birthdays!

8 April to 14 April is possibly my favourite time of year — it’s the week when Matthew and I are the same age, which is always exciting, but most importantly it sparks Birthweek Mayham.

This year Matthew turned 30 (THIRTY!) but was less excited than I was last year. So I figured we’d ease him into celebrations. Beginning with chickens.

They live in the backyard at Cafe Crema in New Cross, which incidentally has begun offering some GORGEOUS vegan cakey goodness.

Then we went to the Science Museum, where Matthew went head to head with his Rainbow Bubble Doppelganger,

spied at me through a Magical Magnifying Machine,

and built an Archway of Genius.

Seeing as we were already playing tourist, we took a guided boat cruise up and down the Thames. We learned about architecture,

and physics,

and then EXPERIENCED THE PHYSICS FIRSTHAND

(with a different camera — putting that whole lens lesson to practice as well).

We went to The Old Fountain which is of Beer in the Evening‘s top 40 pubs, but unfortunately the pictures didn’t quite turn out… Possibly because the lighting was poor, but more likely because the pub had a host of deliciously delicious ales (yum!).

The next day, Matthew got his real present: a trip to a day spa! I figured he needed it now that he’s 30 (THIRTY!). He was pummelled into relaxation by a masseur and then given a facial that finished with a traditional shave, and went from looking like this:

to looking like this:

He showed off his new face at dinner at the famed New Cross Meateasy with our friends Nick (pictured above) and Leah. (Meateasy is not as difficult a place to find food as you might expect for the Very Vegetarian. Their macaroni and cheese was gobbled up before I even thought to take a picture of it.)

The rest of the weekend was spent receiving our new mattress, testing our new mattress and generally giving our new mattress our seal of approval.

Come Tuesday, my own Birthweek Mayham began, or would have done if I wasn’t up to my eyeballs in deadlines. I’ve decided to put off a proper celebrating until next week once they’ve all passed. In the meantime, however, we had a quiet celebration using the AMAZING pizza stone that Matthew got me to make AMAZING pizza,

and eating several undocumented cupcakes and indulging in an incredible Chocolate Peanut-butter Layer Cake, which Matthew made me and which is droolingly delicious.

We also got haircuts, and transformed from this:

to this:

thanks to Hairy Jayne, who is, as Matthew noted, the only person in London who has approached either of our heads with scissors and not made us nervous.

She is incredible — if you are in London (and even if you’re not), we would both highly recommend her.

Thank you, everyone who sent birthday wishes our way! You made it an even more fantastic week!