Another birthday...

We don't really celebrate birthdays in our family or, rather, we don't celebrate them on my side of the family.  Mostly this is, I suspect, because mine, my mother's and my sister's birthday are all within two weeks of Christmas, so we have become used to the joint present and even, from real penny-pinching scum, the joint card.  There was only one advantage to having a birthday after Christmas, in that if there was anything on my list from Father Christmas that I never received then I could ask for it for my birthday.  Now the Old Bat (her family do do birthdays) bought me a joint Christmas and birthday present this year but it is a really nice one in the rather enticing shape of this dancing girlies table.  As ever, with the Old Bat, there is an ulterior motive, which is for me to tidy up my study which is a complete tip at present.  This may actually do the trick and I am well on the way to filing all my DVD's in albums which frees shelf space which enables me to put other stuff on the vacated shelves etc.

I didn't receive any hobby stuff for Christmas but my ever elegant sister gave me this so tasteful box of Humbrol paints for my birthday.  I looked at them and immediately though 'Dark Ages'!  Maybe it's time to finish my Carolingian Lion Rampart army this Spring.  My daughter got me some Superglue Gel, which I have had trouble getting lately.  I have some figures to assemble and I couldn't find it anywhere as both Waitrose and Sainsbury's seem to have stopped stocking it.  I can assemble my Brother Vinni Viking Shieldmaidens now.

Not sure about the paint job.  Not very well designed for sneaking up on things

Close to us we have a place called Garson Farm, which is one of those garden centres on steroids which also sells all the other unnecessary rubbish for your home (they call it 'indoor lifestyle') that you can shift in Surrey.  We have a lot of 'indoor lifestyle' shops in Esher, Cobham and Oxshott selling things like a wicker garden lounger for £12,000.  Garson's is particularly famous for its award-winning Christmas decorations shop (in addition to its award winning indoor lifestyle shop).  Every year the Old Bat goes to their 75% off post-Christmas sale and returns with more sparkly rubbish to add to the 35 boxes (plastic crate boxes not shoe boxes) of Christmas decorations in the loft.  I went there this morning with her and while she bought useful things like outdoor disco lights (so Guy can look at an outside moving lights display from his wing of the house), more Christmas tree decorations and some other stuff which I didn't really know what it was but had plastic flowers on it, I wandered around the rest of the recently vastly expanded shop.  The new restaurant was a disappointment; a breakfast menu of herb teas and smoothies was not what I was looking for.  Surrey wives, who are usually 15-20 years younger than their husbands, have to keep fit or they will find themselves replaced by a Croatian or Singaporean model (literally).  In the corner of the toy department, however, was a new dinosaur section, with a good selection of Schleich dinosaur models.  Now while these are very good they are usually far too big to use with 28mm figures.  However, today they had this splendid carnivore which is spot on for Lost World adventures and the Old Bat bought it for me as a birthday present.  Non-hobby Christmas and birthday saved!