my diet for an afternoon and ate everything that was put in front of me, including three puddings. All the courses were tiny and mainly fish and it was impossible to work out how to put it in the app (I gave it a go and the meal got a score of zero), but I was full enough by the end of it to not need to eat anything else for the rest of the day. My favourite bit was the roll and butter though. My intake of bread has gone down very significantly, so when I have it (and the amazing freshly made stuff) it's very special.
My body couldn't really cope with the overload of rich food and my tummy rebelled a little afterwards, but it was worth it. I don't think it will push me back into loading up on sweet things and to be fair I don't think the many savoury courses I had were all that bad, even if my attempts to log them ended in me ruining my weekly average (got 74 for the week, one off being excellent).
In the evening we went to see Dawn French at the Palladium in her show "Dawn French is a Huge Twat". Having been listening to Ade Edmondson's audiobook this week it was remarkable to see this woman who had started her comedy career in a tiny room in a strip club in Soho (she was though only doing comedy there) now commanding a packed Palladium. She has such presence and character that I think she could get away with doing anything and still keep that audience entertained, but this was a two hour show (not including interval) where she kept everyone rapt with embarrassing stories from her life. A few of them were fairly minor embarrassments, but some in the second half were a bit more personally revealing and slightly crazy, but the point, that stands well, is we're all guilty of those. Stand up can often be about confessing something dumb you've done, that most people would keep quiet, in order to make the audience feel less shame about their own mistakes. At least for me. It was a gripping show with lots of laughs and lots of fun, but mainly about everyone in the room loving the person on stage. She is a remarkable woman.
As is my cat lady wife. And the daughter who loves her so much that even her birthday wishes come with passive aggression. We endured the Hell of Saturday night public transport to get back to our hotel. Catie sometimes yearns for London, but she didn't enjoy this.
