A very merry unbirthday (part 1)

 There is a certain kind of irony in spending most of a day that marks you getting older, indulging in very childish immature thoughts.

It was my birthday. The 28th October, to be precise (Rosa, don’t you think that it’s a splendid sort of a date on which to be born? Thought so). I was feeling, to be honest, a little strange about this birthday.

Not because of getting older, which still rather delightfully holds no fear for me at all. On the contrary, thus far the enjoyment that I’ve got out of each year of my life has increased as I get older: gaining extra years to me means gaining more experience in what I like, who I like, and what makes me happy… and gaining the confidence and money and independence to be able to go out and do it.

On that note, I do have to add that twenty-five isn’t exactly my favourite number. It’s not as bad as twenty four. It’s an odd number, which counts strongly in its favour as far as I’m concerned. But it also divides by five. Not good. I’m a bit picky about numbers. When I turned twenty two my friend asked me how it felt, and I was trying to explain why I didn’t like the number.

“The thing about the number twenty-two,” I said, earnestly, “Is that it’s just that little bit too easily divisible by eleven.”

But in defence of the number twenty five, it’s not an awful kind of a number. Not as sickeningly chummy as twenty. Not as brash and in your face as twenty six. Just not as off-beat and cool as numbers like twenty three or twenty nine. But I digress….

I was feeling a bit strange because I’m not seeing my parents this year. Normally they’d come and see me on my birthday. One year they couldn’t, so I went home the previous weekend and had an honorary birthday on the Saturday before the actual day. But this year, they weren’t and I wasn’t. This lead to some worrying thoughts. Would Jack know what to do on birthday mornings?

The routine on a birthday morning runs like this: everyone in the house whose birthday it isn’t has to get up really early, pile up all the presents on a tray, with tea, then stand around outside the birthday person’s door, whispering loudly and lighting candles. The birthday girl or boy has to lie in bed pretending to be asleep, and then when woken by tea and cake and presents and singing must look very surprised and sleepy. Everybody then de-camps to my parents’ room, we all squeeze into their king-size bed, drink tea, eat cake, and the birthday girl or boy opens their presents. Simple.

But of course, I couldn’t tell Jack this. If he was told what to do, it wouldn’t be the same! I decided that a few quiet hints were the best option, but managed to stop short of giving him a bullet-pointed to-do list….. continued…