Another birthday

I still haven’t taken a single decent photo with my mobile, but can’t let our recent guest, Luke’s, birthday go unrecorded. I had fun buying his birthday present – he loves cooking and highly spiced food, so we chose a selection of spices from the Arab shop that sells them in bulk (50 g of this, 60g of that…). I left it rather till the last minute, as I got carried away with spring cleaning (well, late autumn cleaning), so by the time we had showered and waited too long for an Uber taxi, we were a bit late arriving at Luke’s new home at the Vicarage. However, Jess and Mark weren’t bothered and had some delicious nibblies laid on, so we tucked into those and the prosecco/beer while toasting Luke and watching him open his presents. He approved of the spices and loved the hammock he got from J and M.
 
Then two girls who arrived yesterday from England turned up and we moved on to a covered market where  restaurants set out tables in the parking lot after closing time. We were hoping to meet up with a British journalist who is covering various aspects of the Rio Olympics, as Luke is here to study the legacy of the games and J & M would also like to meet him. However, he didn’t make it, so we demolished a couple of pizzas and a few beers before moving on to a wonderful chocolate birthday cake produced by Jess. I hope Luke enjoyed his birthday as much as we did.