It is the very middle day of the year, which is, of course, also my birthday, and I have had quite a surprisingly happy day.
I had not thought about it at all, because Mark is not here, and I hadn’t actually told anybody else, thinking to spare the children the expense and nuisance when, after all, I don’t actually need anything or want any fuss. In any case I had completely forgotten all about it when I woke up this morning, and it wasn’t until my parents rang half an hour later that I remembered.
Another milestone has been marched past. There have been so many that it didn’t seem important, this one is the fifty ninth. Goodness, that is lots.
At least I don’t need to worry any more that I might die young.
Anyway, it hadn’t seemed to matter very much, and I was about to set off for my usual morning walk, when the phone pinged, and it was Number Two Daughter.
She and Mrs. Number Two Daughter had splashed out for a joint birthday present between me and Mark, and booked us a night in a lovely, utterly indisputably middle-class hotel.
It is called Swinton Park, and it is in Yorkshire. For the not terribly highbrow amongst us, it is the delightful place where Robin got married to Matthew in one of JK Rowling’s brilliant Cormoran Strike books, I forget which one. For the rest of us, we went there a couple of years ago to celebrate my parents’ wedding anniversary, and very splendid it was as well.
Either way, it is one of the nicest hotels I know, with glorious, dignified grounds and beautiful, heavily-draperied bedrooms, and one of Number One Daughter’s friends is the manager, so we will even have a friend there. We can go whenever we like. I would like it to be next week, but of course it won’t be. Maybe in October when the world has calmed down a bit.
After that I realised that it being your birthday really does make the world a brighter place, especially when, like me, you have got a nice family, you are not hopelessly short of cash, and it is not raining.
The last bit did not last all day.
It was a very lovely morning. The sun was warm, if mostly buried in its duvet of clouds, and the damp air was heavy with the scent of late blossom. The roadsides are a tangle of buttercups, vetch, and cow parsley and bracken, and the fellsides are carpeted with clover, wild thyme, and marsh marigolds. It would be difficult not to feel contented whilst strolling happily through it all, the long grass rippling and waving in the breeze.
The feeling of contentment lasted precisely until Roger Poopy discovered a particularly pungent pile of badger poo, and rolled in it, joyfully and vigorously. This made him revolting company even outdoors, because his shoulders were disgustingly smeared and sticky with it.
Lucy and Oliver had bought me some flowers and a birthday card when I got home, and I forgot about it, until I discovered that I had carelessly flung my jacket down on the sofa, and he had climbed up and was now lying on it, snoring blissfully.
I was not pleased. Jacket and sofa cover were hurled into the washing machine, and poor, protesting Roger was flung into the bath, followed by Rosie, just for good measure.
Lucy had already set off for home by then, after a briefly entertaining interlude of cat-capture, and Oliver had gone off to earn a living as a cocktail-shaker. This left me by myself to celebrate my own birthday, which I did, with great happiness, ignoring the dogs, who were shivering unhappily in front of the unlit-fire.
My new computer has arrived, and I spent a very happy hour setting it all up. I took my poor exhausted old one off to the computer repair shop. It has been running very hot for a long time, and I thought probably its inner whirring bits had become thick with dust. I have got no intention of throwing it away, it can sit around displaying photographs or a fire on YouTube or something, it might not want to talk to Barclaycard but I can hardly blame it for that.
The new computer is a magnificent joy, I can tell you, and just using it for the first time made it really feel like my birthday. It is sharp and clear and fast and clever, and I was suitably awed by its miraculousness, we didn’t have anything like that fifty nine years ago, I can jolly well tell you, what a splendid time to be alive.
I would have finished on that note, except I must just tell you about something that happened last night.
A couple with a dog wanted to get in the taxi. I said that was fine, except the dog had to go in the boot. My taxi is a Berlingo, with a vast, open boot that a wheelchair can travel in. There is a dog bed, and it is perfectly fine and comfortable.
They were not having it at all, and were very cross with me, railing loudly about my hard-hearted injustice.
I was unmoved.
It goes in the boot, I said. All dogs go in the boot, and it’s a dog.
The man gasped.
You can’t say that, he said, furiously. It’s an awful, judgemental thing to say. Why, it’s racist.
I laughed, and he was going to boil over with rage, until he realised that everybody at the bus stop behind us was sniggering as well.
They sloped off with their dog after that.
It still makes me laugh when I think about it now.
Somebody asked my younger brother if he was an old age pensioner yesterday.
That made me laugh as well.
