Birthdays are ACE

I AM: extremely grateful for having wonderful friends

I know, I should be going to sleep if i'm home. But I wanted to be excited about this evening while i'm still, well, excited!

I have recently returned home from the birthday fun. I am very tired, and a little inebriated, so my apologies for mispellings and poor grammar - i'll correct it all tomorrow. I am a very lucky Lesley, who has been wholly spoiled this week. Tuesday was, as you know, my actual birthday, and we skived off school early and went to Glenelg. The beach was beautiful as ever, and swimming in the sea and building sandcastles on my birthday is something of a novelty - maybe I should go south for the winter every year?! My St George's friends decided to buy me a present that I didn't need to carry home, and chose very well - I had a professional massage! Calming music, lovely aromatic smells, candles, the works. It was fabulous. Later on, fish and chips, and then to Bracegirdle's, a kind of chocolate cafe, for pudding! I went home with a tummyache, but that's irrelevant...

Today, the celebrations continued, in the manner in which i've become accustomed to sreading birthdays out for a week. Well, you can't go out drinking and dancing on a school night without worrying about the time, so we waited until Friday. And what a Friday! First up, met with my Group 12 friends for dinner (Flinders people, explanation another time), which the senior Mr Von had been roped into cooking - awesome pork, and noodles, and veggies, and spring rolls...mmmmmmmmm. I wandered off to call Ann (it's her and Sean's wedding day today - CONGRATULATIONS!!) - and when I came back, there was a circle of people around the door...and there was singing...and then there was a present! My 259 people will be pleased to know i've taken your name for me around the globe - my birthday present from my newest gang of pals was a fish! A pretty little silver fish on a bracelet. Very cool. In a slightly confusing twist, now I come to think of it, it was hanging on a kangaroo, but hey, these Aussies are a little on the crazy side :)

After dinner, we piled into the city, in search of further fun. Drinks on Rundle Street (several drinks on Rundle Street..) while we collected everyone for some reason took two hours before I quite realised what was happening. Twas very enjoyable just to be able to sit and chat to everyone, though, there's not so much time for that. Later on, we trundled up to the Cavern Club for some live music action - from a band containing one of the surgical interns! Very good they were, too. Lots of dancing ensued, much enjoyed by dancers and spectators. Music carried on after the band left, which gave us a chance for some proper twirling about - thank you Shawn and Karim! A wander down Hindley St (club central, it seems) in search of more dancing resulted in only late night falafel, but that's not so lamentable - we'd been going for some time...

All in all, I had a lovely lovely birthday, feel thoroughly spoilt and very loved. Thank you, wonderful friends xxx