I’m a lucky chap. I’m getting on now (I’m 33 yesterday) but I still have a great family who always manage to get me some really fun presents. Wii was definitely a feature of this year’s gifts and tonight I’ve been playing Wii Fit Plus. There’s some great new games in it, although my favourites are the juggling and the kung fu. I also got Mario Kart, Colin McRae Dirt Rally and another fitness one (can’t remember the name of it).

My folks paid for half of my new fiddle for me. A week ago today, I went to John Dike’s Violins in Sherborne and managed to find one stand out fiddle. In fact, the rest I didn’t much like but I liked this French fiddle that had been recently repaired from a sound post crack down the back. It cost £800, but my parents have kindly offered to pay half, so that was my very generous present from them.

Yesterday evening I went and saw the new Pixar movie, Up. It was really good. I could see myself in the old man, Carl. We saw it in 3D too, which was really great. Caroline wasn’t so impressed with the 3D, but I thought it worked well. It’s a reason to actually go to the cinema rather than just wait until it comes out on Blue Ray! We ate beforehand at TGI Friday’s a gorgeous, if somewhat oversized, meal before using our vouchers to get in the film for free

We’re off out tomorrow lunch for a meal with my parents and sister. I’m not sure if we’ve decided where to go yet, but we’ve also got various shopping tasks to do too before going to a fireworks do in the evening. Sunday evening we’re off around a musician friend’s house for another bonfire do. It’s a busy weekend!

Today was my sister’s birthday. She’s 36 already; crikey doesn’t time fly. That, of course, means that I’m 30 this year! Ouch.

Here she is playing with her rather nice new toy: a Sony W70.

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Yesterday Daisy and I went up to London to see the Cirque du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall. It was Daisy’s birthday yesterday, and the present was a Christmas present from her Dad (bought on my birthday – just to keep the coincidences going). It was a great day out, and the show is absolutely spectacular.

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Inside the Royal Albert Hall prior to the show starting

If you haven’t seen it on the TV, the Cirque du Soleil is a circus without any animals. They have some amazing people on the show performing the usual juggling, high-trapeze and trampoline stunts, to more unusual stuff like hand-balancing, contortion and fire juggling. The clowns that performed a little show in between each main part were also very good – actually quite funny which I wasn’t expecting. The music was great and the costumes and set were pretty impressive too.

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Denys the Ukranian hand-balancer, taken from Friday’s Working Lunch TV show

So from the Circus of the Sun and Sunny London, to grey Aberdeen. Today I fly up to Aberdeen in Scotland, well known for being perhaps the greyest place on Earth. I have a meeting that starts at 9am tomorrow morning, so I have to fly up this afternoon with lots of my collegues from work. It’s a 3-day meeting, so I don’t get back until late on Wednesday. Oh joy of joys.