I could have done with a sleep in this morning, but the hotel curtains were thin and I was woken by first light at 4.45am. The church bells in Bungay were nearby, sounding out the time ever 15 minutes. So I know that I managed to get to sleep again some time between 5.30 and 5.45, but was awake again by 7. I hoped I'd stay awake at the party.
Although me and the birthday girl have been quite competitive foes over the last few weeks - seeing who could win medals and so on - I decided to put our feud on hold as it was her birthday. And we played quite nicely together. She had been given an impressive toy kitchen and I put on her chef's hat and apron (even though they were a touch small for me) and pretended to mix up some pancakes. She responded by making me a pretend milk shake which she put in the oven, even when I protested that I would prefer my milkshake cold on such a hot day, she still cooked up the pretend milkshakes, even though she could see I was pretending not to enjoy them. Just childish. I rose above it.
Later she wanted to play at gardening with her new gardening set and made me walk up the garden to find a suitable spot to do some digging. But once we were there she went off to play football with some boys, leaving me doing the gardening alone. The other adults laughed at me for carrying on when the birthday girl had lost interest, but I believe if you make a commitment to something you have to carry on doing it.
It's been a while since I've been to a three year old's party (I am not sure I got invited to many when I was three), but I enjoyed this one. It was great to lie out in the garden in the sunshine, feeling like I'd drunk four pints of beer, but in fact just drunk from lack of sleep and I can't remember the last time I had jelly and ice cream but it's a triumph of taste fusion.
On the way back home we drove past an air show and watched a jet looping the loop, heading at speed towards the ground, firing off fireworks as it did so. It's an exhilarating thing to watch, but an odd form of entertainment where the spectator is thinking "I hope it doesn't crash" and "I hope it crashes" simultaneously. This time the planes stayed in the air. I was happy and disappointed about that.
