This year I hadn't planned to organise anything specific on or around my actual birthday, Uns and I were planning on an engagement party combined birthday party towards the end of the month, so would save the celebrations for then. But as it turned out, Woolley was planning to head down to London last Wednesday evening as a final farewell, which turned into a combined farewell for him and birthday party for me which I wasn't expecting. It was nearby London Bridge at the Pommelers Rest which I'd been past but never inside. Landed up being a fairly good crowd of us out that night, plus a surprise cake which went down well after a few beers.

Needless to say, Thursday was a fairly long-drawn-out day at the office and Friday night was just a chilled out evening at home with no real plans. Saturday we had kept free to go engagement ring shopping again, so that morning we set off up to Hatton Gardens and made our way from shop to shop to shop. Eventually we found one that was more antique/vintage looking which Uns really liked, so took a few photos and will get Mr G to look into that next week. From there we made our way down towards High Holborn and decided on a couple of well deserved beers at The Melton Mowbray, happy that we'd decided on a ring.

From the pub we hopped in a bus over to Hoxton for dinner at MEATmission which I'd booked sometime ago. It was just myself and Uns, and saving the group night out for the end of the month. As expected I went for the burger, fries and bingo wings which is hard to beat - seriously do love their food there.

Half way through we got a message from Noel and Megan inviting us to drinks at The Ritz which was something to do with Absolut Vodka cocktails. So after eating and a quick dash home to change, we made our way through to Green Park and met the two of them at The Ritz. It turned out that Noel got complimentary Absolut cocktails there... what we didn't expect is that they'll sell out before we got there. Excellent. But stayed for a cocktail each before moving on.

We then tried Dukes but that was a residents bar only, phoned a couple of others on the list but they were all either closed or renovating, so landed up at Langan's Brasserie which was at least open and still serving. From there we got the bus home and spent today just chilling out around the house.