Getting older

Balloons in the front garden are always a blatant clue that there is a party on.Posters in car windows clarify the birthday girl, with the semi-compulsory embarrasing childhood photo.

We are now starting to come to end end of the 40th parties and moving into the 50th season. Last night we tied up with Sandra in Cheshire who has her birthday in a couple of weeks but wanted the party yesterday for convenience. Being married to a gardener, she has a lovely back garden including a couple of Chimineas and this very pointy hanging basket.(Our hanging baskets contain fruit and bathroom toys!)
The birthday cake gives the game away- a Banshee member, a group of girls who are celebrants of the God Bacchus.
Sandra lamented that when she was a kid, as her birthday was always in the school holidays, she never got party bags. To put right that perceived injustice, she made sure we left with party bags, something David was delighted about.

Coffee Stains

I’ve mentioned coffee stains before, where an otherwise immaculate presentation is marred by lack of attention to detail, e.g. the Coffee Pot ring on the pristine table setting.

Yesterday, the three of us went to a surprise party for an Eighteen Plus old friend down in Leicester. It was being held in an out of town hotel and the afternoon’s procedings would include a buffet and a Kaleigh Band. People were attending from North and South as well as from the Midlands. We even had the Lord Mayor of Lichfield join us, in civvies of course…

It was a great do and marred by only one Coffee stain, or more accurately a Chocolate Chip Cookie stain. I had stuck a couple of biscuits in my top pocket for the journey to share with David but forgot about them until late in the journey. At this point they had melted somewhat and my shirt pocket looked as though my Pooper-Pen had leaked. (What do you mean, you don’t have a crap Biro? I have loads of them, generally made by Bic…)

Fortunately, I am too thick skinned to worry overly much about what others think and didn’t feel it was necessary to scoot along to a retail park to buy an emergency shirt. (this is the Yorkshire influence:- depp pockets, short arms!)Instead, one of the girls tastefully arranged a napkin as a flamboyant Pocket Cravat.

It is nice to mmet up with old friends, especially when it feels just right to drop into the groove again. It is a shame we don’t all live in the same place and there is the dawning realisation that as we move from the natural progression of marriages, 40ths, re-marriages and 50ths, sooner or later we will be attending funerals as well. In the meantime, aging Eighteen Plussers are determined to grow older disgracefully…