It has been a very happy birthday.
I can’t say thank you for all your birthday wishes, because I didn’t tell anybody, except Mark, who probably reminded the children. I didn’t need to tell my parents, who generally remember the occasion, since it has had some significance in their lives as well. Exactly fifty eight years of unexpectedly intensive financial liability, celebrated by giving me some more cash, just out of habit I expect.
I was very pleased and grateful indeed. I expect I will blow it on something thrilling, the way I always do.
I had some thrilling birthday presents. They were things for my desk, which was what I wanted, because it is the only bit of house that is entirely mine to occupy as tastelessly as I like, not that this has stopped me from filling the rest with tastelessness as well, I am sure you have not yet forgotten that I painted the bedroom to look like a circus tent, and added some gold stripes for good measure.
I had a tray which is supposed to be for letters but which I shall use for paints, lined with purple corduroy and edged with silver, adorned with a silver elephant. There was a writing desk set, which was brown and gold painted with ancient Egyptian figures, and a heavy brass inkwell.
I loved all of these treasures instantly, but the highlight of the morning was when the telephone rang.
It was my parents, calling to wish me a happy birthday, but to my surprise it was not our usual telephone ringing, but the beautiful china one with the roses painted on it. We bought this ages ago, cheaply because the microphone didn’t work, and Mark was going to fix it, which he didn’t.
Today I woke up to the happy surprise that he had fixed it, and it rang, and I could talk to people on a real china-and-gold telephone.
I wasted half of the phone call not understanding what had happened, and saying things like: But can you actually hear me? What really? Well I didn’t think you would be able to, this phone doesn’t work, but presumably they just thought that I had been having sherry for breakfast since it was my birthday, the way Number One Daughter did when she was five.
She called today as well, which was an excitement, to tell me that Number One Son-In-Law has bought her a motorbike. She sent me a picture of this, they are going to go on high-speed family holidays together, since he has a motorbike as well, and it will make the traffic less challenging on the school run.
I tried to sound thrilled, but Mark said afterwards that although I got all the words right the tone still made me sound like a horrified old biddy, which perhaps I was, it is always somewhat shocking when your children purchase motorbikes and leather jackets.
Number Two Daughter rang as well. She has also had a splendid weekend, having run in a race. The race was fifteen kilometres, which is almost ten miles, and she ran it in an hour and a half and came second. I was quite astonished and very impressed, what a remarkable achievement, how determined and fast you have got to be for that. I could not walk ten miles without needing to stop for a spot of lunch and probably a glass of wine halfway round, but she has done it, and beaten fifty nine other people on the way. Number One Daughter said that this made her the first of the losers, sometimes I think it might be better if they didn’t talk to one another.
Oliver sent me a card, and Lucy sent me some pictures of a house she might buy, and then we loaded up the camper van and drove north.
Hence I spent most of my birthday looking out at Scotland and knitting. We stopped in the evening to visit the Peppers, who live in Dundee now, and it was lovely, as if we had only seen them last week, apart from they have got a very smart new sofa, from which they kindly removed the dog blanket so we could sit down.
They really did not need to do that, we are not that middle-class, but we felt very honoured.
We are now just north of Aberdeen, with the wind rocking the camper van. It is long past midnight, so it isn’t my birthday any more, but it has not gone dark, so maybe it doesn’t count.
It has been a splendid day.
