Presently

I have had a reprehensibly idle sort of day.

Mark went to work this morning, even though it was his birthday.

We had a small celebration in our dressing gowns with coffee, whilst he opened his birthday cards. Two of these, wonderfully, had been home made, and will probably finish up adorning the wall eventually, or at the very least kept in the box with Special Things, to be discovered and admired during occasional clear outs later in life.

He even had some presents. This is always an excitement on a birthday, especially since we have both had one or two with none at all. My parents remember faithfully every year, but there have been a few years when they have driven up to visit a couple of days later and brought their presents with them, and so the Day itself has been a bit postponed.

I do not mind the absence of birthday presents in the least, being of the sort of age and disposition where if I want something, usually I just buy it. The exception to this is when whatever I want is too ridiculously expensive to be afforded by me, in which case it is entirely certain that nobody is going to buy it for my birthday either.

When Lucy was small she was scared of presents, and refused to open them, which made for some difficult excuse-making to generous relatives. There was once one containing a pretty doll which sang a song, which might even have been Happy Birthday To You. Inexplicably, this terrified her so much that she shrieked and hid under the table, where she stayed, firmly, with her eyes closed, until dragged out to go to nursery. This had to be the end of all discussions about presents for a day or two, until she had recovered from the trauma.

We kept the doll anyway, and occasionally dug it out, the way people watch horror films even though they know they will make them anxious when they go up the lonely stairs to bed afterwards, but she would never countenance it, and eventually we gave it to the little girl across the road, who adored it. I wish we had kept it. It would have been interesting to send it to her now that she is a policeman, to see if it still had the same effect.

Anyway, Mark had some spiffing presents, and was very pleased. My parents had already given him theirs, which was the drill for going round corners, which fortunately he had in advance because he has used it every day since. As well as that the girls clubbed together to give him some absolutely gorgeous cologne, which was a relief, because he has almost finished his and has been eking it out a tiny squirt at a time. We all sniffed and admired it this morning, and thought how fortunate it is that his birthday is in the middle of the year. It will last brilliantly until Christmas.

His mother sent him a book about a Welsh doctor, which was good because of him being on the last chapters of Boris Johnson’s tome about the history of London, and Number One Son-In-Law gave him an angle grinder. This was a Very Good Thing indeed, because he already has two angle grinders. Neither of them work and are in bits on the shed workbench, where he has been trying to blend them into a single functional whole, without success.

I didn’t give him anything, because we don’t do that. We have decided to put aside some money and go out for dinner some time. We decide this every year, and sometimes we do, but more often the money gets accidentally spent on more pressing things. I gave him a card with a picture of a donkey on the front, and a cake, which we ate for breakfast.

After he went to work somehow the day has been of the wading-through-treacle sort. This was because I woke up in the night with cramp in my legs and did not sleep very well afterwards.

I washed some things and wrote some letters and milled about with the dogs and Oliver, and eventually sloped off to bed for a couple of hours, where oblivion overtook me almost instantly.

It was a good thing that I did, because we are having a small birthday party with some of the neighbours this evening. I have no self-control whatsoever on these occasions, despite determinedly good resolutions, and I do not doubt that the evening will conclude in the usual late and intoxicated sort of way.

It will be all right. We do not have school tomorrow.

It appears to be Boris Johnson’s birthday as well.

Have a picture of a pumpkin.