The fairly last minute trip to Brussels, Belgium was the weekend before - but what about my actual birthday weekend? It wasn't massive, but it was good and it was entirely London based. It really started Friday night after work when I attended my workplace's "Fizzy Friday" get-together and turns out despite me not telling hardly anyone, most of them knew or found out it was my birthday the next day - queue a whole lot of free drinks.
I did get home before midnight, but had a bit of a sleep in and did not get up to much during the day as a consequence - ever so slightly hung over.
Not that that stopped me from going out Saturday night on my actual birthday. The plan was myself and some of the guys from the IT team at work would meet up somewhere with Tom, the guy I work closest with in my new job (who will be referred to as IT Tom herein) and hang out with him and his other friend Tom who's birthday was the next day (not his 30th, in case you were wondering - referred to as Birthday Tom herein) and then head into Town later on in the night. But the plan was a bit loose, and would be formalized on the day. When it was formalised, I got a text saying we were meeting at Surbiton about 7.30-8pm and would go into town later from there. For some reason I thought Surbiton was a pub or bar - turned out it was a town on the outskirts of London - in fact right at the edge of the Oyster zone. Meanwhile I caught up with Jeremy for a few pints in Town, in an Irish Bar somewhere in Soho (Rachel didn't come because she had a bad headache) and when was asked what time I might show up in Surbiton so they could work out when to head for town, I told them that I was already in town and instead of me coming out to Surbiton it might be better for them to meet me in town when they got here. Seemed to be fine until an hour later when I got another message where I found out they were still in Surbiton and that our IT boss was now out in Surbiton too - realising that they probably actually aren't going to make it to town, but that my boss had actually made the effort to come out for my birthday I felt like I should actually go. Since Jeremy had work the next day, we parted ways and I caught a train from Waterloo to Surbiton.
So about 30-40 minutes later on a fairly express train, I arrived in Surbiton. The next hour or however long it was, was a bit comical - turns out somehow the group had become split and peoples cellphones had run flat so they weren't quite sure who was were, and not long after I arrived started suggesting we should go to Soho, where I had just come from! Long story short we found the pub where the others were about 10 to Midnight, but that pub had already stopped serving drinks; after midnight struck we all headed for the train station to catch the last train into London to go to town, and then somehow the Birthday Tom half of the group split off and went into a Wetherspoons while we went into the Station and caught the last train back to London.
We managed to get a few drinks from some places in London, but by the time we got to Soho proper it became clear to me that most places in London stop serving alcohol at Midnight; those that don't charge £20 to get in, which is about NZ$40. By the time we'd exhausted trying to find a place that was open and would let us in for free, it was 2am - the £20 cover charge places were going to close in an hour so it wasn't worth it and we called it a night, but it had been a pretty decent night and I didn't feel like I had had too few drinks! I caught a night bus back home, getting home about 4am and slept most of the morning away!
May not sound like much, but I enjoyed it. About the only other thing of note, was one of my flatmate baking me a cake (or more correctly, Chocolate Berry Brownies) for my birthday which was very nice and very much appreciated!