26

Though I sort of forgot about this over the past week, it's my birthday again. Rather tragically I'm beginning to notice them less as time goes on, and I couldn't think of anything special I really wanted to do even when pressed by Whitney, so we're ordering in Indian from a semi-decent place nearby tonight. With chocolate now on the Things That Will Kill You list, I picked out some strawberry mixture and icing at the supermarket last weekend, but as I don't tend to think about colours, I hadn't considered that this would result in a cake that looked pinker than a toilet roll advert - as chance would have it, though, it went slightly wrong coming out of the pan, and the resulting pile of misshapen fluff with "Happy birthday" written on the top looked so monstrously hideous that I was threatened with violence were I to post photographic evidence.

This morning, Whitney also gave me a new (possibly grey) dressing gown and a special travel dressing gown as inspired by David Mitchell, even presenting it by getting me to open a Possession card before I opened it, and I'm looking forward to bringing the second of those with me to California next week. In a situation that some people may consider somewhat merciful, I didn't receive any cards through the post from relatives at all - my mum, however, completely outdid herself in the e-card department with this. My favourite touch is the heartfelt birthday greeting of "Message here".