It’s the Middle of the Darling Daughters’ birthday today - and she is feeling Proper Poorly. Which is extremely unfair as I am sure everyone who has ever had to take to his / her bed with a hot water bottle
on their birthday, instead of partying till the early hours, will surely agree.
She phoned me this afternoon to tell me not to phone her, as she would still be
in bed, hopefully asleep. I was at my monthly cribbage group (though we were taking a short break for coffee and some of Delia’s delicious biscuits so I didn’t have to interrupt play. Like rain.) It was pure luck that I actually heard my mobile
phone ringing from the depths of my handbag. Mr B complains that I never answer my phone, especially when he is calling me. I tend to respond by asking him how that can be when these days he never, ever phones me. He says he has given up phoning me because
I never, ever answer. This is one of those arguments which goes on and on, round and round, never reaching a satisfactory conclusion.
When I hear that it is the
Birthday Girl on the the other end of the phone, I ask my cribbage buddies to join me in singing Happy Birthday which, bless them, they do with gusto. If you are thinking that it was quite rash of me to make such a request, you have to remember that otherwise
I would have had to sing all on my own, with everyone round the table gazing at me, mystified. My daughter seemed pleased with our rousing chorus, saying it was the first rendition of Happy Birthday to which she had been treated all day.
The Rascally Trio, in case you are wondering, were all downstairs in Daddydaycare and almost certainly being so well behaved that you, my regular readers, wouldn’t recognise
them. Daddydaycare believes that Rules Is Rules. Yes, I know, it’s ungrammatical in the extreme, but Rules Are Rules, while grammatically correct, doesn’t have the same ring of authenticity about it.
The Trio are always extremely well-behaved when their father is in charge. There is no Rampaging of the type that occurs when they visit their Grandad and me. I suspect this is because while there is (loosely speaking) such
a thing as Nanni’s Rules, all three Rascals know that Nanni’s Rules are breakable and that the miscreants will always be loved and forgiven in the usual way. Nevertheless when you are in bed, feeling Perfectly Horrid, it is doubtless much better
to know that peace and quiet reigns downstairs.
I still remember one particular birthday when I, like my daughter today, was Proper Poorly. We were out in Florida,
staying in a place called Pleasure Island on the Gulf of Mexico and some Americans we had met at our hotel had recommended for my birthday lunch a restaurant famous for its fish dishes. My dish of mussels was delicious, indeed - but I ended up with a bad case
of food poisoning and spent the rest of my birthday feeling thoroughly miserable and wanting to go home. Not a single mussel has passed my lips since that fateful day...
I am just glad that we were able to provide the Birthday Girl with an early celebration on Saturday. When she looks back on this year’s anniversary, hopefully that is what she will remember.
That and the Cribbage Chorus, of course.