My friends know me so well. What was I inundated with for my birthday? Plain chocolate (milk choc brings on the sniffles) and gorgeous, sparkly notebooks just crying out to be filled with poems and ideas. I even got a chocolate birthday cake (left), made by Mr G. Considering that until a couple of months ago he could hardly use his right hand following his strokes of last July, this achievement was a miracle. The cake was divine, too. So this was why he sneaked off to Sainsbury's at the crack of dawn - not to get party fare, but cake ingredients. He did grumble that it cost him £45 to make it and a dozen muffins from the leftover cake mix, and it would have been much cheaper to go to Marks and Sparks and buy one!
I met two friends at Frederick's restaurant in Islington (where the husband of one of them met Tony Blair coming down from a private do in the upstairs room and didn't recognise him!). We had tender lamb cooked to perfection, saute potatoes in a cheesy sauce, spinach, three different blobs of ice cream with a strawberry on top, and a bottle of Cava, then went back to the house of one of my friends and ate chocolate. What else?
Got home an hour ago and Mr G asked, "Would you like some of last night's curry for dinner?" and I went a fetching shade of Eau de Nil.
Read through the first two chapters of the book and found a horrifying number of really stupid typos. I'm also changing it here and there, editing as I go. By Wednesday, I should be ready to start Chapter Four. Early days....
To cheer us all up following yesterday's sad entry, here is a poem I wrote a couple of years ago that's quite appropriate for someone who has had as many birthdays as I have.
OLD-AGE DELINQUENT
I am an old-age delinquent. Some people might think me quite sad,
For I wake up each day and shout, "Hip, Hip, Hooray!" as I think of new ways to be bad.
I block up the aisles in buses, with my trolley and zimmer and stick.
And if there's a crowd, I'll cough ever so loud and sound like I'm going to be sick.
I'm a pest at pedestrian crossings. I like to show who is the boss.
Once I've made the cars stop, I go wandering off and don't even bother to cross.
My diet's amazingly simple. There's ten tins of beans on my shelf,
'Cos you don't have to race for a seat or a space if you fart and you talk to yourself.
People tell me I've reached second childhood as I lurk in my fusty old den.
Yes, with rancid old undies and socks changed on Sundays, I'm a perfect teenager again.
1 comment:
£45 to make the cake?? How big was it?
Love the poem. I knew you were a 'red hat' girl! (Ref. Jenny Joseph.)
Glad to hear you have had a lovely birthday so far and I hope you've changed the eau de nil look for a rosy pinkish one now.
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