Another birthday weekend gone, with all manner of fabulousness, including too many drinks in Soho, a nasty hangover with critical horizontal moments, followed by a long walk from Whitechapel via smoked anchovies and Cornish fish stew in the close-by company of Plum Sykes and Toby Young, an encounter on Embankment, an extra hour of daylight, trees divesting their leaves on the dot of Winter, platefulls of bacon, leek and potato torte, ice-cream, wine and breathe.