Happy birthday, Jenny.

Friday night was spent celebrating another birthday. Angie held hers at the Axis restaurant at the One Aldwych hotel, at, uh, 1 Aldwych. They did a bargain champagne plus 3 course meal plus film deal, plying us with alcohol before gently guiding us into a small screening room where The Thomas Crown Affair played to an audience of very pissed and mostly slumbering people. Ridiculous. Drinking before watching a film ranks alongside drinking before driving in the stupidity stakes. I remember Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway motoring around sand dunes in a buggy, and not much else. So don't you be asking me any questions in that Michael Rodd / Screen Test way.

Saturday was spent wrapping presents and writing, meeting deadlines, clearing email inboxes and getting frustrated at being unable to fix a date to record the new Free French single. It has been deemed a good idea that it be internet download only. I'm unsure about the wisdom of this; I've always been a staunch upholder of a record release being a perishable object you can hold in your hands, and can't help feeling that making it download only devalues it slightly. But at the same time I never have any decent ideas about what Free French record sleeves should look like, so at least it saves me from travelling down that boulevard of indecision.

This morning I got up early to go out and buy the new Observer music mag. Delighted to see a letter in the front that described my “Musicians Wanted” column as “virulently repellent”. Turned to the back to find that I'd spelt “manoeuvre” as “manouevre”, and it hadn't been corrected by the subs. Which, I concur, is virulently repellent. But there is a nice picture of me in desert combat gear and a horses head at the number 57 bus stop.

Jenny's birthday has been hijacked by another relative who has decided to hold her 80th birthday party in Hendon this afternoon, which we are obliged to attend. Jenny warned me in advance that people are going to ask me what I do for a living, a question that usually elucidates much humming, hawing and tutting from me as I never know exactly what to say. I've been musing on describing myself as a pornographer, to bring a dash of colour to a distinctly Catholic afternoon. Mebbes I will, mebbes I won't. (i.e. I won't.)