shewhomust | In holiday mode

Today is my birthday. We had made no plans, beyond a vague ambition to go out, to do something...

It is also Easter Sunday. The bank holiday is not a bonus. I am not a fan of bank holidays in general. Yes, they were once - and may yet be again - useful in guaranteeing holidays to people whose employer wouldn't otherwise grant them, but from my perspective a bank holiday just means that anything I want to do will be either shut or overcrowdwd. Nonetheless, the weekend so far has been fun.

We started the celebrations on Thursday: F. had given us a joint birthday present of some vouchers for her favourite Italian restaurant: J., who knows Italy well, is unimpressed, and dismisses it as 'cheap and cheerful'. We decided to book ourselves lunch on Thursday, after our appointments with the dentist, who is nearby: these were just check-ups, so even if it turned out that work was needed, it wouldn't happen straight away. Yes, I admit I was amused at this juxtaposition of enhagements, but it did also make a lot of sense. The dentistry was uneventful, and I lunched on a big bowl of mussels, and enough white wine to ensure that I did very little that afternoon.

I didn't do much on Friday, either. There was a brief, chatty visit from J., and a long chatty phone call from

boybear. I thanked him for the puffin birthday card, and he seemed quite perturbed that I also had birthday cards without puffins on them. I explained that I had so far received five cards. "Oh," he said, "then that's 20% puffins. Fair enough." (Yesterday's post brought another five cards, of which one had puffins on it, maintaining that proportion. Then

durham_rambler gave me a puffin card printed from one of his own photos, Three out of eleven: the percentages are left as an exercise for the reader.)

We have been plotting our midsummer trip to Orkney: we had accommodation booked for a week in Stromness, but we have now booked the ferry there and back, a few days on Hoy, overnight stops northbound (just one, in Inverness) and southbound (a more leisurely journey, including a couple of nights on Mull). We'll be on our way in two months time, so this it's about time we got on with this.

Yesterday we actually did go out for the day. A photo I had admired on Flickr pointed me to the South Tyneside sculpture trail;

durham_rambler suggested we start in Whitburn. We had a splendid time, which was almost entirely not as intended: I may have more to say about that when I have sorted out more of my pictures. For the time being, have a dolphin:

It was, all in all, an excellent birthday, even if it was a day early: but I may have peaked. Today has been much quieter: but now there is lasagne in the oven, and I should be opening a bottle of wine...

ETA: 25% puffin!

weegoddess (no longer, alas, of this parish) e-mailed me a card, with partying puffins.