My Birthday 2018

Well, still can’t quite believe I’m 50, though I’m slightly more reconciled to it than I was for the few months – OK, few years – beforehand, largely through, I don’t know, having no choice and all. These photos sum up my mental turmoil beforehand.

At the beginning of 2018, Ruth and I had been entertaining thoughts of booking some significant trip to mark my half-century, but unsurprisingly given our collective feet-dragging over holidays, that didn't quite happen. We did have a bit of a peruse of Hurtigruten’s Nordic cruises, but couldn’t quite decide on the best time of year to go. The Snowdonia trip we took in June was vaguely intended to be for my birthday – though the idea of climbing Snowdon was Ruth’s – as was the yet-to-be-blogged canal trek in September.

There was no concealing my age from the office, in part due to my own whingeing about the impending birthday for some while beforehand. So, in the custom of birthdays with a zero at the end, I was duly presented with a card and some presents – a bunch of flowers and a generous Amazon gift card, plus a bottle of bubbly from Jill. Judith gave a speech including quite a number of stats around the percentage of my adult life I’d spent at the OU, etc etc.

Around 10 of us went out for a lovely pizza dinner at Murati’s in Wolverton the evening before my birthday. Although I’d arranged this, it hadn’t been intended as a birthday meal but just as an ex-Information Office get together, but it happened that the 15th was the date most people could make. Very nice evening, enhanced by the staff appearing with a cake and singing Happy Birthday to the accompaniment of tambourines. Turned out Sara had arranged the cake, which was very sweet of her. I don’t think she’d necessarily banked on the tambourines.

I had the day itself to myself in MK, some of it spent having an Autism Diagnostic Assessment, of which more – maybe – in a later post.

For the weekend, Ruth and I booked a relatively last-minute (by my standards) city break in London, staying at the 4-star Dorsett City, a hotel we’d seen featured in The Times Weekend’s 'Cool Hotel Guide'. The hotel, part of a Chinese-owned chain, is on Aldgate High Street between Aldgate tube station and the church of St Botolph without Aldgate. It’s an unassuming-looking building from the outside, quite a contrast with the gaudy interior (faux gold everywhere).

The Dorsett City to the right of the church

The hotel boasts a ‘destination skybar’ on the 14th floor which does indeed have pretty good views of the surrounding cityscape. As we were keen to try it I’d booked us an hour’s slot early on the Friday evening, which worked out well as we ended up with a great table out on the terrace looking directly out at the view. Here I am with my 'City Sky Line'.

Cocktail at the Jin Bo Law skybar

View down onto the tower of St Botolph's

On the first night we had dinner at the hotel’s ‘Shikumen’ restaurant, which was very nice though practically empty, which we were a bit surprised at. I think both of us would have liked a main course of the colourful dim sum and to have scrapped the rest, though it was all nice enough.

Dim sum at Shikumen

One of the things I noticed was that the hotel’s lift panels didn’t give the option of selecting floor 4 – which immediately got me thinking that floor 4 was some secret mysterious floor along the lines of the fifth floor of the Yanggakdo International Hotel in North Korea.

Ruth and I decided to investigate this by going down via the stairs, but there genuinely seemed to be no fourth floor. Googled this and apparently the number 4 is unlucky in Chinese culture and thus it's common for hotels and office blocks to lack a fourth floor. So there you are. There's a note here about the Dorsett City and its absence of a floor 4.

On the Saturday, I went for an early walk to Tower Bridge. We breakfasted both mornings in the VQ restaurant adjoining the hotel, which was OK though nothing special.

Ruth had a yen to visit the Thames Barrier, so we took the DLR all the way to Woolwich. The DLR part was fun but clearly we hadn’t researched the distances accurately, as we then had a dreary walk to the Barrier, relieved slightly by hopping on a bus partway (Ruth commendably takes charge when she senses I am about to lose it). 

We made for the Information Centre café, through a massive throng of cyclists annoyingly taking up the path. I SHOWED THEM by pushing through them irritably. Once in the café, I found a table while Ruth nobly queued behind a line of cyclists. We had a look around the interesting exhibition. The TB Information Centre had been closed for a while beforehand for a refurbishment, though I have to say it wasn’t hugely obvious to me what the money had been spent on.

Ruth then came up with the idea of crossing back over the river via the Emirates Air Line cable car, which I’d never even heard of. We had a bit of difficulty locating where we were supposed to queue to get on, but once on board the ride was enjoyable though and an alternative way to cross the river, though there is something slightly white elephant-y about it and it seems unclear whether it’s actually getting used by commuters as much as was originally planned.

On our second evening we had dinner at Emilia’s Crafted Pasta at St Katharine Docks – lovely food and we managed to bag a table outside, which was lucky as the place is tiny.

Dinner at Emilia's

The Times Weekend's piece on the Dorsett City: