Julie

It's not everyday you celebrate someone's 30th birthday. And Julie being Julie, we had to do it in style (bearing in mind last year she organised an ice skating outting in which I slipped in a monumental moment of slapstick inspiration and busted my tailbone leaving me bedridden for almost a week. Hilarity ensued for almost everyone involved, or so I hear).

And of course Julie being Julie, she is obsessed with the Sound of Music.

Work obligations prevented us actually going to Austria (the original plan), so we had to make do with Edinburgh.

A lunch of schnitzel with noodles (which is actually quite nice) and the soundtrack wafting through the house, followed by a photoshoot in the gardens (some evidence of which is on facebook). Pinafores, a guitar, a little too much giddy singing and my piece de resistance - insisting everyone re-enact the cuckcoo song by popping out from behind her back in sequence as she strummed tunelessly and giggled like she won the lottery.

Then home for warm apple strudel and the film (and a few brown paper packages tied up with string).

There is something so wholesome about good old childish play and a musical birthday party. If only I had the guts to turn my russet drapes with the golden phesants on them (oh yes, they are mine) into leiderhosen I think she could have died happy that day.