wonderful weekend

Current work: Vienna book
Listening to: (silent house right now, as am only one up)
Reading: Rachel Hore, The Glass Painter’s Daughter (enjoying)

Really lovely weekend. Spoiled rotten with lots of flowers, lots of cards, lots of chocolates, lots of gift vouchers for all my favourite vices (aka books, music and Pandora/Radley – especially handy as I’m due a new bead for having a new book accepted), and lots of phone calls. Sadly my bestest cousin couldn’t make it up for the weekend in the end, but it was lovely to see my best friend (especially as I was able to give her a copy of the book I dedicated to her, out next month – Dr Cinderella’s Midnight Fling), and lovely to see my stepmum on Friday.

It was a weekend full of naughtiness, starting with the bacon and avocado sandwich for lunch on Saturday (oh, the joy of nice seeded wholemeal bread – the naughtiness being that if I don’t walk at least 20k steps in a day, I put on about 1lb for every slice of bread, which is a bit annoying as I lurrrve good bread). Dinner out on Saturday night; although I had said I wasn’t going to be boring and order what I order every single time we go to Mambo’s, I lied :o) (I happen to like Caribbean chicken , i.e. in a spicy mango sauce, served with rice and salad.) And there was a really unusual pud on the specials board – cinnamon and toffee nachos. Being a cinnamon fiend, how could I resist that?

Possibly a little too much Chablis, too. (Do I admit that I fell asleep during Cowboys & Aliens on Friday night? Half a glass of Chablis + not enough sleep during the week = me wiped out. Feel guilty now as DH bought the film for me. Am total lightweight on the alcohol front.)

And I am definitely not confessing how many boxes of chocolates ended up in our house. Or how many of them have been scoffed :o) (With help!!)

Thank you to everyone who sent me lovely wishes either via Facebook or by email. Much appreciated. And it was much, much better than my birthday last year, which I found a real struggle – this year, I had the chance to enjoy it and celebrate the RNA shortlisting, too. Raised a silent glass to my dad (who would’ve been 77, two days before my birthday – hence last year’s being very tough, and I think changing the way we celebrate my day was a really good idea).

Half term this week, so I’m hoping we have a bit of a thaw and get the chance to go out a bit. Otherwise, I think it’s staying indoors with mugs of hot chocolate and playing board games/X-box marathons! Apple training today (plus sorting out my mouse – am on my fifth set of batteries in 3 weeks, whereas the keyboard is still at 100% battery life, so clearly something isn’t quite right), and a bit of quality shopping time with my daughter (aka hello, indie bookshop…)