Carpe Diem! A birthday week filled with celebration, friends, fine food and good health

I was irritated this year to find my birthday falling on a Monday. This seems like the worst possible conjunction of special event and mundane reality. Mondays are ... well, you know the songs.

Turns out there's a big advantage to Monday birthdays, however. The day is so inauspicious that everyone suggests festivities on other days, which nicely stretched my birthday over a whole giddy week this year. None of my Friday or Saturday birthdays has ever gotten this much traction.

Festivities officially started on Saturday night, when Guy and I stayed local and headed for my favourite Moroccan restaurant in Windsor. Well off the beaten tourist track, Al Fassia is family-run establishment of no more than a dozen tables, all of them always packed on the weekend. The staff remembers the locals, and always takes good care of their regulars. (In this case, with free dessert thrown on at the meal's end.) The food is proper North African, done with care. Start with delicate, meat-filled bastilla pastries, freshly made hummus or stewed, chilled aubergine. Move on to a wide variety of tagine-cooked meats, succulent and falling off the bone. My favourites include lamb with prunes, and chicken with onions and raisins. All accompanied by heaps of gently steamed, fluffy couscous. A range of honey-based pastries and mint tea is always a good end to a meal here.

Sunday night and celebrant No. 2: Hillary. In a mood to forsake my diet completely, we opted for the Gourmet Burger Kitchen on Chiswick High Road. I had a massive, medium rare burger dripping in cheese, chili sauce and onions that goes to prove that the Brits can actually do this down-home American classic just as well as the originators once they get over their perception that it's "junk" food. (And it also shows that no matter how used to healthy eating I may get, a greasy, high fat burger is still going to taste heavenly.) As it was my birthday ... almost ... we compounded our sin by stopping into the gastropub up the street, The Roebuck, for dessert. Hillary's ice cream looked good, and my chocolate torte was so rich that it was like eating a slab of fudge. Perhaps a bit overpowering, but a nice treat.

Ironically, my birthday itself was spent alone. A crazy work schedule had frightened me into not accepting any invitations because I feared I wouldn't be able to clear work promptly. Yet I had quite an efficient day, so managed to wrap up by 6 and head to the gym. After which, I dropped into Waitrose to get myself a deluxe sushi box and a gourmet cupcake, then took myself to the cinema to see The Duchess, the new biopic of the 18th-century Duchess of Devonshire. A brilliantly executed film with fine acting and lavish costumes and sets. Very much my cup of tea. All very self indulgent, so perfect for a birthday.

Tuesday was the undoubted climax of this great week. My friend Christine arranged a day out at Raymond Blanc's cooking school at Le Manoir au Quatre Saisons, one of the most famous restaurants in the country, and the experience lived up to lofty expectations. We gathered for coffee in the elegant drawing room (the hotel is in a traditional Cotswolds manor house) to meet our fellow students (10 in all) and get our chef's jackets. Then it was off to the very posh kitchens.

The cooking school has its own kitchen, separated from the main food prep areas by glass walls that allowed us to see the buzz of the wider establishment all day, but not get in anyone's way. Our own kitchen looked very much like a domestic model, albeit a very large one with five sets of stoves, ovens and fridges. A large breakfast bar in the centre sat the ten students, who faced the instructor and his line-up of burners and prep areas. The theme was "autumn dinner party" and the idea was to show us a multiple course meal, with some variations, that took advantage of seasonal tastes and produce. The day alternated between demonstration and actual cooking, with a fun group of fellow students keeping up a lively banter.

In the morning we all made mushroom ravioli and a fricassee of wild mushrooms, while watching the instructor produce a traditional French stew with beef and red wine. That became our lunch, eaten around the breakfast bar with our fellow students. After coffee in the gardens we returned for an afternoon of desserts, including three different apple pastries (thin apple tart, Maman Blanc's apple tart and tarte tatin) and a variety of souffles. I am delighted to report that my pistachio version both rose, and tasted great. All in all, a fantastic experience. I learned some great tips, even on items like pasta that I thought I was already very good at. The staff was entertaining and informative, the ingredients excellent and the whole day a fantastic way to relax. I felt like I'd had a proper holiday instead of just a Tuesday off. I'm definitely a convert to the idea of cooking school as holiday, and may need to investigate more options.

Wednesday offered a little respite, and a chance to get back to the gym after work, before a second climax on Thursday. (Why not. A girl deserves a treat.) This one wasn't an event, but rather a doctor's appointment. My mammogram and ultrasound were clear for the second year post cancer, dropping me into a lower risk category, allowing me to only have annual scans rather than every six months and generally taking a major worry off my mind. It never fails that in the weeks before the tests I work myself into a quiet panic, imagining a range of aches and pains in my breasts and the things that might be causing them. By Wednesday night I was running through my schedule in my head, tentatively scheduling my second mastectomy. The relief that washed over me when I learned my fears were all unfounded was just as pleasurable as anything else this week.

Thursday night, out with colleagues for a business dinner. Average food at an unexceptional place called Tao on Bow Lane. An oriental/Italian fusion theme, which is an idea that just doesn't work for me from the start. The food was actually very good, but the atmosphere was horrific. The music implied they were trying to be a nightclub, the jumbo screen above our head screamed sports bar. The chef was saying "nice restaurant" but got drowned in the atmosphere. Delightful company, however, made up for any shortcomings.

Friday night's long, pleasurable denouement was one of Nicholas' famous dinner parties. Staying true to form, he delivered yet another fascinating mix of people around a table filled with a progression of fine courses. The sea bream with chili and salt was a triumph of restaurant quality, and I would have devoured far more of the cheese board (always a centrepiece of Nick's dinners) had I not been conscious of the weigh in looming the next day.

How much damage would all this celebration cause? My final birthday gift was one to myself, for the answer was "none". Despite all the excess, choosing fish as much as possible, getting to the gym and not eatingan excessive quantity of anything allowed me to break even for the week. Which made all those little indulgences that much sweeter.