28 December 2010 (Tuesday) - Mum's Birthday

I’m still suffering from the Xmas bug – I’m not 100%, but I can’t complain really. I’ve certainly felt worse in the past. Having had a rather busy time over the last few days I settled down to catch up with emails. Even though I’m on holiday, life goes on. I had a few emails to catch up on – most interestingly one to one of the voices in my head. By far the loudest voice in my head appears regularly on You-Tube, and even has his own Facebook page. Over the Xmas break, Dave Cow had an email:

“Hey sweetie , how re you feeling , am new to this site and i really want to get to know more about you , i want to know how i can add more joy to your life and make your day brighter, and i wish you can do the same for me too. i can give up my world if only you will let me be part of your , i will like to know more about you please , you can add my up on yahoo and let chat , dopey_fitbint is my username, i will be waiting for you there now.”

From her photo, the correspondent looks rather fit. The Cow is certainly getting over-excited, even if the fit bird is probably only twelve years old. One wonders exactly how she intends to brighten the day of a glove puppet.

And then my tribe gathered and we eventually set off to Hastings for Mother’s birthday party. As we drove down the A28 we waved at friends driving back the other way; none of whom saw us. I’m not sure what the attraction in Tenterden had been this morning, but it seemed that a lot of our friends were driving back from the place.

We’d been told to arrive at my brother’s house at mid day, but bearing in mind the buffet wasn’t until 4pm and we were all hungry, we went via McDonald’s for a bit of scoff. I was tempted to try a “fish-o-fillet”, since (apparently) “My Boy ^TM ” has never seen anyone eat one. But I stuck to the tried and tested burgers before we popped into Sainsbury’s to get a birthday card. We wanted one with “75” on it, as we felt that this was something of a landmark birthday. We were out of luck. There were lots of numbered birthday cards up to sixty-five, and quite a few from eighty onwards. Presumably Sainsburys think that there’s something of a paucity of birthdays between the sixty-fifth and eightieth. Either that, or it’s not worth their time catering for that market. Perhaps they expect people to croak during that window, but if they can make it to eighty, then the chances are that they will make more birthdays? I don’t know, but in the end we settled for a generic “Happy Birthday Mum” card, and hoped for the best.

We arrived at my brothers and the party was in full swing. I must admit I wasn’t though; I sat on the sofa and died quietly. I wish I could have joined in more with what was going on, but I wasn’t feeling at all well. As well as feeling generally “bleagh” I’d developed guts ache too. Probably from over-eating over the Xmas period. But I joined in as best I could. After all, it was good to see Mum on her birthday: normally I’m going back to work on 28 December.

And then home again through the fog. Normally we can get from Hastings to home in forty five minutes. With the fog we expected to take a little longer. Following the twit who drove slightly slower than walking pace made the journey take ages….