Who would have believed that another year has passed and that Aude is another year older? Although she likes to remind me that she’s still in her twenties, I like to remind her that she’s on borrowed time, and that before long, we’ll need to introduce ourselves as a couple in our thirties.

To celebrate the occasion, we had a party at Fusion, the new bar around the corner. We got really lucky and had the bar more or less to ourselves — and with the clocks going back this weekend, we got an extra hour of partying time!

Matthew smoking a shisha

We’re not smoking marijuana. Honestly. Aude just gets excited very easily.

Gino making a grand entrance

Jiri

Anne Marie, Jiri’s girlfriend

You’ve got to keep a close eye on Aude. Lose your concentration for one second and another man is kissing her…

Vinka

Clearly a very happy girl, despite her advancing years. This sort of giddiness is characteristic of old age senility

More old age senility. Neil, at his great age, is already further down the path than the rest of us.

Neil and Anne-Laure looking very “Sex in the City”

A face for radio…

Aude and Darren

Aude, Jerome and Ivano

Lina

Matthew has a bit of a reputation with his camera. This is the reaction it normally provokes. What you can’t hear is Lina saying “would you please put that f*cking camera away?”

Alcohol + salsa lessons = who leads whom?

Our gatecrasher. This guy came in, ordered a full bottle of champagne for himself, and drank it in the middle of our otherwise private room. A particularly stylish touch was his shirt and tie, cut from exactly the same material. I’ve seen this look twice this week — I pray to God this isn’t the new fashion!

We had a great time at the party, but the reality of old age hit us hard this morning. We all had the heads that we deserved — including Aude, which was a real surprise!

Yes, I know, it’s hard to believe that Anne-Laure is another year older. It seems only yesterday we were wishing our French amie a “Very Hoppy Birthday”. Here she is a year ago, young, single, happy and free.

A year on and it’s all “my boyfriend this…” and “my boyfriend that…”, sighs and groans as her aging muscles and joints fail on her, and claims that she has to go to bed at 9pm because she’s too tired to cope.

All kidding aside, we had a great meal at the Dog Inn in Wingham. Even though it was her birthday, and she was already the centre of attention, Anne-Laure had to up the ante and shine the spotlight squarely on herself by spilling her wine rather spectacularly over the most of the table (and what didn’t hit the table went straight into Dave’s lap). She maintained it was an accident and that she felt terrible about it, but we secretly all know that it was an attention-seeking ploy.

Anne-Laure, the birthday girl

Her friend Juliette…

…and Juliette’s husband, Dave

Aude’s rather daring Tarte Tatin with flambeed Calvados

Has her birthday wish come true?

The gang outside the pub

The gang outside the pub

Despite a late start, I managed to turn up to my birthday party in the end. It was fantastic, loads of food and great presents.

One of my presents was a lovely new 35mm lens for my camera, enabling me to take lots of great pictures. As you can see from the photograph above, the camera is no longer the weak link in the equation. (Aude will be receiving lessons in “how to use autofocus” shortly. In the meantime, please enjoy this blurry blob with a sharp brick wall in the background!)

I’ve just returned from a week-long residential training course, a kind of ‘Finance 101’ designed to teach me all about the services that my new company sells. It’s also designed as a way to get to know some of my colleagues.

As courses go, it’s one of the best organised, best run courses I’ve ever been on. It was interactive, incorporated plenty of role-play (including quite a few of my colleagues cross-dressing, which is an image that will stick with me for a long, long time). It was tough work, though – quite a few of my colleagues come from an industry background, not a consulting one, and we spent as much time learning the ropes about how to work with one another as we did actually learning about the various service lines.

Somehow, though, someone found out that it was my birthday – and arranged for a cake on the final night of the course. Given the international group on the training course, they sang me happy birthday in twelve different languages, each rendition accompanied by a toast.

It turns out that a hangover transcends translation. We all felt rough the following morning.

At the end of the week I returned home to a lovely birthday dinner and presents from Aude. I was so shattered from the week that I headed straight to bed…