Birthday!

I'm doing a separate post to mention a few things about my birthday!

Scotty and I decided that the best way to celebrate would be to do something unique and different...and hence the run that we did. It was really brilliant and so many people commented on what a cool thing to do for my 30th. When we finished the race it was wierd to still have a full day to celebrate.

The first present that I had was the hotel room. Scotty had upgraded our room and it was lovely and huge. We had a large balcony and massive telly (probably had to be that big because the room was so huge).

Scotty gave me the option of opening presents before my birthday, on the morning of my birthday or after the run. I said that I was happy to open them after the run as I didn't want to have to do much more than get dressed at 4.30am! But he said there was one present I did have to open before.

The present was these great running shirts for us both. They are wiki material - which is the bets to run in I think - and they had our names on the back. Best of all on the sleeve he'd got the date of the race, and location, Luxor, sewn on. We've decided that we're going to get the dates and locations of all our future races sewn on too.

When we got back from the run I got onto my other presents! Scotty had bought about half of my presents to Luxor, but other heavier one he had left in Cairo and I'd get them a few days later. The theme of the presents was 1981 / 30 and this also meant that I was getting 30 presents in total :)
Scotty had obviously spent ages finding things as I got not only the 1981 Beano annual, but also the copy of the comic from the week I was born! Luckily we were both Beano kids, not Dandy. A 1981 penny and 1981 Egyptian stamp were real finds. Music is a big thing for us and so he got me a copy of the number one album from the week I was born (Adam and the Ants), number one single (Lennon's Imagine as it had been re-released following his death) and Now 30!
When we were at Caz and Flossie's a few days later I open up a set of 30 colouring pencils all with my name on them and a 30cm ruler :) Scotty bucked the theme, but two brilliant presents were the Trailer Park Boys mug and a book by an author I like, Matt Rees.
Mum was thinking ahead when she bought me some Neal's Yard creme for tired feet (a lot of that was used this weekend!) and a lovely T-shirt hand drawn by Abi (photo soon). From Jane I had a lovely sun necklace which I wore as we travelled back from Luxor. Nerves mean that it was well thumbed by me on that trip and subsequent days, but also by our friends toddler, Zane, who took a liking to it and it's wavy rays. Back in Cairo Ros had perfect timing as her parcel arrived on the Thursday before we went away for the weekend. Although the Egyptian Customs/Post Office did open the parcel the present remained: a glass pint tankard engraved for me :)

Then I opened a small black box. Inside it was a jigsaw, but nothing else. Looking closer I saw that all the pieces had small pictures of me and us on them! Wow! Very cool. Without a picture I set to trying my best to do the jigsaw; find the edges and corners first!

It took a while, but even when I had the boarder and some of the sides done I still couldn't tell what the overall picture was! Scotty kept asking me and then the tell-tale piece went in. The number 30! I remembered how we had our photo taken together this summer by lock 30 along the lock flight at Devizes. Brilliant!

We were getting ourselves ready to go out and grab a spot of lunch, but the images on the TV of downtown Cairo kept distracting us (naturally - more on that in another post). We kept getting knocks on the door from Housekeeping who wanted to tidy the room, but we told them to come back in 30 minutes.

Just as we were leaving a knock from Housekeeping came again. But when we open the door we see it isn't Housekeeping, but a guy with room service. We try and explain we didn't order anything, but then he said "Allsop. Birthday." Erm, yes it is my birthday. I look at Scotty "Not me!" he says. We let the guy bring the tray in and it's a large chocolate mousse cake with a card. I open the card and it's from the hotel. They must have seen my passport on check in and realised! What a great place!

When we came back to our room after lunch Housekeeping had been :)

A brilliant and memorable brithday. Thank you everyone x