Mad dash first thing to the nearest town where I could be reasonably confident of finding a sufficiently voluminous posh frock to accommodate my ever-increasing bulk for this evening's 60th birthday party. Fortunately I found something suitable, if a little uninspiring, which was lucky because I am not usually very good at shopping under pressure.

I must admit I was not really looking forward to the party tonight, not least because I was going to be wearing something resembling a black marquee and it was being held in a marquee and temperatures were due to be hovering around zero degrees C.

On the walk down the road to get there I told Graham that I was pretty sure I wasn't going to see it right through to the end at 2am, but it was an amazing and spectacular event, and a little too warm inside the marquee, if anything. The person whose 'do' it was has strong links to the horse racing world and that was the theme of the evening. There was a real bookie and everyone had fake money to place bets on races that were shown on screens around the room. There was also a racehorse simulator which is used to train jockeys - needless to say, I managed to resist the temptation to have a go.

Best of all was the 'silent disco,' something I thought sounded utterly ridiculous, but which in practice was completely hilarious. I had only heard that such a thing existed recently. There was a DJ playing regular tunes but you also had headphones which could be tuned to one of three channels playing something else. At one point I noticed a group of people dancing to YMCA while another group was dancing to something far more sedate. So funny.

Got to bed at 3am - too old for that sort of thing these days

This photo was taken in the link that joined the house to the marquee.