The birthday weekend starts right here

It started last night - the 50th birthday celebrations.

Along with a crowd of good friends from the RLFans.com network we adjourned to the Aagrah Indian restaurant in St Peters Square in Leeds (top picture) for another of our famous Southstander.com Curry Neets.

I must admit that I was most impressed with my birthday present from Rob (middle picture), a genuine greek captains hat and although it was a little on the small side I was certainly the belle of the restaurant and won many admiring glances from the ladies, and some from the men too as I carelessly and with abandon left the cap lying on the corner of the table for all to see and admire.

Carolyn graciously left a five pound note in my birthday card which will come in useful for a drink or two at the rugby match tonight but then tarnished the effect slightly when she told me that she'd found it on the pavement outside the pub along with a ten pound note - she'd kept the ten and put the fiver in my card, but still, its the thought that counts.

The ten would have been better though.

Not that I'm ungrateful or anything.

The food and service was excellent and although I always take some stick for being limp wristed in my curry choices I opted again for a Kashmiri curry that was full of lychees and bananas with a Pashwari nan adorned similarly with fruit and nuts - in my mind you smply cannot seriously consider a curry unless it looks like Carmen Mirandas headgear, or as I put it last night "If it doesn't arrive looking like the fruit basket prize in a working mans club raffle then I'm sending it back".

And better still, when the waiter found out that it was my birthday I got a free ice cream (see bottom picture) which I couldn't get anywhere near until the roman candle that they'd stuck in the top expired, by which time it had almost melted the ice cream - ice cream served with dangerous fireworks in it, wonderful, just wonderful.

But the best was saved for last - the bill. I didn't see it. It got passed around the table for a couple of circuits and then they all chucked enough money in to pay for it without me having to contrbute - thanks you very much for that guys it was a nice gesture and I appreciate it, mind if I'd known at the start I wouldn't have gone for the cheap curry, but still...