I can totally manage another year older (if it comes with cake and Jennifer Love Hewitt's blessing). Part 1 of 2.

Birthdays are strange things. It seems that people want them less, the more of them they have. Like socks. Or jobs. Or reality TV shows.

I'm still within the commonly acceptable age range which is allowed to welcome birthdays, but I think I'll have to give up the right to annually self-worship in approximately 730 days. Unless, of course, I take some well-thought-out, cogent advice from the Femail section of the Daily Mail, which quotes that veritable woman-mountain of inspiration, Jennifer Love Hewitt :

Last year when Jennifer Love Hewitt was 29 she was quoted as saying: ‘I'm so excited! It's my dream age. I don't know why but, literally, since my 12th birthday I've wanted to turn 30. There's nothing more graceful or elegant than the beauty of a female when she has figured out who she is.’

So until then, when I've figured out who I am (?@!&$*) Love Hewitt, I've decided to go all out.

This year was all organised as a series of little surprises by the Mister, who deserves an enormous medal for not bowing to the continual pressure I subjected him to whilst trying to find out what we'd be doing on the day, and for managing to involve my mum as well, whilst keeping everything a delicious secret from me. Our conversations the week beforehand went mostly like this:

Me: Tell me.

Mister: No.

Me: Oh, go on.

Mister: Do you really want to know?

Me: No.

Silence.

Me: Oh, go on.

(repeat ad nauseum).

So in the end, the day went like this.

We met my mum at a secret Piccadilly location at 11am which turned out to be Fortnum & Mason. She and I had a treatment each - me, manicure, she, pedicure - in their Beauty a la carte rooms. It was heavenly. My nails have never looked so spiffing.

The Mister went and had a pint and read his book nearby. We reconvened in an hour, then we all went up two flights of stairs to the St.James's Restaurant for proper afternoon tea.

I know. I'm a fiendishly lucky woman. Look at the cakes!

We ate a lot of cake. And sandwiches. Delicious little sandwiches for rich people with tiny little hands that couldn't hold a real-sized sandwich. It was really quite illuminating. And lovely. Did I say lovely already? I think I'm still having sugar highs.

After lunch we went to Oxford Street. That was a bad idea. By then it had started to rain. But we persevered, for my mum's birthday promise to me was a new pair of shoes. I know! It's like I had died and gone to some kind of Femail-sponsored heaven. It almost made me want to buy something fashionable. Eventually the rain reminded me that nothing is worth Oxford Street in the rain, not even new shoes. Yes, I'm cancelling my subscription to Grazia as I type.

So then mum called it a day, because we were going to see a film, and because, in her words, 'the evening is for lovers'. Aw. Don't you love mums?

The film we went to see was called 'Le Refuge' and it was on at the Renoir, which is another brilliant move from the Mister because he knows I'm a sucker for those Frenchies and their art-house sexy addiction films about drugs and babies. Anyway, more about that another time. You can read a review of the film here.

Then, suddenly, it was nearing dusk and I thought the day was over. But oh no. There was more to come.

For that, you're going to have to wait, because it deserves a sparkling post full of joy and now it's a Monday night at 11.43pm a few weeks later and I'll have to remember every detail to do it justice because it was a lovely evening. Ok, so it rained. A lot. But that didn't spoil a thing. It was lovely and warm and sunny inside. Oh, did I mention it was lovely*?

*All, right, I'm aware this sunniness may be getting annoying. Just one more post and then it's back to food and grumps.

Last of the summer cake

Its been bloody ages since my last post. But, just to prove I haven't slipped into a late-summer-early-autumn-birthday-cake-induced sugar coma, I present to you: my second restaurant review for streathampulse. Enjoy.

I shall be back with a self-indulgent dose of post-birthday loveliness as soon as I can move again for all that cake.

Konditor & Cook, Waterloo

Monday, April 6th 2009

The Bitter: Bumping into the one who broke your heart

The Sweet: Great coffee and sinfully good cakes

3. Spring Awakening and A Sweet Defeat

You surprised me today. You crept up on me in MY favourite lunchtime hangout, in MY neighbourhood, unannounced, and uttered some innately smooth line as I stood deciding on which bag of fatty, unglamorous crisps I should consume for lunch. Oh, the horror. Why is it always when you feel tired, ugly and hausfrau-like whenever a former love of your life is within spitting distance? You might have had time to size me up, to decide whether I still looked good enough to warrant talking to. I guess you judged I did, but I still felt exposed.

“So many choices…it’s a hard decision,” you said. A line that sounded so flippant, I thought maybe you were a staff member making small talk.

Turning around and finding you there beaming at me was the last thing I had expected. Your smile genuinely disconcerted me. The last time we had met, pain was etched into your face. It was a battle to keep from holding you then. Today the battle was with how fat and happy you looked. You, the sinewy dancer. The health-conscious paragon of aesthetic virtue and sleek lines. The walking Alessi product.

You seemed to have grown with your happiness, in many ways. You certainly looked more your age. Your hair, a little greyer. Your clothes a little more filled; your belt a notch or two larger. Your eyes a little crinklier at the edges. But you were you. Happy and smiling and adorable, your eyes swatches of sea glass. You, my boy, still got it.

I could only stand there, grinning like a simpleton, my stomach in my heart, crammed into my throat. All I could do was turn on myself; cursing my appearance. I wished I’d worn the newer shoes, the ones that pinch but make my feet look dainty.

I wished I’d put on a slick of lipstick. I wondered whether my skin was looking as young and unblemished as you might have remembered. And I wanted my clothes to be newer, more pressed, more tailored. I also wished I could have uttered something more intelligent than the standard “How are you? How have you been?” Instead, I stared at you. You stared at me, and smiled. It was awkward, and also thrilling. I felt my stomach/heart combo do a somersault.

There was a large earthquake in central Italy on that day. And I felt its rumble there, in that coffee shop, as the tremor of seeing you shook me to my core. Was it her, your new woman, who had fed your body and your soul? If so, why were you smiling at me that way? What did you gain from drinking me in and asking me if I had five minutes to spare?

I didn’t. But I wanted to.

I can't remember much about what I ate that day. But now I find myself in this quaint little coffee shop more often than is strictly necessary; with adrenaline, not caffeine, coursing through my veins. I’m finding that the cakes are much, much sweeter with a sprinkling of danger and a pinch of longing.