My 40th

Right, here's the deal. Misha was 50 in October, I was 40 in November. For the first stage of our 90th celebrations we had some of our favourite faces come to Lowestoft (see born 1958, not North Korea) and for the latter, we twisted big sister Sue's arm into taking the boys for the weekend.

Here we are with Chris and Paula - two old friends from Leicester days - having brunch in Hampstead.

And Bernadette on the right, below, also an old Leicester girl.

Funnily enough, Chris was just finishing her Pirandello show that weekend in the west end with an even older Ipswich friend, Noma (who couldn't join us), but Caitlin, who also knew Chris and who was my friend when we were 17 and 18, pitched up. Here they are sharing an umbrella.

A view from Chris' flat. Behind the very beautiful Royal Free Hospital you can just about make out the Gherkin building and somewhere is Canary Wharf, but obscured on this very dismal day, weatherwise.

That night we went to see Pinter's 'No Man's Land' with my favourite actor, Michael Gambon, and stayed at the Russell Hotel, an enormous Victorian monstrosity which took up one side of Russell Square virtually.

Misha snapped me going to breakfast.

So I reciprocated.

After stuffing ourselves right royally on full English, we hopped to the British museum round the corner for a quick look around.

I was curious to see that Borek Sipek's inspirational glass had its roots quite a few centuries earlier. The knobbly bits were designed to allow one to drink without dropping the glass, since banquets of old involved lots of meat and greasy fingers.

Then we headed east to meet another old friend from Prague days, my former colleague in CERGE and a member of the small but significant Irish contingent, Suzanne Cave.

She left her job where we edited economics students' English papers, and went to study fashion design.

Now she's the costume designer on a prime time BBC serial, and it was so good to see her. Then we all enjoyed a good curry in Brick Lane, she pedalled off and we caught the train at Liverpool Street back to pick up the boys in Ipswich and relieve my, by that point, relieved sister and niece!