Thursday, July 02, 2015

The Birthday Party

Once again, the Earth has made it around the Sun without being hit by a giant asteroid, without the computers taking over, and without reality TV bringing about the end of civilisation, and as a consequence of that I decided to celebrate.

Traditionally, birthdays in the family have been marked by a gathering at the parental home for takeaway. Unfortunately, the last several times this has happened I have found my IBS acting up afterwards, so thought perhaps that a change might be nice. At about the same time I was musing on this, LC and I happened to visit Beecraigs Country Park (just outside Linlithgow), where I found that they have BBQ pits that can be hired for a reasonable fee. And so an idea was born, possibly the greatest idea since...

I therefore told my family that it wasn't for them, at which point the mayor declared that we're twice as smart as the people from Shelbyville, and that I should tell them my idea so that they could vote for it. And so the monorail was born.

Returning briefly from our excursion into "The Simpsons"...

Having settled on this grand plan, I then visited Beecraigs again about a month ago - mostly to pick up some venison mince, but also to book the BBQ. I do like efficiency.

In the days leading up to the event I had some concern about the weather - according to the long-range forecast it was supposed to be nice up until about 6, and then rain. And since we were planning to gather from 6, this was a bit of a weakness. But, undeterred, we got the stuff together, and hoped. Luck was on our side, for the forecast shifted over the weekend, and the night itself was fine.

The BBQ itself went about as well as could be hoped. We had a frisson of concern initially, as the matches failed to light the bags of charcoal, but once that was done we never looked back. And all was well, except perhaps for the dire midges.

(As an added bonus, this provided us with an opportunity to finally try the local butcher, as we'd been intending to do for about a year. Which proved to be another success.)

1 comment:

Kezzie said...

Happy birthday! And what a good idea for it!