Dan is 18!

Its hard to believe it, but our teenager just reached the age of maturity! In theory, that means he can go down the pub, drive a car and serve in the armed forces, but in reality he's still just our Dan.

Because of the way the weekends and holidays have fallen this year, his birthday celebrations have spread over a whole week, ending with a big party on the Bank Holiday Monday.

Leroy

I guess his biggest present was a Sunday trip to the West End of London to see a Michael Jackson tribute show called "Thriller". Dan found it for himself on his iPad and asked for us to take him: insisted really. We drove through the rain down to Nick and Gabby's house and then took the tube to Piccadilly, which was just as well because Finsbury Park station was already flooded and the water was rising. Nick took us to an American style diner where Dan felt quite at home after our trip to Maine last year. The waitress was a lovely girl who had worked with autistic children in Poland and she used sign language with Dan, so they got on really well.

Food!

The show itself was better than we expected. Being the West End, the production was perfect. I fretted at first because I think that using pre-recorded backing tracks is cheating, but after two songs the curtain rose to reveal a live band! They were perfect. Five actors played Michael Jackson at different times in his life and they were all really good singers. The chorus-line was also very professional, but  the script between the songs was a bit cheesy. All the same, they played to a packed house, got us all up dancing, and even enjoyed it themselves, which was just as well because an hour later they had to do it all again.

Callum

Dan enjoyed the walk through Soho to Regent Street where Nick works. 'Lots of lovely red lights and lurid signs, but we managed to keep him out of the shops.

Sundays are not good for public transport as that's when the maintenance crews go out and earn double time. They dig up the tracks and send people up the line by bus. This time, they had flooding as well, so that meant that the points at Camden Town failed and therefore the signals didn't work either. Chaos ensued, so we went to have another meal and then returned to the tube only to get stuck again. Gabby put on her own cabaret show to keep us entertained and the time passed swiftly for us, and for the other passengers too. We got home at 11 pm after a really full day with a happy Dan.

Alex with Richard Branson

The theme for this years party was "B Movies" and I put up posters and decorations featuring Hammer House of Horror, which Dan is really keen on. Basically you can use all your Halloween stuff, throw in Arabs, Egyptians, gangsters and cowboys and  let it all hang out. The Lambtons love dressing up and Nigel soon found an Arab costume in his wardrobe. Worryingly, Margaret had a cowgirl costume ready as well. (I'm sure their lives are far more interesting than ours.) At least it wasn't doctors-and-nurses again. Alex Lambton was a very nasty ice-hockey player.

The Bride of Frankenstein

In past years we have always hired a bouncy castle, but as the kids have got older it has been used less and less by the kids and more by the parents. The weather had been terrible for weeks, so we decided to go for a magician instead, Years ago, Dan had been to a show near Cambridge that featured JezO the magician and we almost died from laughing too much, so JezO was our first choice. He was even better than we remembered, keeping us all in stitches and involving the youngsters in his act. He stayed on for ages afterwards making balloon onions (yes, really) and animals for them. Look him up on You Tube and book him!

Cow-girl Patty

Gabby's parents spent the weekend in Norfolk with family and took Nick and Gabs with them, but they all joined us for the party, which was a hoot. They actually tried to leave several times, but kept getting side-tracked. Eventually the men all got involved in a shoot-out with Nerf Guns that shoot foam darts.  (If your dinner party is ever lagging, get Nerf Guns. I've no idea why, but shooting people in the head is immensly satisfying, time after time, and I'm a pacifist, I think.)

Dan's school friends Callum the cowboy and Leroy the gangster really got into the party thing and Matthew from Dan's archery class came too, but like Harriet Lambton, preferred the quiet of the front room to the chaos within. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the party animals, Holly and Catherine, were right in the thick of things as usual.

Even if I say it myself, it was a the best party I've been to in ages. We must remember to invite Dan next time!

You will be able to see a whole album of photos on Photobucket here.