Another anniversary

This time the anniversary is my birthday. I don't take much notice of it these days, unlike when I was young and made a tremendous effort, making sure everyone was fully aware that in seven, six, five, four days (and so on) there was going to be a Very Special Day when I would expect unicorns and ponies and magic glitter.

Today I received exactly what I asked for, which was phone calls from my family, and a couple of days' holiday next week with Mr A. We're going to Whitstable. I got some extra bonus chocolate too, book tokens from Mr A's parents (yay!) and some cards. True to form, Lola II sent me the most hideous card with pop-up teddies.

The big celebration is happening on Saturday, when we have made the fundamental error of forgetting that we don't like big parties, cleaning and tidying, or welcoming people into our home. We have gone and organised a joint birthday party - Mr A's birthday is a week after mine - on the basis that we didn't celebrate our engagement (because we didn't have one) or our marriage (that's material for another blog post) or any birthdays or anything else, ever.

I've been making lots of lists and planning every detail, and I've made a cake and roasted some beef and some turkey and bought a salmon and some cheese and croissants, and still have to make another cake and some salads and cook the salmon and buy French bread. Mr A has moved all the junk that was in the garden, probably to the garage, but I haven't looked, on the basis of I Don't Need to Know. He's also in charge of Drink, which he's planning to sort out tomorrow.

Included in the party is a showing of a DVD, filmed on Mr A's charity trip from Plymouth to Banjul in an old car with Mr B and a group of other people in old cars. The trip was back in 2005/6, and Mr A took loads of video footage, and nobody else really bothered because he was doing it. The trouble is that every time he meets up with the group, they ask when they are going to see the results. Part of the tactic of having a party was that this would provide a handy deadline, by which time the video would have to be edited. It's nearly done.

This whole party thing has been a huge learning experience. We have learned not to host any more parties because it's so much work, and not to video anything ever again because the editing is tedious and takes an incredible amount of time. But you never know, the actual party might make up for the pain of preparation.