A Touch Of Class

Tue 19th Sept

It's my birthday. The themes this year were art, food, and all things vegan. Two lovely framed pictures by Fahrelnissa Zeid, the artist that we saw a few weeks ago at the Tate Modern. Google her, she produced lovely and vibrant work in the 20th Century and has just been rediscovered.

I also got a donation to an animal sanctuary in Norfolk and a Tepinyaki grill for all year 'round indoor barbecues. Without the smoke, arguments and burnt food. I know, takes all the fun out of cooking and reduces the income of relationship counsellors, but you can't have everything.  The positive side of me says it is communal, fun, and inclusive; but another way of looking at it is that it is a kind of IKEA approach where you have to make it yourself. I can see the worried looks now. "Are you sure we are supposed to have some aubergine left over at the end?" I just need a beer fridge under the table and I'll be made, although they say that "sitting is the new smoking" in public health circles these days so we should probably not have lazy lunches. In fact we should give fast food a new meaning; you have to chase it for a mile before you are allowed to eat it …. Oh wait … sounds like hunter gathering. Everything that goes around comes around …

My Australian family rang today to wish me happy birthday and said that they make coffee in bed and read my daily blip. I got told off that it isn't always there for them so have now been instructed to have it ready by 9pm UK time for them to look at in the morning in Australia. No pressure. I have to think of my audience.

Plan A was for the yoga Mama to come down and the three of us would go to Penshurst Place in Kent; but unfortunately she had a few  problems with the traffic and we had to do something different. So we took a train to London. The man in the ticket office looked bored. TSM asked him how he was and he said "I'm stuck here". Well he would be wouldn't he? That's what happens when you take a job in a ticket office on a railway station …

It was nice and sunny as the train pulled in to Waterloo. We went to the fabulous Scooter bar in Lower Marsh and I grilled the retro waitress about whether her look was de rigeur for the joint or the way she always dressed; she claimed the latter, and I have to say her orange rollneck, grey shift and Audrey Hepburn hairstyle looked fab.

I think I should have been a fashion photographer. Women's clothing and hairstyles are fascinating.

Spoke to Big Bro and we reminisced about the time we had a drunken encounter with Ken Clark in the doorway of The Barca with a leggy blond who definitely wasn't his wife. After a lazy walk through the backstreets around Roupell Street we found ourselves in Jacks where we had Passion Fruit Daiquiri, red wine, and vegan tacos. They have a great vegan menu at Jacks, the chef is apparently vegan. So we sat outside surrounded by the hundreds of pot plants that have sprung up in the little alleyway by Evs off The Cut.  The food was fabulous. Go there, it is such a great little location and really nice.

TSM enjoyed scooping the flesh out of her decorative slice of passion fruit. I remembered the first time I encountered this particular fruit in Hither Green Hospital in 1972. The man in the next bed had just made an advert for crunchie bars but his agent said he sounded too nasal so he was was having his adenoids done. Except TSM googled adenoids and said only children have them. So maybe it was his tonsils. And it might have been not have been crunchie bars but something else. He was dressed as an astronaut. Which may have been why he sounded nasal, in which case his agent was a git. Anyway one of his luvvie actor friends bought him in some passion fruit, I remember that. It had a distinct smell but slipped down the throat easily. I am sure there is a rude joke in there somewhere.

We were sitting outside Jack's when Google man went by. I yelled after him but he wouldn't stop. They are probably under orders not to interact with human beings, only algorithms. If you don't know Google Man he or she is a person who walks around with a big green hi tech blob full of cameras on the head producing the images for Google Earth; they mount them on cars but also on rucksacks that people walk around with. We are all becoming part of the Google / Facebook matrix. There is no escape.

We crossed the river at Blackfriars which was cold and a bit windy; TSM told me to man up and I reminded her I would be sixty next year; a year from today in fact. "Would never have guessed" she said sarcastically. Temple looked gorgeous in the autumn sunshine, there are still clerks humping barrowloads of files around on trolleys, even in the digital age. You have to feel sorry for them, it is so Dickensian. We emerged by a news vendor with an Evening Standard headline saying "May urges world to stamp out modern slavery". Yeah I thought, you could start with the millions of modern slaves your party has driven into zero hours contracts. It may be my birthday but I feel no charity to the Tories on any day of the year.

On The Strand we bumped into that curious creature known as London Fashion Week. Dahling I was fabulous, clicking away with my little camera surrounded by the big boys with their Nikons and their Canons. Everyone was just too beautiful. The pavements were awash with gorgeousness, if you like that kind of thing which I do; as I said, I should have been a fashion photographer. And for five minutes I was. Particularly like the shot of the woman in the red coat against the backdrop of a black cab. Pure capital chic.

We went to Waterstones but I was more interested in blogging than book buying. The Girl Racer face timed so I took her over to Trafalgar Square so that we could talk with Lord Nelson and the Lions in the background. She looked very happy but then she should, she is doing things she loves and is in a relationship with a Canadian Jedi Knight.  She wished me happy birthday and then I was summoned by TSM who texted me to point out that we had an appointment in Guildford with the boys who were meeting us for a Thai meal. So we legged it over Hungerford Bridge and managed to get a seat on a crowded commuter train. By now I was hungry again despite eating quinoa tacos and oregano fries a couple of hours earlier. And I fancied a beer too. No stopping me today.

We met Top Gun, The Dizzle and Mr G in Thaikhun in Guildford. This restaurant's specialty is good food and hopeless disorganisation so we ended up eating at eccentrically different times. Personally I wasn't too bothered although even I got grumpy when they forgot to give us any plates to eat off.

A lovely birthday, truly fab. Made it up as we went along so's to speak, except everyone put a lot of thought into pressies. Felt the love, had lots of laughs. One of my pressies from TSM was a t-shirt with the epitaph "remember me with laughter or not at all" which is attributed to the guy who wrote Fiddler On The Roof. Says it all really.

Great day. Class.