Monday 13th March

Where once one looked forward to birthdays with anticipatory pleasure, now there is a degree of…well, what exactly?  Not trepidation exactly, but more a feeling of resignation.  Okay, it is your birthday and you cannot avoid it; merely not celebrating the thing won’t make it any less real; and strangely it seems to give other people more pleasure than oneself.  And you are expected to laugh and be jolly and everyone says ‘Have a Great Day’ and so on.  And it isn’t that you don’t, you do go with the flow, relax and enjoy yourself, but at the back of your mind as you look at yourself in the mirror there is no getting away with it – you are not only another year older, but looking it too.  And although we have known this simple fact for a long time; the years ahead are diminishing rapidly while those gone pile up behind you, never to be regained.

So, another year and another birthday.  And I had a nice day, though not work-free by any means.  The Café stops for nobody, and we were open as usual.  I also managed to paint one more half of the eight sets of French windows in the house.  In the evening we had an Indian evening in the Café.  Maggie and Jane did the cooking and I served the wine.  We did quite well, a full house and lots of wine shifted.  But in a funny way it was a strange way to spend your birthday.  Not that I didn’t have a good time, but we seem far too busy to even have a quiet meal together these days.  We are actually batting away invites for drinks or dinner, oh what it is to be popular…

Anyway, the day itself has passed and only 363 until next year, when it will be another year and another birthday.