And things went pretty much according to plan. We had a very nice lunch of lamb stew and roast beef. I never knew this before but Penny Black has quite an impressive spread of mains and sandwiches.  And it was good.

Even at normal prices, I thought $14++ for the lamb stew and $16++ for mr P’s roast beef was exceedingly reasonable.

And a rare bonus these days — the place wasn’t crowded. We sat outside facing the river, watching the crowds ambling along on the opposite bank at the Asians Civilisation Museum. It was actually pretty hot out but with iced tea and beer we didn’t go wrong.

By about 3pm the entire stretch of the quay started filling up with fans and there was definitely a party atmosphere palpable in the air. Quite a few showed up in the smart All Blacks kit and there were a few brave souls who turned up in the ubiquitous yellow of the the Wallabies. For some reason Penny Black’s telecast of the game via ESPN was about 10 seconds behind whichever channel Harry’s next door had subscribed to. So fans next door started cheering each time a penalty was awarded, or the ball was given away or when New Zealand’s Nonu scored the first try, completely wiping any suspense of the game. Pretty funny but still… Anyway the kiwis were in their usual top form and Australia just couldn’t keep up. Pretty good score in the end. Looking forward to them demolishing les bleus next week!

seriously?

Either way, groove into your week with Adele to recover from GE withdrawal symptoms.

I was nervous pretty much the entire day, nervous about everyone coming, nervous that my dress would be ill fitting, nervous that my shoes which i hadn’t worn in over a year, would fall apart.

After dinner, while I got ready, Audrey and Shumin went on ahead as they were worried people would start arriving to an empty booth. The first to arrive were Wee and Jaron, as well as K. From then on people streamed in rather steadily. Shree, Sherry, Ben and Huimin were next and I was so excited by their gift, which was the polaroid camera. Shumin and Audrey very kindly figured how to get it to work. From then on everything was kind of a blur. I know the live singer sang me a birthday song early on. And I was flitting around a lot from groups of people to groups of people, butting in and out of conversations, welcoming newly arrived guests. I was constantly on my feet and didn’t really drink anything.

And then somewhere along the way the viking and his best friend Christian arrived, like some guests of honour. And I got a little bit nervous because I just knew everyone would be watching. We got a couple of introductions out of the way and it was quite funny. I remember seeing all the bloggies standing up with quite solemn looks on their faces, like they were getting ready to meet royalty or something.

Thankfully both of them settled down with drinks and I knew I could leave them alone to entertain themselves.  Almost immediately the viking wanted me to open his gift, but I insisted I wanted to wait till midnight.

After that I think Ramsey arrived, and then Wayne a little after, so I heaved a huge sigh of relief. All the work guys could sit in a circle and talk shop. (And of course I found out today Ramsey was talking about nicknames, including all the ones he has for me.)

And then Biru called to say she had just finished work and was swinging by, which was pretty awesome.  But UU and Wee and Jaron left pretty early and in the back of my mind I was thinking, you haven’t had cake!

But all too soon it was close to midnight. Audrey cued the cake tower and all the attention suddenly made me shy and I wanted to get it all over and done with. So I remember blowing out the three candles really quickly and there were lots of flashes of phone cameras and proper cameras. I think everyone was trying to get pictures of the cake.

After that things started to slow a little. I finally opened the viking’s present, which had the telltale Montblanc wrapper and ribbon. I remember him saying, “it’s actually a bicycle helmet, the wrapper is fake”. The bloggies’ gift was next, a lovely pair of Thomas Sabo earrings, which I wore immediately.

Also, everyone said my dress and shoes looked great, so that was one worry off my mind.

second part to come…

It is not really feel-good entertainment because women’s roles were still very traditional — housewives, secretaries — and the married male characters all seem to be unfaithful. A lot of female objectification going on.

But really the clothes are breathtaking. I want to wear everything January Jones wears! Clothes are cut perfectly, with full skirts, defined waists and boat necked collars to show off the shoulders. Make up is immaculate, and I have this urge to dig out my rarely used crimson red lipstick from somewhere in my cupboard.

In the online universe, I’ve been visiting  mod cloth to get my fix of vintage. I love scrolling through pages and pages of 50s and 60s inspired dresses.