Year of pleasures #4: Birthday treats

I turned 33 this week, a bit of a non-birthday numbers wise but it has a nice ring to it so I'm excited to see what the year of 33 brings. The last four or five years have been pretty significant, what with babies and weddings and the like, so maybe this will be a bit calmer and more settled!

I've had lots of treats this week. We had a Sunday pub lunch at the Maid of Muswell with some good friends (delicious, and the veggie option still includes gravy and Yorkshire pud, result).

Mark took my birthday off and we had a fun morning at home with Logan then dropped him off at nursery and watched The Fighter at the baby club at Screen on the Green (more boxing than I expected, which sounds daft I know, but some brilliant performances and the whole cast were marvellous), followed by a yummy burger at Byron and Ottolenghi cupcakes with Anna and Lucy.

Then I hotfooted it to the SLA Winter Warmers pub quiz with Team Gav. Lots of fun, it's so long since I had a proper night down the pub! The last few rounds were tense but we triumphed in the end, hurrah! I managed to carry the bottle of cava (and the library textbook!) home on the tube without dropping it, too.

Mum and Dad are staying with us so Mark and I had a rare night out last night. We pushed the boat out and had a proper posh dinner at Oxo Tower on the South Bank. What an experience! I think I managed to hide my excitement quite well, but I'm not sure I was quite nonchalant enough to look like I was a regular! I love the atmosphere there, the service and the view of St Paul's. The food was delicious - pumpkin gnocchi with goats cheese, truffle potato blinis with wild mushrooms and watercress and orange salad, and the chocolate plate (four different desserts, all yummy but not sure about the odd caviar-like balls).

Of course we had to have cocktails to start (dark and stormys), a bottle of wine with dinner (Dog Point sauvignon blanc from New Zealand) and port to finish... It would be fair to say I felt a little rough in the taxi on the way home but luckily Ella didn't wake up until 6.30am so I had a chance to recover. It was a really special night and it's a good job because for that price we won't be going out again this year!

We did go for lunch with mum and dad, Aunty Celia and Uncle Nick today though. We don't see Ciss and Nick nearly enough, so it was lovely to catch up with all the family gossip over a long lunch at Souk, in Seven Dials. It's one of my favourite restaurants - the food is really good (couscous, tagines, baklava and sweet mint tea), but it's the atmosphere that I really love, it's so theatrical, just like being in a Moroccan souk (I'd imagine!). And it doesn't cost half a month's salary either (I hate being on maternity pay).

Superbrain of Britain?

I had a fab Christmas chez Heslop in snowy Durham, but it wasn't quite the same without me and Dad beavering away at the computer into the wee hours, trying to find obscure photographs of northern sportsmen for the Northern Echo Superbrain quiz.

This year they've decided to run the quiz in January instead, and open it up online. Which means even less chance of winning anything, and more chance of answers cropping up on Yahoo!.

But it does mean anyone can take a look at the questions so if you're that way inclined, have a gander. Not as much fun as scribbling possible answers onto the newspaper in the back of the car on Christmas day, though.

We are the champions

Won the Lucky Voice music quiz tonight, hurrah! Only 3 points in it but Linda's slightly scary recall for dodgy '90s tracks won the day. Bring on the karaoke!

Be nice to animals

I like to think I'm pretty up on 'green' issues, so when I came across this RSPCA quiz on animal welfare footprints I rather smugly thought I'd ace it.

I didn't do too badly - I don't eat them, for a start - but there were a number of points I'd completely overlooked. I don't know when I stopped, but it's years since I checked for the 'no animal testing' symbol on toiletries or cosmetics (my new Garnier handcream on my desk doesn't mention it, ominously). And it had never crossed my mind to check for the same symbol on cleaning products (although we do sometimes choose the Ecover range).

So I guess no matter how smug you are there's always something more you can do.

We are the champions, da da da da da

This blog seems to be taking a library turn, now the inauguration of he-who-shall-not-be-named is out of the way. Not necessarily a bad thing but I'll try to mix it up a bit (probably next time Logan does something vaguely amusing).

Anyhoo, last week was the annual SLA pub quiz. AUKML's team, the imaginatively titled Team Gav, came third last year so I was feeling the pressure of being the newbie. You know when you wonder whether you'll have anything to contribute other than, "Shall I get the beers in?"

We had a shocking TV themes round (I got Bargain Hunt, to my eternal shame - come on, what else am I meant to do while Logan's throwing his dinner at the walls?), and with two rounds to go we were trailing the Oliver Postgate Appreciation Society (I kid you not) by eleven points. Fortunately we aced the lyrics round so we knew we were in with a shot (I'm rubbish at remembering song titles but ask me to sing When I'm 64 or anything from Mary Poppins and I'm there).

Faced with a list of 20 cocktails and tasked to identify the ten vodka-based ones (where was Linda when we needed her?), our nerve faltered. What we needed was strong leadership; luckily Gav was there with a steady hand and a do or die attitude. "Sod it," he said (I might have made that up) so we gambled on the ten we hadn't eliminated and, remarkably, it paid off! When the final scores were revealed we had triumphed by one point. Bottles of Sue Hill champagne (and some delicious pizza) all round. Hurrah!