Tomorrow is my birthday. The older I get, the less obvious birthdays become. When you’re a child they’e something you yearn for and look forward to and you just know the whole day will be special and involve everyone around you doing exactly what you want them to do. Or at least what they think you want them to do. For me it used to be lucnh at a Little Chef with a Knickerbocker Glory for pudding . I was an extremely sophisticated child. Whatever else, it’s slightly beyond your control.
As you get older, the whole thing gets more complicated. First of all getting older when you’re in your forties is not something one greets with the same unadulturated joy as one did aged eight. And then there’s the awful dilemma of what to do to make the day in any way memorable, especially if, as in my case this year, it falls on a Monday. Not exactly the sexiest day of the week, or the most convenient for a party.
I also have the added pressure of the children saying they will spend the day with me, which is lovely of them but makes me feel I somehow have to make sure they have a good time or they will refuse ever to come again.
My husband keeps asking me what I want to do for my birthday and I keep trying to REALLY visualise what my ideal day would be, but it’s impossible. OK so a long, boozy lunch on the beach might be nice, but then I’ll just feel like crap all afternoon. Or maybe a massage but then I have three children waiting around for me to finish. I suppose I could start the day watching the Ashes and hope for an Australian collapse as a present?
Happily this is not a ‘milestone’ birthday because I can’t even begin to contemplate the sort of life-changing day I would need to arrange for that. My father’s attitude to birthdays is much like his attitude to New Year’s Eve; ignore it and get an early night.
I won’t do that, well I might get an early night, but I won’t be ignoring it. Whatever else I do I can at least use the ‘it’s my birthday’ line to get the children to stop fighting, maybe play some tennis and carry me home after lunch.