Curries and cocktails

Myself, the matron of honour and the father of the bride all celebrate our birthdays in the space of a week. The Birthday Weekend has been an annual tradition for many years - it usually goes something like this - 7pm enter Browns, put £50 in the kitty each and start ordering cocktails. Keep the rounds going until around 9.30pm - the drinking only to be punctuated by a few snacks, snaffled from a handbag (they charge an extortinate amount for nuts in these places). 9.30pm - slide off bar stool and stumble through the streets of Cambridge to find a suitable eaterie that will admit people in a state of quite such inebriation. Stuff down dinner and pour yourself into a taxi before midnight, when they ramp up the prices - pray fervently that the cab gets you home before a) you're sick in your handbag, or b) the meter ticks over to more than you have left in your purse.

This year was no exception and a good time was had by all. I recommend the Apple Blighty Mojitos. Mr Jones does not recommend the blue concoction above - though why he chose such a girly drink in the first place is quite beyond us all. Last year Mr Jones asked the father of the bride for my hand in marriage while at the bar ordering the cocktails. SO that perhaps out ranks this year as the best Birthday Weekend ever - although nothing will quite beat the first year, when the matron of honour and I were quite overcome by the celebrity that is Rory McGrath - and in our drunken state posed for a photograph with him lecherously draped around our shoulders.