I woke to the sound of Morgan jumping off the bed at four
o’clock, so I hurried after him. He did the same a few minutes after I’d got
back to bed; this time I heard him trying to be sick as I bundled him outside.
I did catch him trying to chew on a dead deer’s carcass when we were at the
woods yesterday. I wonder if he will learn the lesson?
We all eventually settled, and were then woken by the bin
men coming up the road at six o’clock.
In the past on my birthday we’d be woken at twenty past
seven by a phone call from my Mum. Not any more…
I nodded off again, and woke shortly after nine o’clock. I
made toast and sent out birthday wishes to three of my Facebook friends who
were also having birthdays today. Many years ago (about fifty-five) it
came as a major revelation that my birthday wasn’t that special. Other people
shared it. I had no idea that this was possible, and I can remember being
incredibly surprised about it. There was a thing at Red Lake Primary School
that when it was your birthday you stood at the front of the class and everyone
else sang “Happy Birthday to You”. As I walked out to the front of the
class I was amazed to see Leslie Marriott and Johnny Walker also walking out as
well.
I really did go to school with Johnny Walker. It was years
later (about ten) that I realized he’d been named after a bottle of
whisky.
There were three of us who shared the birthday in my year
at secondary school. Chris Sampson was one. It transpired that he and I were
very distantly related. I can’t remember who the other lad was.
One of my trainees at work (the fifteenth that I took
from starting through to qualification) also had her birthday today, but as
we both agreed, it had been my birthday first.
A few celebrities share my birthday; the most famous being
James Beck (Private Walker in Dad’s Army), Alan Rickman (Severus
Snape from Harry Potter) and Charlotte Church.
Historically apart from an obscure species of parrot going
extinct (in 1918) not much of note happened on this day.
As I scoffed toast I saw that the fish tank had become very
clear overnight, but the new pagoda ornament I’d bought yesterday was listing
at a very rakish angle. Bearing in mind the amount of muck that poor filter had
probably shifted overnight I cleaned it out and put the pagoda straight. Doing
that stirred up plenty more muck.
We got the dogs onto their leads, but didn’t go up to the
woods. It had been grubby enough yesterday and had rained overnight so we
walked into Ashford and wandered round the memorial gardens, the north park and
once round the outlet centre. The mems has been done up rather well, and the
outlet centre is amazingly dog friendly with the majority od shops welcoming
dogs in. I wouldn’t dare take a dog into any of those shops though. I couldn’t
afford an accident – not at those prices.
Our walk was guided by a couple of geocaching adventure
labs, and we came home having added eleven more smiley faces to our scores (it’s
a geo-thing).
We came home for a cuppa, and I spent a little while
looking at the fish tank. The time and effort (and nearly fifty quid!)
spent on it yesterday seems to have paid off. It looks a whole lot better, and
the fish seem to be a bit more active.
“er indoors TM” boiled up a
rather good bit of dinner which we washed down with a bottle of plonk and a bottle
of port. The evening became rather vague…
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