Daddy's 42nd birthday

I turned 42 on February 19th - it's all right, next time with the card and CD, email me for suggestions! ;-P - and this year saw more of an actual celebration than normal!

Best present of all was that my best mate and best man (and I was his) Dominic came over with his family, wife Fi and two boys Lawrence and George, from Manchester. We hadn't seen each other for over a year - as I keep saying, Durham is a long way from everywhere, even Manchester is over 2 hours away! - and so it was fantastic to see them again, and for Liam and Lawrence and George to play together.


Fi baked me a birthday chocolate cake too, and it was yum. Here are the two families.

We went for a walk in town to show Lawrence, a keen Harry Potter fan, some of the locations where the first film was shot. I had always believed the hall in University College had been used for the school dinners, but Lawrence was utterly unconvinced, and turns out he was right. But some of the Hogwarts scenes were filmed in the cloisters of the Cathedral, so I pulled back some credibility there!

Dom and Fi also arranged, for my present, a Guided Tour of The Emirates for me in the next year, which is touched by genius as I've only ever seen My People's Central Temple from the southbound East Coast service to London King's Cross... I also got loads of Coen Brothers DVDs from the missus and the monkey, and a quality hand-drawn card from Liam.

Thanks everyone.