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Brother's Birthday Meal (2007-11-13)

Category: Diary. Posted: 2007-11-19 00:54:36 GMT.

Taking Sarah's advice, I make my smoothies in the morning. Unfortunately, I'd been sold the hardest to peel oranges in the world, so it took me ages to make them. I didn't have time to wash everything up, so just rinsed it, and hoped for the best. I arrived at work a bit late, but still worked more than a full day before leaving at 5PM. I locked my bike up at the railings by the bus station. I was a bit worried about leaving it here because there were lots of pokey little kids arguing about who had slept with who, and it seemed quite heated. Anyway, I popped into Tesco to get some biscuits for tomorrow's course at work.

Just before leaving work, I'd printed off a map from t'internet, which showed me that I needed to get the Tube to Barbican, and walk up Beech Street. When I got out of the station, I had no idea which way north was, because I'd left my compass at home. Fortunately, I remembered Sarah's way of navigating using bus stops, and found Beech Street. Being a tunnel, it was lit really brightly, which really confused my body clock, and almost gave me jet lag. I found the road that the Italian restaurant was on, and, being 30 minutes early, went in search of a pub. I walked past the Kings Head in disgust, and saw a pub (the Two Brewers), which encouraged BYO food. While I was having a sneaky pint, I got a text message from Sarah, so I told her about the BYO pub. We'll have to try that one next time.

I then popped into the Alba Italian Restaurant. My parents were already there, but my brother and Nina were running late, having got stuck in traffic on the M25. There seems to be a habit in our family this year to arrive late for our own birthday meals. Unfortunately, I forgot my rule about not drinking over-priced bottled lager, but I do have to admit that it was nice lager. My brother and Nina arrived about 45 minutes late, just before the starters arrived. I'd adopted a monkey from Monkey World for my brother's birthday present, which he seemed really pleased with.

I don't have a clue when it comes to Italian food, but managed to order something suitable. The food was really good, but the service was slow, and it took a while to get anybody's attention. The toilets took a bit of getting used to. They were individual cubicles with a toilet, and a washbasin. Not only that but there were large mirrors inside, which initially made me think that there were two toilets inside each cubicle. Also, instead of having paper towels to dry our hands with, the dispenser had small proper towels. Anyway, we had a really nice evening, with my father not drinking too much wine!

I then walked back to Barbican. Fortunately, I missed the train that I ran to catch, because it wasn't going to Paddington. It took me a while to figure out the tube map, because south was at the top of the map, and north at the bottom. I just about caught the train to Slough, and found my bike still in one piece where I'd left it. I then had to cycle home, iron some shirts, and have a shave, before I could go to sleep. I remember there being an interesting article on plastic bags on BBC News 24, and I eventually got to bed at about 00:45.

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