It's My Party & I'll Cry if I Want to...

SO, it's my birthday on Tuesday (24th August). I'm going to be 25 years old. A semi-milestone in my young life. And to tell the truth I'm feeling somewhat down in the dumps. No, not because I'm just that bit closer to 30, but because I've had a shitty work week, my back is aching from stress, I'm overtired and my husband has to go away for a meeting, on my birthday.

I probably sound like some whiny egotistical pain in the butt, and I know this is self-indulgent, self-pitying tripe - but it makes me feel better.

Typically, when things are generally not going great I tend to withdraw into myself and pretend as though the world and his friends are against me. I am berating myself for having told people that it's going to be my birthday, preferring that they just ignore it and treat it as any other day. But some stupid attention hoe somewhere inside me has to go open up her big trap and blurt it out.

Then I thought I would just take the day off, and treat myself to a birthday day, but that's been blown to sh*t as I'm stuck in meetings all next week and can't have the day off. Poo!!

If I did have the day off, I would first treat myself to a pancake breakfast at Jack's Cafe near my flat, then I would take myself shopping (retail therapy = happiness), then I would come home, take a long relaxing bath with lovely music in the background. Afterwards I would snuggle on the sofa in PJs and the duvet and watch all my favourite movies with a cuppa tea. Mmmmmm... a girl can day dream. I will just have to content myself with doing some of those things in the evening after work :(

I am having a party on Sunday - a combination of cupcakes, Sex and the City and pink champagne. And I am going to see Sister Act, starring Whoopi Goldberg on Saturday night. So, maybe we'll hold the tears for next year...

All you wanna do is ride around Harry...

Thought for Today
Men in suits. Men in suits riding around London on bicycles...??!



Quite possibly one of the most paradoxical images to come across during my lunch hour today. Awaiting the halt of traffic at the Green Park interchange and what do I see but a tailored, suited and booted gentleman astride, a bicycle!

With the advent of increasingly expensive public travel, environmental awareness, the importance of healthy living and 'Ride to Work' schemes, I guess it was inevitable that this day would come. Although, of course, 2010 does not mark the debut of such antics as can be seen in the below photograph of the Hawthorn Cycling Club, dated 1900 - 1909:



Caption: Photograph of eleven men with bicycles posed against a background of trees;the men are dismounted and are holding their bicycles; all are dressed in suits and are wearing bicycle clips or have the legs of their trousers tucked into their socks; one man is holding a dog; the men have been identified as members of the Hawthorn Cycling Club [ppparchive.durham.gov.uk/images/hawt0018_tcm4...]

So, is riding a bicycle retro? Like everything it is cyclical (pun intended), ascending the trend barometer together with similarly 'what's hot' activities, theories, issues, fashions, individuals and so on. I appreciate that this 'suited men on bicycles' has been going for longer than just today, but I just happened to really notice the physical comedy in such a spectacle! However, I do applaud them for taking on the extended commute, tackling their exercise regimes and potentially risking their clean apparel.

What's next, ladies riding scooters in heels?!