BIRTHDAY LUNCH for 8
Special birthdays need special celebrations: those rites of passage of 18 and 21 should definitely be celebrated in style. And when one enters one's thirties, another rite of passage - for often by the time one may be married, settled, with a new baby, or one on the way - some kind of celebration is in order. And then there's the forties - a time when one perhaps feels well settled, in life, career and family and a party might be just the thing to stave off the dreaded "middle aged, middle class" ( "we were wild in the old days" - Joni Mitchell ) Fifty is significant, no getting around that. It's a Big One, the half-century, the golden one. To party or not to party, that is the question? My Significant Other celebrates his half-century this month and was adamant there would be "no party". But not to celebrate seemed churlish, and so a low-key Sunday lunch with friends and family, which will extend into the pub with more friends and family in