Yesterday I turned 35 and whilst I dare say there has been plenty to write about in the three years since I last posted something, I have never felt so inspired by an event as I was yesterday to gather my weary thoughts into something cohesive and entertaining.
As birthdays go this one was run of the mill until about 6 o'clock in the evening, and I had been dreading it for some time, having a burnt-in memory of my mother telling my eight-year-old self that since she had read somewhere that the current life expectancy for most people was 70, 35 was the new middle age. Clearly our aging population has put paid to that statistic but things we learn in childhood tend to stick.
I went to work and discovered that my colleagues had been kind enough to get me a card and a book of inspirational quotes by the late Irish writer and Catholic priest Fr Daniel O'Leary. My lovely husband had still been very drowsy when I left for work but he had managed to tell me we would do the card and present in the evening so he could give it his full attention. I was to be home by six because we also had to call at my Mum's house.
Dutifully, at 5.45PM I called to say I was almost home and ask if I ought to wait in the car. After several attempts to get through, a very frazzled Paul answered, telling me he wasn't ready and asking me where en route I was. The answer clearly didn't please him and he said when I got there he supposed I had better come in the house whilst he got ready.
Nose quite out of joint, I harumphed and muttered to myself all the way home: it was my birthday and we were going to be late for Mum's and late home, meaning I would likely be shattered for work in the morning. I got home feeling rather sorry for myself but was gratified to see that the gardener had been and tamed the front lawn. Next I was concerned: the front door was ajar and our front door is never ajar unless someone is about to go through it. Even if Paul had managed to get ready to go out in the five minutes it took me to hang up and get home, he wasn't anywhere to he seen. I stepped in the house.
The house was deserted but I could see through the living room, into the kitchen and out the back door. Paul was standing in the garden wearing overalls, with three eastern European men behind him. "Hello, darling, happy birthday!" he called cheerfully when he saw me. The men behind him chimed in with "happy birthday" too. So the new gardener was late arriving and hadn't finished out back yet. Didn't I feel ashamed for being bad tempered in the car?
As I went through to the kitchen to say a proper hello, I spied a mahogany stool I'd never seen before with dark green upholstery, just like the two chairs upstairs. All of the boxes, tools, badminton racquets and other ephemera had also gone from the back wall of the kitchen. I laughed and was about to say "Did you find a piece of furniture you didn't know you had when you cleared up?" when the big dark wooden something or other in the garden by the back door caught my eye.
The whole time I'd been taking in the scene I hadn't noticed that Paul was standing in his overalls next to a large upright piano, and the other gentleman were behind it. Behind them was my open back gate and behind that was a large white lorry. How it got up our ginnel will remain a mystery to my dying day.
"Happy birthday," Paul repeated, followed by his backing group from Bucharest. "This is for you."
He said much more after this but I was frankly struggling to take it in. My mouth fell open and I couldn't speak to anyone. Apparently the piano in my garden was Paul's birthday present to me. Had everything gone according to plan it was going to be in the kitchen with its stool (which wasn't part of the set upstairs as it happens) bedecked in a rather large ribbon by 5 o'clock so I could come home and see it. The only problem was that when the delivery men (so, not gardeners) brought the piano from Altrincham, it was discovered that it wouldn't fit through the front door no matter what angle was attempted. I had walked in on them having just given up trying to get it in the back door. The only solution was to take not only the door off but the entire frame out, for which no one present had the tools or the time. Plan C was that for an extra sum of money (because it was now six and they were meant to have arrived at another job at 5.30) the delivery men would take the piano to my Mum's house, because she had nice, wide double patio doors. I'm so glad she moved house last year!
Neither Paul nor I had any cash on us and about the only thing I could properly take in at this stage was a need for cash so I briefly and belatedly thanked Paul for the gift, and the delivery men for the happy birthdays and dashed back to the car to get to Morrison's cash machine. By the time I got back it had been decided Paul should show them the way so he grabbed the money and left in the car.
By this time it was about 6.15 and in the silence of the house I had time to think. I went into the kitchen to make a coffee and sit with it on what I now understood to be a piano stool. Distracting as the preceding events of the evening had been, it was not until this point that I noticed I couldn't get to the coffee as all of the stuff that had been cleared to make way for the piano was now stacked up against the kitchen cupboards, facing where it had been when I'd left for work.
I turned to check if the stool was sturdy enough to hold me and discovered a hidden compartment under the seat, inside of which were several books of sheet music, including ABBA's greatest hits and a compendium of TV theme tunes. Events took their toll and I dissolved into a fit of giggles and slid down to sit cross-legged on the floor instead.
I did eventually get to my Mum's house, but not before about an hour of cleaning the back door and sorting through some of the paperwork that formed the mound barring the way to a brew as I waited for Paul to get back and then get party-ready. My Mum was still staring in stunned amazement at the piano in her living room. When we arrived at a quarter to eight.
We ate, drank, played the piano, laughed and played games, and my niece told me she had picked the earrings her mother bought me because she knew "Kerker will love them because they are very weird."
Not for the first time I felt like my life had turned into a sitcom, but the birthday I dreaded the most was the best birthday I ever had.
