If I ever seem to actually be considering politics as a serious career option, however, please lock me in a padded room until I see sense.

I turned 21 yesterday. I stopped getting excited about birthdays a few years ago now (especially after spending my 20th birthday painting the kitchen ceiling - rather a let down, I felt) but this year was actually quite a lot of fun.

When midnight rolled around, I was sitting in Paul’s kitchen, hideously drunk in a light-headed happy kind of way on Jagermeister and orange juice (surprisingly nyommy) playing Never Have I Ever with him, Matt and Helen whilst tef was out cold in the living room. (Over the course of the previous 24 hours, we had all drunk at least a little bit, eaten way too much junk food and then been to see Cornelius in the hot and stuffy Shepherd’s Bush Empire; tef suffered a little more than the rest of us, unfortunately.)
When I eventually woke up and felt less hangover-ish, I went to meet tef and Helen, and we wandered around Foyle’s being geeks, got sugar and caffeine from CyberCandy, and then headed to the London Transport Museum shop, where I got the London Underground Board Game. After wandering around and talking and stuff, I left Helen to put tef on a train and went up to Edgware to go bellringing.

On Saturday, Matt was replacing some ropes in the tower and I went along and had a tied practice with him, where I rang alone with little intervention. As there were only two other ringers there last night, Matt had me join in with them. I was quite panicky about it and not brilliant (a little slow) but I managed to do it and I was so ridiculously happy about it :-)

After bellringing, we headed to il Mascalzone in Edgware, which is fast becoming one of my favourite London restaurants (second only to Marine Ices). We had a lovely meal (parma ham, smoked salmon and mozarella, spaghetti carbonara and lemon sorbet) and Matt gave me two books (Metro Maps of the World v2 (squee! I have wanted this for ages!) and the Darwin Awards) before we headed home so that Matt could play with his new eeePC (want).

I’ve spent most of this morning being a trainmapgeek and I’m thinking about going out to the London Poly Meet tonight (although the idea of sitting in and playing the Underground game is very tempting!)