London 2011-2012: London: Hip Hip Hooray!

The last couple of weeks have been particularly busy and exciting, full of royalty and birthdays and above all cupcakes. I saw The Artist with Iona – wonderful! so funny! bang! – and Kyveli took me to see Chris Addison (Principal Blood from Skins, no less) at the Hammersmith Apollo, also known as the theatre where Ziggy Stardust performed his last show, and where we took sneaky blurry photos before seeing the signs that said doing such would result in eviction.

Oh, and did I mention that I saw the Queen that very same morning? I feel like I might have mentioned this. Seven thousand times. To everyone unfortunate enough to catch my attention. Yup, saw the Queen’s back for a total of eleven seconds after a wait of, oh, forty minutes? Totally worth it for the bragging rights.

This was all a lovely lead up to the main event: my twenty-second birthday. I am now extremely old, and shall commence turning twenty-one every year, just like Mum. I had such amazing fun on my birthday, starting at midnight when a couple of my gorgeous flatmates – and even some randoms, hurray – came and sang at my bedroom door until I realised what the noise was. Festivites continued at 7 bloody am, when I skyped my family (and Shin) back in Melbourne. Mel made me a cake! Just as I demanded!

They ate it while I opened my many airmail packages and felt like the luckiest person in the world. After they’d all buggered off to a restaurant (on my birthday, mind you), I got to skype Hayley and Michelle, who sang me a rather disjointed, cacophonic version of Happy Birthday that I absolutely treasured.

One of the best presents of the day was a text message from Heather which included a video attachment of my entire high school year level wishing me a happy birthday. I may have missed the five-year reunion, but in another way, I didn’t. Which is also largely thanks to the live stream of comments Shin kept texting my way.

After getting hilariously lost in Bloomsbury for an hour, I snapped a quick shot with JBen as per London Birthday Tradition, and raced off to meet friends for coffee.

Of course, once Muney managed to find the right café, I dragged him straight off to another one, and then made Tori come and meet us there. Who said I was a difficult, fickle person? Had a great – albeit brief – time with those two, and then had to duck out to my moral philosophy seminar. I was fifteen minutes fashionably late, and heralded my own arrival with the clang of a wine bottle on my desk. All class, that’s me.

Next up was cupcakes with my girls. Having failed to find sufficient room in the intended café, we headed up the road to Covent Garden and found the prettiest, sparkliest, girliest coffee shop in London. I had a crème egg milkshake: amazing. It was really fantastic to catch up with so many wonderful friends all on the same day.

On the way home, Cara and I embarked on an epic quest for poppy seeds, but Tescos and M&S failed to produce results. Very unimpressed. Was much heartened on returning home to find that Shin had sent me tulips! Tulips!

I fetched Polly and we headed to Kyveli’s for dinner, where we met up with another of Kyveli’s friends and made delicious mustard chicken. For dessert, there was lemon and poppy seed cake (minus the poppy seeds). I need some new adjectives, but for now I will simply say: AMAZING.

We drank red wine and rosé (thanks Tori!) and watched The Philadelphia Story, a Katharine Hepburn movie with plenty of romantic twists. Polly and I left for home at around 2pm, wandered the hobo-strewn – oh wait, that was just me – streets of London, eventually managed to find a bus stop, and got in at around 3am.

The perfect birthday.

Since then, I’ve been up to a whole lot of stuff – human rights mooting, risotto in Polly’s kitchen, lots and lots of Gilbert & Sullivan rehearsing (COME SEE IOLANTHE, March 21-23), gourmet pizza at Tori’s, cocktails for Lauren’s birthday, dancing at a retro club event with Tori, and so much more. Yes, parents&Grandma, I’ve somehow found time for studying as well.