Midnight

These blog providers are disgusting!!! One minute past midnight and they have already added a year to my age! I have eight hours and four minutes to go before I am actually 52! Besides, Liz has been 52 for 22 days and they haven't changed her age yet!!! I've always been her little friend - a foot shorter and three weeks younger! (Well, actually when we were first friends - a great many years ago now - the difference was seven inches with my 3 foot 7 inches to her 4 foot 2 inches. I remember distinctly: we were seven years old and the whole class had been lined up in height order and we were the end stops. Incidentally, when we were lined up in age order I was in the exact middle with Pat Leesing - whose birthday is also today. I think that Mrs. Tuplin must have been teaching us about averages.)

I've just remembered - the height line-up was used to give us partners for country dancing, and I had to swap places with Anita Thickett so that I danced with her twin brother, Nigel, and she danced with Alan Dawes, and, at the other end of the column, Liz danced with James Peters. How's that for memory? *

Morning

On my own for the first time in ages! I think that is a birthday treat in itself. I'm going to lunch with Isabel later, but for the moment I can just chill. I've been rushing around like a blue-arsed fly for the last week. I could do housework, but I'm not going to, and just for a couple of hours I have no auntly, work or parish duties: as my grandmother used to say Peace perfect peace and loved ones far away

Late Afternoon

I'm back from lunch with Issy - Pike Pate, Seafood Pasta and Victoria Sponge (jam & cream) - very, very nice. Inge was there too with baby Tilly and also Callum who was off school with this cold everyone has had. Jess and Josh have both had days off with it this week. Liz is obviously taking being a distant cousin seriously and, like most of the rest of the family, has not sent me a card. All my other friends have sent me one.

I will now send this little fellow to pee on her computer.
Pooch pee

Early Evening

Helen, Glen and the children have now given me presents and cards. Pa hasn't even remembered to say Happy Birthday yet.

Bedtime

I had to remind Daddy that he hadn't so much as said Happy Birthday! So he said it from halfway up the stairs.

Saturday Morning

Pa went out this morning and bought me a creme brulee set with one of those flame-thrower things you see chefs on TV using to caramelise sugar toppings. He also bought Joe a load of photo frames. He says birthdays always take him unawares.

*I can also name all the other children in the class.
GIRLS: Sally-Ann Balkwell Janet Bloice Mary Coleman Susan Dows(e) Marilyn Hardy Julie Heaton Mary Marshallsay Elaine Maw(son) Mandy Nicholson Karen Nickells Elisabeth Nicholls Suzanne North Lynne Osborne Charlotte Pycroft Ellen Rimmer Carol Whotton Caroline Willows
I think that is the whole line-up for first year juniors, but there were also in the same year in the other class Helen Bulman Susan Hart Christine Jennings Lorraine Ryan Dorothy Severn Jennifer (Trafford?) Pauline Waddington and there was a certain fluidity between over the years. Charlotte and Lorraine certainly swapped over at the end of the first year
BOYS: John Aston David Bates John Brown Stephen Cook Melvyn Cox Roger East Stephen Farrier John Grant Michael Hawley Stephen Kendall Hamish Mills Shane Nesbitt Richard Spicker David Stagg Ian Thompson Timothy Turner Derek Woollins