And still the birthday celebrations continued, well into the month after, which is just how we likes it. We went out for dinner in the fanciest of pants, me and Olive and Hens and John and Marc and Emily, and at Moro they greeted us nice and warm on a cold November night.

Our dinner reservations not till just after nine, we’d started down the street at the Eagle for drinks all ’round the table by the radiator. “Weelll...” I’d texted Marc before he arrived, “they are serving grilled sausages and butter beans at the Eagle, is all.” “Sounds like a decent predinner snack,” he wrote back. “Be there in 15.” But we were strong, we were – hungry but strong – because we had a feeling about Moro, and so there were Guinnesses and glasses of rosé, there were flutes of prosecco for girls for whom sparkly trumps all, but there were no grilled sausages, no butter beans.

When the big clock on the facing wall showed nine, we stepped out onto Farringdon and up to Exmouth Market, where the strings of lightbulbs winked and grinned. Oh, Moro, you are good to us, with your perfect lamb and your flawless skate, for your unexpected yogurt and pistachio cake, not cake-like in the least – rather a fool of some sort, a mess, a splodge – but smooth and electric at the same time, while pomegranate seeds burst like soft rubies on the tongue.

“What,” we’d asked the waitress when she came ’round for dessert orders, “is a ‘Bombolas’?” It had been hand-written on the bottom of the drinks menu, below the sweet liqueurs, beneath the coffees and teas. I’d assumed it would come in a wide-rimmed glass, on fire. I’d hoped its arrival would be announced by brass trumpets.

“Don’t ask,” I’d said to Hens, “just order.” We waved our hands in the air and said “Bombolas!” as if we were dressed up for Mardi Gras, and clowns were dancing and tumbling behind us. “Happy birthday!” we said, to no one, really, because a night like this is everyone’s birthday, “Bombolas!”

But the waitress came ’round, and “What,” we said, “is a ‘Bombolas’?” “It’s a chocolate, with an almond inside,” she said, and a thousand hearts sank. Still, an order was placed, this note of sensibility and restraint amidst the rich chocolate-almond tarts and the frou-frou yogurt and pistachio. A pound-fifty for a small white porcelain bowl of bombolas, and, I tell you, we ate them all. Every single chocolate-dusted, chocolate-coated nut was devoured – held up to the light to be appraised, and then popped, with a satisfied smile, into our mouths. “Petit mais costaud,” Marc said, and I think he ate the last one, too.

We tumbled out into the night. It was late, and cold. Two went right, two went around the corner, and two disappeared southwards. The lights on Exmouth Market were bright still, like the party wasn’t quite over yet.

Just last Friday, then, the birthday presents from Suz, a brown paper bag of nice smell. I reached in and took out two rose geranium and lavender soaps and we held them to our noses and said, “Mmm.”

“Do you want a trip on the London Eye,” she’d asked me on the phone some days before, “or a bar of organic soap?”

“No need present lah,” I said, “no need.”

“Trip on the Eye?” she said.

“No need!” I said.

“Organic soaps?” she said.

“No need!” I said, and then, “What flavour?”

“Ah!” she said. “Rose geranium and lavender, lemongrass and marigold, lavender and camomile. Come!”

“Aiyah,” I said, “no need presents lah!”

“Lavender and camomile?” she said.

“No lah, no,” I said.

“Lemongrass and marigold?”

“No—”

“Rose geranium and lavender?”

“Oh!”

“Okay!” she crowed, hence: Friday night, and the brown paper bag of nice smell, and the fancy soaps, and the mmm. We went into the Natural History Museum, then, and the Diplodocus grinned us a toothy grin, but that is another story.