Pictures

After getting back to London I got together with friends for a birthday meal at Gordon Ramsey’s, The Narrow.

The food as ever was amazing but more so the company was great. Having everyone together was so nice and long overdue.

Thank you to everyone that came along, and thank you for the driving experience you all bought me. I look forward to losing enough weight to fit into the racing car!!!

M

While being on holiday in Antigua I wanted to write Moliblog and tell everyone about my fantastic time sitting in the sun, consuming Passion Fruit Daiquiri’s daily and eating the equivalent of my body weight in fabulous food and being pampered in paradise. However, I never had the time.

After day 5 the excess became too much. It would appear that you can have too much of a good thing. I would go as far to say that all the excess would actually kill me in the end. I remember thinking that it was strange how I could spend most of the day sleeping and relaxing and still ending up wanting an early night. Maybe that’s what happens now that I’ve reached the big 40.

On that topic I had an amazing birthday, so different to all the others. It started with a great breakfast, then a massage, then swimming in the Caribbean sea, a fantastic creole shrimp salad for lunch followed by more sleeping and catching the beautiful rays. So far so good, then I had an evening meal in the fine dining restaurent and the biggest lobster I’ve every seen. The only thing that worries me, is the fact I get so much pleasure from food. How on earth am I going to lose weight???

I had the pleasure of sharing all this with Fleur who encouraged me to eat Passion Fruit for the first time.

I first I thought it looked like snot but it was more like the strongest hit of orange juice you’ve ever had. Amazing and intense I couldn’t get enough of them.

From the moment we arrived on the island the welcome from the people was just amazing. The site of a 747 parked next to a tiny terminal building was a true indication of the pace for the week ahead. Rarely do passport control welcome you like a hotel reception. Both of which supplied iced fruit juices and a big smile… Apart from the car alarm sounding crickets that are beyond annoying, everything was just perfect and we didn’t really want to come home. I can’t wait to go back.

M

If you are reading this, then I should be sitting on a beach in Antigua turning 40 in style…

Here is a picture of a cake that was given to me on the 27th October. Made by the fantastic chef at BAFTA and eaten by friends…

Here are some celebrity birthday wishes…

Thanks to everyone who sent me a birthday greetings, it was so nice to get those messages while I was away in the sun…

Holiday blog coming soon…

M

On Friday I attended a friends 40th birthday party which despite the amount of friends who turn 40 this year has been a fairly rare event. The theme was the 1980’s with music and dress in keeping with the era.

The evening went well with classic tunes at volume 11, drinks flowing and terrible dancing, but the thing that struck me the most was when people you’ve not seen for 24 years make an appearance. School friends that you were with every single day and couldn’t be without had for some reason disappeared into time and now they appear looking a little older but somehow the same people. They all have a story to tell about the last 20 or so years without you and the adventures each had were not too dissimilar to each other. Job, kids, home etc…

Within an hour or so it was like they had stepped out of the room at the school disco and just returned. We picked up where we left off and it was great. I hope to see more of them now and will fight the mysteries of time not to lose touch again.

M

My poor spine is killing me…

Not sure the Selfridges massage room has made things any better…

Certainly my wallet is lighter!!!

After 37 years its time to leave Manor Park. It has been the place of my family home for as long as I can remember and I have so many memories from the day we moved in. I was only 3 years old at the time but I remember meeting my first friend and neighbor Samantha. We are still friends now and I remember playing in the street as you could in those days. Piggy in the middle, hop scotch and riding our bikes up and down. However, my strongest memory was playing in each others houses and in the garden. Most of the time I ended up getting hurt and my mum was forced to collect what was left of me from whatever accident had befallen me, which was normally something to do with Samantha’s swing and spinning me way too fast.

I remember all the Christmas dinners with my parents and grand parents and even a Great Grand father. We had my mum’s special recipe stuffing, roast potato’s and turkey. However, things have now changed and now it’s just my mum and I left.

I remember the parties we held for my birthday. Jelly and Ice cream as a schoolboy and a Fancy dress party for my 21st with my friends and neighbours in some amazing costumes. The community came together in 1977 for the Queens silver jubilee…

I remember the long summers playing in the garden with toys and water fights with my dad. I remember him running away from my water pistol and falling over on the wet grass and straight through a giant flowerpot. We had a giant pool in the summer and my mates would come over for a splash around. As I got older I would spend the summers in the garden sunbathing and getting very burnt. Not to forget all the pets that I had such as a Goldfish, a rabbit, a few dogs, some mice and a duck…

As an only child my bedroom was my world. From a young age I had a big black and white television at the end of the bed and remember watching ‘The Sweeny’ before going to school the next day. I played my various computers in that room and even turned it into a home cinema room. It had various beds and numerous colours to suit my changing life and increase in age.

Above all of this, it was a home to my family and I for 37 years. It has so much history and I have so many memories of happy and sad times. The rooms of the house have been filled with so many conversations and so much laughter its almost too much to remember. The sense that I’m left with beyond everything else is that it was a happy home surrounded by love.

The area has changed for the worse with the dregs of society replacing the doctors, lawyers and teachers that had once made the street their home too. A once clean and leafy street has been replaced with old TV’s and Couches being dumped on the roadside and noises and smells that have more in keeping with the slums of the world than an East London residential street. I know that my mum moving away from these disgusting people is the right thing to do.

My family is part of a long line of people that have taken residence since the house was built at the turn of the century starting with…

1896 William Lyon – Bought the land.

1897 William Fish, a Butterer & Cheese Monger from Upton Park

1922 – A.A Caton
1922 – Annie Till
1938 – R.B Meldon
1953 – Grace Page & Henry Page
1962 – John Sayer & Frank McGovern
1963 – John Foody
1964 – David Robinson (2500)
1971 – David Law (£5000)
1975 – The Oliver Family ( £10,000)

Now it has come to pass the home on to a new family and for them to have their own adventures. I hope that they have as much life and love as I did there and I will never forget it.

M