Posts Tagged ‘birthday’

Last week, I reached middle age.

Most people wouldn’t consider themselves middle aged, but when you lead the kind of lifestyle I do, 50 seems a good innings to reach. That said, most people consider middle aged to be above what it is anyway – average life expectancy is 78, that means middle age is 39. So if you’ve hit 40, you need to stop kidding yourself 😉 .

I spent most of my birthday lounging around before finally getting up at 2pm, having done some extensive research as to whether UK Border Force is as good as Nothing To Declare: Australia’s Front Line. Turns out, it isn’t even close.

I would like to thank everyone for their birthday wishes, cards and presents, it’s all very much appreciated!

This month’s Wendy House happened to fall on Viv’s birthday, so following some pre-drinking where we finally got to use the shots roulette wheel, we headed to The Old Bar for some birthday cake, before heading into Wendy House.

On Norm’s (almost) actual birthday we headed down to River Plate for a good piece of steak.

Having already pre-decided, Norm went for the 1kg steak! It covered an entire dinner plate and to be honest, I think we all had our doubts as to whether it could physically be eaten by one man – never the less, Norm stepped up to the challenge and defeated it.

I decided a smaller steak would be a good call – especially as I was having half a rack of ribs to start with! Plus having only eaten what could be considered two meals in itself, I still had some room for dessert.

Overall, however, I was somewhat disappointed with River Plate. It was excellent, but it didn’t live up to my expectations given previous experiences. The judge’s verdicts are in, and Blackhouse is officially the best steak restaurant in Leeds.

Having hit Fazenda last month, and then again a few weeks ago, I took one more trip there recently, to celebrate Jonni’s birthday.

As usual, they delivered some good meat, though with us being there on a Tuesday, they seem to suffer from a lack of turn over, as the meat was often slow coming. This was a little disappointing, though ultimately we ate to bursting point, so we didn’t have any less food.

We also got a free cocktail for checking in – they weren’t shy with the alcohol either.

I think it clearly has a critical mass point though, so if you’re going to go, I would recommend going on a Saturday evening when there are plenty of people and plenty of meat coming round.

Fonze having missed most of his birthday meal, we headed down to The Elbow Room to shoot some pool.

What looked like a slightly disappointingly stocked bar when we first approached, turned out to actually offer a great selection and we were soon enjoying some Ketel One vodka. I’m not a fan of the American style pool tables as their ridiculous size pockets mean that it’s very demasculating every time you don’t pot anything and the white goes in on almost every shot.

However we struggled on none the less and having taken the first game I suggested Fonze and Elina have a game, after all we had the table for another forty minutes so that was plenty of time for them to play and still get plenty of other games in.

Turns out I was quite wrong about that ;). A fun night none the less though.

On Friday night we headed down to Alea Casino for my birthday celebration.

We almost ran out of space as I had only booked the table for 15 people and 16 people ended up turning up, not that the restaurant could cope anyway – it took them 50 minutes to bring us our starters, of which they then forgotten one, they manged to forget one of the desserts and to top it all off they even got arsey when I told them I didn’t want to pay the service change because the service was rubbish. Food was nice though.

Afterward we hit the casino floor and effectively ended up with our own private table – there was blackjack table down the end that nobody else seemed to know about so we had it to ourselves, even if it was £5 minimum bet. I put down £50 and managed to walk out even but somewhat trailed James’ returns after he hit three blackjacks in a row!

Thank you to everyone who came down, it was a good night.

In the true spirit of the holiday period there has been a fair bit of drinking within the past week.

Tuesday was Lil’s birthday and as such we went for our traditional Lil’s birthday celebration steak. She wasn’t there or anything because she was busy having a meal at some other restaurant but it was still excellent steak.

Wednesday afternoon Mike went on some kind of mission to get everyone to the pub for a few pints as it was the final time we would be in before New Year. I still had things to do however so I ended up going out for a drink and then back to work!

Finally Kieran arrived in the evening and we headed out for drinks on Call Lane with Rich and Tim. Fun times.

On Thursday Oli paid me a visit with a number of suprises including a Lil and a late birthday present in the form of a box of wine 😀 . As my blog readerable is mainly sophisticated well educated individuals similar to myself it would almost seem patronising to remind you that such a produce is the finest type of wine as it can breathe when in a box rather than being stuffed up in a bottle.

This was followed by pizza which included extra for myself and Oli and Lil is trying to lose some weight plus the fun of watching a woman take out a bike just outside our house. The guy seemed alright which makes it ok to laugh about. Oli had to rush off in a hurry to catch a train shortly after which resulted in me not getting chance to grab a photo so I present instead one of the classic Chris and Oli pictures. Enjoy.

When I went to bed on Sunday night I wondered if I would feel any different turning 23.

Turns out I would feel much worse as I woke up the next morning with my cold having returned with avengence. Still I eventually dragged myself out of bed and got as far as sitting on top of my bed for another few hours until I felt good enough to move.

Luckily Michelle was here to cheer me up so we headed into down to grab some lunch ending up at Brio in The Light which did a rather nice Italian roast chicken dish.

This left me with an afternoon of taking it easy on my birthday and as such I headed home for a business meeting. Well, sort of anyway, myself and Norm had a teleconference with the BHA so we could consult on Humanist Week 2010 – exciting times and all that.

Finally in the evening we headed down to River Plate on The Calls which served some absolutely amazing steaks including my delicious fillet and George’s huge 700g cow. I would highly recommend it if you are looking for a great restaurant though obviously it’s Calls prices. We managed to balance the night out by ending at ‘Spoons though so all was good.

Today was Lachlan’s birthday so the obvious solution was for everyone to sleighly leave the office, don fancy dress hats and accessories and then go back in singing “happy birthday.” I say obvious, it was certainly successful. This was followed by us heading over to The Box for a few drinks or two at 4:30. 5 hours later and we were all still there.

Given it was Nathan’s first day, we came very closing to telling him that every Thursday was Fancy Dress Thursday but as amusing as that would have been, we decided it was just a little too unfair in the end. Aren’t we nice people 😉 .