At the weekend, a large group of girlies joined me to celebrate my recent engagement. One of them did point out that traditionally the groom-to-be is invited to any such occasion but I was in need of girly drinks so this small detail was swiftly swept to one side.

The evening was superb. This was not however due to anything I did – in fact my organization skills failed dismally from the word go. The first bar I told everyone to go to was closed when I tried to book it. I then looked up a different one, but it had changed it’s name, and the woman on the other end of the phone had a very heavy accent and after asking her three times for the name I was too embarrassed to ask again. On further investigation, I found a Spanishy sounding bar and decided triumphantly that this must be the one. We turned up there to find the man had no recollection of our booking. I was annoyed at this, as the lady on the phone had said the manager would phone me back to confirm and no one ever had. I pointed this out and firmly insisted that this must be there mistake. Credit to them they immediately set about creating a block of tables for our giggling girly party. It was only when he was putting the finishing touches to it that it dawned on me that we may or may not be in the wrong bar. By that time he had worked so hard to accommodate us I felt too guilty to leave, so we stayed, enjoying a fab evening of pina colada’s, sangria and tapas. Luckily the girls know me well enough to just laugh at me (and one even kindly reminded me to get someone else to organize my hen night).

Sitting there, surrounded by my friends, I just felt so incredibly happy and so so lucky. I haven’t been able to do the whole “bar” thing for years, well in fact I have hardly been able to do it at all, as the smoke has always been too hard to tolerate (come on July 1st) and by the time I was at Uni my lungs really were not complying with my need to go out and party. Honestly this year is a bit of a dream come true so far. Well minus the whole nearly dying bit right at the beginning.

A small group of us returned to mine for coffee and further laughter, and poor A arrived home to find a group of shrieking girls drinking coffee and clutching various wedding magazines. Credit to him, he merely offered to make more drinks and sat down quietly. Although if you ask me he wasn’t actually too fussed to come home to be greeted by a room full of rather lovely women…

I have heard from Harefield now and due to wheezing becoming slightly excessive now creating an eerie whistling affect, I am booked in for further investigations on Friday. My sister who has just finished Uni has volunteered to accompany me so I am sure we will have quite a nice day; there are some great pubs up there so a good lunch at least!

Work-wise we are still ploughing on with preparations to support National Transplant Week. We have a bit of a project currently being planned, which I will disclose as soon as it is all a bit more concrete. I am also currently helping these guys here; about time I gave something back to the NHS so I am more than happy to be involved. Yay for life!

ps - I was going to add please spare a thought for Emmie, who is having great problems with her port. However I have since been informed that due to its continuing disobedience and naughty behaviour, she has now named it Emily and consequently the whole team have taken great delight in referring to it as "Naughty Emily". I no longer feel she needs any pity...