Gin birthday

Today turned out to be largely about gin.  Many months ago, I had seen an advert for the gin festival, noted it was on my birthday, and bought tickets for the afternoon session as a treat.

Then, with my morning coffee, W brought up a certificate telling me that he had enrolled me for another year in the Craft Gin Club, and this year, the box will come every 2 months.

Whilst waiting for our taxi to Norwich, a parcel arrived with some lovely flowers from my older daughter in Sweden - see extra.

The Gin festival was quite good fun, but I don't think I would bother to go to another.  The tickets were £17 apiece, and for that you got entry to the venue (where they had laid on some not particularly inspiring live entertainment), a gin glass each (see photo) that we decided we really didn't need to bring home, and a little booklet with very brief tasting notes on the 100 or so gins available.

The venue is a re-purposed bank building, with impressive high ceilings and mouldings.  

There were a few trade stands, where they were doling out tasters, but other than that, if you wanted to drink gin, you had to pay - £5 for each gin and mixer.  That was a pretty good way of keeping consumption down - we only had 2 each in the 3 hours we were there.  I did try a number of the free samples, and came away with 2 bottles (Bullards Norwich gin, and one called Aber Falls, from Wales, that caught my fancy).

We then walked down to the Norwich Brewdog, where I had MORE gin - their own brand, called Lone Wolf - that was lovely, I look forward to opening our own bottle.  We also had a burger - W tried the Seitan burger, which is wheat gluten made to look like meat, and which was underwhelming.

We were actually home quite early and quite sober, but both tired - seating had been in short supply at the festival, so we had to sit upstairs, which meant that I climbed up and down the stairs about 5 times over the course of the afternoon - something that is still quite hard on my new knee.  And I did quite a lot of standing about for one reason or another.