All good things must come to an end... and my Birthday Week is no different. On Monday I had to sort out a new modem for my flat. It's still giving me some problems, cutting out occasionally for no valid reason, but I think it might be the phone interfering with it, so I've disconnected the phone and will see what happens. After messing around with that I went to see Get Him To The Greek at the cinema. It was quite funny for much of the way, but went a bit awry towards the end -- I don't think they quite figured out what exactly they wanted to do with the characters and how they wanted to end the movie. After that I went to visit my grand aunt Martha in hospital. Then Bas and I went to see La Bete at the theatre. It features my favourite theatrical actor that I've ever seen, the incomparable Mark Rylance -- he's been absolutely brilliant every time I've seen him, and this was no different. He played a verbose buffoon and at one point he spoke without pause for more than 30 minutes straight -- and all in rhyme!!! It also starred David Hyde Pierce, who was great too, and Joanna Lumley who did OK but didn't seem totally suited to the role. Overall, a top night out at the theatre!!

Today I did more fiddling with modem and phone, and also looked into replacing our fridge-freezer -- it's a week of troublesome appliances!! I bought a nice watch to celebrate my birthday (I do that most years, and have built up quite a nice collection by now) -- this one dates back to 1925, which is a special year for me, since it's the year when my Grandad was born (the one who died recently) -- so as well as celebrating my birthday, it was my way of honouring his memory too. I went to see Hot Tub Time Machine at the cinema, which was great fun. Bas, her friend Ciara and I then went for dinner to Dim Sum on the Southbank -- yum!! And after that we went to see a comedienne called Sarah Millican in the Udderbelly -- she was very funny.

And that's it!! All packed and ready to hit the road in the morning. I'll be taking things easy on Wednesday, then it will be all systems go from Thursday -- the hard summer work starts here!!!