Not my birthday barbeque - Andrew’s annual family gathering under blue skies in the garden. We were so lucky with the weather. Last night it lashed down, but by the time I arrived at lunchtime, bearing a box of freshly baked coconut haystacks, the grass was dry enough to be walked on in just socks.

Arrived to find Viv, Sal, Dan, Kim, Steve and Andrew’s mum, plus an almost-two-years-old James already there. James is a true enigma. On the one hand, I can’t believe he is two already. It seems no time at all since he was still a lump sticking out the front of Kim’s maternity-wear. On the other, though, he is so perfectly behaved you could almost believe he was a young adult. No crying. No tantrums (even when he is tired). He eats what he is fed. He sleeps when he is laid down. He doesn’t pull the cat’s tail.

It’s almost enough to make me consider my steer-clear opinion of kids altogether. Almost.

Anyhow, as barbeque protocol dictates we all ate far too much. I even did my own brief turn of prodding the various meat things over the flame while everyone else ate, but only because I’d done all my vegetarian stuff under the grill so finished eating well before the rest of them. We wandered down to the meadow when we were done and let it all settle as we fed apples to the horse, then headed back up to the house for dessert and an afternoon of sitting and chatting and feeling uncomfortably full.

Tony and Diane had arrived by then after sitting in static traffic for hours and a bit. Tony had his Noel Coward hat and looked like he should have been striding around Rangoon rather than a large back garden in Chelmsford.

I briefly popped home to do some preparation for tonight’s slot on Through the Night and picked up my email, which included a link to a none-too-flattering video of me wandering around the streets of Sitges. Am rather concerned that in having my camera bag slung over my shoulder it looks like I was carrying one of those hideous man-handbags. I don’t know who it was that filmed me - the email just said ‘one of the guys’ - but they seemed to catch everything but my good side. Not their fault - I was half asleep, and dawdling.

I viewed it, then quickly shut down my media player. I don’t think we shall be revisiting that
Anyhow, that all took a bit longer than I’d intended, and I arrived back there an hour later, just as they were all sitting down to more food. I should really have abstained, but when it’s all there and everyone else is tucking in it’s just far too easy to join in, so I loaded up another plate and vowed to work it off with an extra session in the gym some time this week.

It wasn’t long after that that people started to drift off. I shut the cat in a room upstairs to keep her out of the way of the packing, and the moving of cars, and forgot she was there until she appeared on an outside window ledge high up above where we were sitting, calling for attention. I let her out and she stalked off huffily into the garden just in time to say goodbye to Sal and Dan, who gave me a pretty carved elephant from their trip to India. It’s sitting on a shelf now, facing the door to my lounge, as all elephants should do.

So, with only four of us left we set about the washing and clearing away and an hour later were done, leaving a couple of hours for Viv, mum and myself to sit down with the Rummikub tiles and some mugs of steaming tea.

I feel bizarrely exhausted. I don’t know why. When you look at all that was done today I barely did a jot. Perhaps it was the hot weather, and all the sunshine, and the rushing back and forth between there and the flat.

Whatever the reason, I feel comfortably relaxed now, sitting back at home with my feet up and a cup of Earl Grey.

…and a fridge full of left over food that should see me fed until the end of the week.

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