My memories of today are somewhat random and fragmented.
It was my birthday.
My party was good (I think) but although I planned to stay reasonably sober until the evening I was pretty drunk by 4pm (and stayed standing and drinking til 3am, so things get even more blurry as the night went on).
I got some presents, but not enough to offset the cost of the party itself, so clearly that makes the whole enterprise a failure!
One gift (from a gang of award winning comedy performers and writers) was a whisky jar in the shape of a bell (It originally contained Bell's whisky making this an hilarious visual pun) which was created to commemorate the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of York.
It no longer contained whisky, but is an interesting conversation point. I thought that such an item would probably be worth a small fortune, but later noticed that the plastic stopper that sealed the jar was slightly broken. Cracked plastic seriously damages the value of an antique.
I also got given a teddy bear with a porcelain human doll face. It is one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen. The doll has a hood that is a teddy bear's face that you can pull over the doll face (though it doesn't quite cover it) which makes it look a bit less frightening. But you always know that the staring porcelain face is under the false teddy face, just ready to look at you and willing you to lift up its mask to reveal it's gruesome visage.
Clearly my friends like me very much.