We’ve been celebrating my birthday in style today, even though what we set out to do was not achieved.

We booked ourselves into a swanky hotel in Bristol so we could visit the Camera Obscura – apparently it’s the only one in the country that’s actually open to the public. However, they don’t have a website and the only info we could find on it was on the Bristol tourism sites. They didn’t go into details of when and why it opens but we thought that in mid-August, the height of the holiday season they’d be bound to be open. Not so. Despite having read that the image is perfect at night, they don’t open on grey days with no contrast. That never occurred to us, stupidly or otherwise.

So, we were turned away! We amused ourselves in Bristol, a city that until now I’ve had nothing much good to say about – it’s a complete sod to find your way around and there are some pretty scary bits – take it from me, having missed my turn to the motorway a while ago on my way home from a gig and finding myself in the red light district. So, we actually stopped and looked at this famous city and both ended up agreeing that it is actually really rather nice.

Dinner in a Lebanese restaurant in an ex-wine cellar was yummy and the hotel really beautiful.

It’s a shame this snooker table, all set up and ready to go, seems to have been ‘black balled’ – not a single game of snooker happened on it all night. I know that because this morning, the white ball was exactly where I left it. Perhaps that’s because of the ghastly purple felt table – it’s a bit hard on the eyes.

You may think that a night in an hotel was an extravagance (and in truth it probably was, but it's my birthday and if you can't push out the boat for your birthday when can you?)given that Bristol is in the west Country and so are we, but it’s actually a 240 mile round trip and takes over two hours in each direction. So, we decided that we’d fit in a meal out, some pampering and a trip to Ikea while we were about it.

Last year, carnivourous plants were my thing.