Wednesday 30 July 2008

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.

4 comments:

aims said...

It usually does Lola. The only thing is - all your cleaning and rearranging goes immediately out the door as people throw stuff and move stuff....oh well. Nobody even seems to notice that there isn't any dust on anything....

Sounds like a fun party...what day did you say?

Happy birthday - or commiserations - take your pick... ;0)

Anonymous said...

Happy birthday, Lola!!

I hate organising parties, but we've done one or two in our time.. I don't even much like going to the big ones with lots of strangers ...

The good thing about them is that once it's all prepared and the time comes, you will actually enjoy it and be glad you made the effort!

Enjoy!

travelling, but not in love said...

Happy Birthday. You are the second blogger I know who has a birthday either the same day as mine or the day before...I'm 31st July.

Hope you had a great day!

Lola said...

Thank you all for your kind wishes. This time of year is extremely popular for birthdays, I know at least ten people who celebrate in the two weeks following my birthday. It's a busier time of year for me than Christmas!