Hungerford; Somerfield nee Gateway; long weekend

Half way through a four-day week, which, unaccountably, never seem any shorter than five-day weeks.

Continued birthday celebrations throughout the rest of last week. On Wednesday, while on my way to spend a lovely evening with my friends Julie and Dave, I stopped off for a few hours at Hungerford, where my parents lived for a few years in the early 1990s. I hadn't visited it much since then and there have been a few changes, including a couple of rather helpful mini-roundabouts, particularly the one on the junction of the High Street and Park Street. Somerfield (formerly Gateway), where my sister and I used to frequently trot for that emergency bottle of wine, is now housed in a new building set back from the road. The former pub on Charnham Street that I last remember as a Tex-Mex restaurant called The Damn Yankee is now a garish shade of yellow and called Casanova.

Despite not being particularly interested in antiques, I went for a wander around Hungerford Arcade to kill some time. If memory serves, in the coffee lounge on the upper floor there used to be a crocodile skin hanging over a side rail which I always found somewhat alarming, but as the coffee shop was closed at the time of my visit I was unable to check out whether it was still there.

The following day, I and my hire car (great notion, these - you just show your driving licence and get given a new(ish) car! How cool is that?) proceeded westwards to spend a few days with my parents, which included a nice meal at their local bistro. Ruth joined me on Friday night and we spent a relaxing Saturday including a stroll to check out the views of the Black Mountains.

We proceeded back to Berkshire on Sunday to spend an extra day rurally-retreating, this time near the Ridgeway being fed delicious food and, in my case at least, sitting around idly - though I did label some jam pots. Driving home on Monday, I was reminded of how it's best to stay off the roads in Reading on the August Bank Holiday while the Reading Festival traffic disperses.

The Big 4-0

Well, I'm 40 … feel like I should be overcome with the significance of the moment. A year or so ago I was, oddly enough, but a lot has happened since then.

Fabulous birthday weekend ... myhotel Bloomsbury turned out to be appropriately smart and boutique-y, although I have never seen a bathroom crammed into such a small space. For a hotel that advertises its feng shui influences, you would think that a bathroom design whereby one has to step out of the bath onto the floor via the toilet bowl would flout some sort of law or at the very least obstruct the flow of chi.

Lovely surprise dinner at Chronicles on Saturday night and still amazed I had had no idea what was being planned. Thanks so much to Ruth for organising it and to Ray, Claire, Julie, Helen and Ali for turning out to celebrate with me. Typically and somewhat annoyingly, I was enjoying myself so much I forgot to take any photos. My keenness to document significant events in my life in photographs is continually thwarted by my inability to remember to actually take any.

Spent Sunday at The Sanctuary in Covent Garden, which was an interesting experience - slightly surreal being surrounded by a crowd of other women all in white robes, and some of the treatments involved wearing worryingly insubstantial paper pants. I made the most of the day with an exfoliating salt scrub (very nice), a back and shoulder massage (slightly painful) and a pedicure (much needed). Ruth spent much of the day dozing by the koi pond but did push the boat out in the morning with a full body polish. We ended the day with a Sleep Retreat session which involved lying on Sound Wave Therapy beds listening to a guided visualisation through headphones. The fairly loud vibrating of the SWT beds did detract slightly from the audio-instructions to imagine oneself lying in hammock in idyllic garden, listening to sounds of birdsong. I also tend to lose concentration during guided visualisations and realise with a jolt that I am still in my hammock when in fact I am supposed to have got out of it and be walking beside a stream. Cue rushing to get out of hammock, leading to probable tangling up in same, skidding on muddy path, falling into stream, etc.

Yesterday's abortive wait-in for the gas man at least enabled me to start reading our next Book Group book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini of The Kite Runner fame. Already suitably depressed, and one senses there are plenty of horrors still to come. Will follow it up with comic or similar.