Meine Mutter

As Kay said to me over the weekend, I am like the Queen, as I have two birthdays this year - the official one and the actual one. My birthday is actually later this week (62 and trying not to keep on counting!) I'll be celebrating at a birthday lunch up in London with my two closest friends. Greg's sister is also coming to stay with me for a few days and will be joining us for the lunch too.

Kay will be unable to get down from the North for the actual day, as she'd be busy in lectures, but desperately wanted to come down the weekend before (the one just gone), even though I told her I didn't mind  and she didn't have to worry. She insisted and said she would be arriving for a long weekend on Thursday evening and not going back again until this morning (Monday). She also decided to combine her visit to me with a night out with some of her old schoolfriends on Saturday-night-into-Sunday morning, so we agreed the best day to celebrate my unofficial birthday together would be Friday.

I imagined we might go for a meal locally and we also tentatively discussed visiting the German market on the South Bank too. When Friday morning arrived, Kay was up with the lark and seemed very excited. "Are you excited too?" she asked.
"Well, yes," I said, although technically my birthday was still a week away and I hadn't quiet got into the spirit of things. She handed me my presents and amongst them was a card which she instructed me to open last. When I did there were two tickets to see Mamma Mia that very evening. You could have felled me with a feather. She had even resorted to subterfuge and asked a friend of mine to look in on the dog, while we were out (as I have said before he cannot be left alone for more than an hour or so which is why I am relatively housebound).
"You deserve a night out, " said Kay beaming from ear to ear.

First of all, during the day, we did go up to the South Bank to see the German market.

 

There were so many stalls to see, although not all were authentic

German ones,

 

but we could not resist having a Bratwurst for lunch there

 

washed down with a big glass of mulled wine (too tipsy to take pictures of that, sorry).

 

Who was it that said, when you are tired of London, you are tired of life? This view of London always makes me feel so good.

 

We dashed home again in the late afternoon to reassure the dog, then dashed out again in the early evening to see Mamma Mia. It was a fabulous, happy, foot-stomping show with people dancing in the aisles and we came away absolutely euphoric.  For an unofficial birthday (or even an official one) it was fantastic. Thank you so much Kay..... and I still have another birthday to look forward to in a few days' time.

 

The title of this post, by the way, is Mamma Mia in German. Well we WERE practising our German at the market, see.