The very first time I get asked to participate in
A Day In The Life and the date picked just happens to be my birthday. What are the chances? So here (in pedantic detail - sorry!) is what I did on Saturday 9th May 2009...
6.15am - wake up when Graham is getting up for work but put the radio on and manage to snooze for a couple of hours.
8.45am - decide I've definitely woken up but stay in bed and read my book (The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir) for a bit while I listen to Brian Mathew's Sounds of the Sixties on Radio Two.
9.45am - give in to the urge to go to the toilet. While I am up, I feed the cats and open the cards that arrived yesterday. There's one from my mum and dad, one from Graham's mum and dad (with £10 and a ticket for the previous night's Euromillions draw) and one from my friend, Julia. Slightly disappointed not to have any parcels yet, I go back to bed with a cup of coffee and read for a bit longer.
10.15am - Graham gets home from work and discovers a note from the postie saying he couldn't deliver FOUR parcels because I was out, even though I was in. This is what our postie always does but this time he actually crept in, opening the letterbox silently. I get mad and want to cry (I always get emotional on birthdays) but Graham goes into super-boyfriend mode and says he will go out on his bike to pick the parcels up for me. Yay!
10.30am - I answer the phone to the dulcet tones of my mum and dad singing happy birthday to me. I get back into bed and chat to both of them for a while. Graham comes through with a cup of tea for me while I do. After I get off the phone, I read for a bit longer while Graham braves the horrible weather (the first time I can remember it not being sunny on my birthday) to collect my parcels. Go, Graham, go!
11.10am - get a nice birthday text from my friend, Lorna, who lives in London. I reply then keep reading, wondering why I am enjoying this book so much...
11.20am - Graham gets back from the parcel place and I open them up. I think (materialistic as it seems) presents are the best thing about birthdays to me. They are the only thing to do with birthdays that never make me want to cry. There were two parcels from my sister, one from my parents and one from my old school friend, Jennifer, who also lives in London now.
Here are some of the present highlights:
The most amazing (and HEAVY) French button cards from my sister. These will be going on the wall somewhere and I can't actually tell you how much I love them. They are gorgeous and old and French and covered in buttons!
Again from my sister, lovely fabric and supercute old children's dominos.
A selection of creative type books. The button book and the 52 projects books were from my sister and the amigurami book was from my mum and dad. I'm so excited at the thought of trying amigurami and this book is lovely!
(Edit: hopefully I am more successful at doing amigurumi than I seem to be at spelling it...)
These hankies from my mum and dad made me laugh! They also got me a little bottle of sweet smelling perfume in the shape of a nautically dressed Japanese girl (v cute again) but I seem to have missed it from my photo shoot.
Jennifer gave me this elephant post-it notes fridge magnet, which I love, along with some black cat pencil toppers.
11.45am - while Graham showers I check for birthday emails. I only have one email and it's from Ebay telling me to get ready for the barbecue season. While I'm on the net I also check my Euromillions ticket. I was only one number away from winning a prize. So close and yet so far...
11.55am - Graham makes coffee and croissants with butter and blueberry jam. They might be the most delicious coffee and croissants I have ever had the pleasure of eating. Yum.
12.10 - I open my presents from Graham. More presents! Yay!
You may think it's strange to give your vegetarian girlfriend a tin of tuna for her birthday, but I'd been eyeing up this lovely packaging for ages. I'm going to hang this tin on my wall of many wonders.
Continuing the edible theme, he also gave me a block of delicious blue cheese which is too far eaten to be photographed. Yummy!
I might summon the necessary cruel spirit to eat this cute chocolate ladybird one day...
And here is the piece de resistance! It's an owl by Donna Wilson so that I can start my very own knitted forest world! What a lovely present :)
12.15pm - While drinking more coffee, I hear a strange quacking sound. I realise it's Lola, and find her locked in the bathroom. When I release her she goes into super affectionate mode and then entertains us by throwing her toys around and generally being crazy.
12.45 - I play with the cats and laugh at Graham trying to book cinema tickets through an automated phoneline. When he puts on a silly voice, the machine malfunctions. We decide to have dinner in the Lansdowne but they're not answering the phone to take our booking.
1.00pm - It's so darn cold, wet and wintery that we have to put the heating on. This is unheard of at this time of year but it makes the cats happy (and cute).
1.30pm - We have some tomato soup and ciabattas. Fail to get through to the Lansdowne again.
2.00pm - Graham goes to bed for a nap and I mooch about a bit, replying to a couple of text messages and trying to phone my sister who is not in. Fail to get through to the Lansdowne again.
3.00pm - do some knitting, coming perilously close to finishing Ruth's cardigan but not quite making it.
3.45pm - finally manage to book a booth (no less!) at the Lansdowne. Sorted.
4.00pm - Lola overheats and finally gets off the radiator to lie around on the floor, panting in undignified positions.
4.15pm - I finally accept I'll have to get out of my pyjamas at some point and get in the shower.
4.40pm - The phone rings and Kim, my niece, sings me happy birthday and tells me about her new sandals. I also chat to Kerry for a while and thank her for the top presents. Her triple child house sounds crazy.
4.55pm - wake Graham up and dry my hair, rub Lola's tummy and decide what to wear.
5.30pm - I'm just putting on my tights before heading out the door for dinner when the phone rings. It is the Lansdowne to tell us that they have no electricity and are only serving cold food in the silent darkness. They suggest we might want to eat somewhere else.
5.38pm - we eat some oatcakes and birthday blue cheese while trying to think of somewhere else to eat. We settle on AdLib in town. We book a table and potter about until its time to go (Graham draws bad portraits of me, I visit some blogs, I listen to Francoise Hardy, I play with the cats, I help Graham choose what to wear...)
6.35pm - We leave (running late) and decide to be naughty and get a potato fritter from the Philadelphia en route to the underground but when we get there they have none left. I start to get the birthday jinx feeling but get on the underground nonetheless.
7.00pm - we arrive at Ad Lib. Despite fancying the spicy chickpea burger and a beer, I order tomato and pepper risotto and wine, confident that the risotto will win me over when it arrives. Graham orders a Spansih fish stew. When the food arrives, my risotto is really disappointing which is extra disappointing because I am never disappointed in Ad Lib's food and I KNOW how good that burger would have been. Grrr. Graham's fish stew is apparently very nice and he shares his bread and butter with me.
8.35pm - We go to Dino's for coffee and cake. Graham has white chocolate cheesecake and I have amaretto cake. It is delicious.
8.55pm - We arrive at the cinema and, seeing the queue, are glad Graham went through the trauma of booking tickets over the phone! We are seeing Coraline in 3D, my first ever 3D film. Exciting!
The leg fell off Graham's glasses before the trailers even started but he managed to do a pretty good repair job. The 3D trailers freaked me out but Coraline was a bit more subtle. It was really good but hard to concentrate on because the world's noisiest and most annoying men were sitting right in front of us. There were some other noisy people in the cinema too - a group of young neds, maybe about 14 years old? Half an hour into the film, someone went out and complained about them. The man from the cinema came in and told them that if they didn't stop messing about they would be asked to leave. A nasal reply echoed around the cinema: "Ahm five months pregnant, you stupid wee guy!" It was a classic Glasgow moment. Ten minutes later they actually did get kicked out, causing spontaneous applause from a section of the audience.
11.05pm - We arrive at the bus stop.
11.10pm - the streamline thing tells us the bus won't be there for 17 minutes so we decide to walk.
11.11pm - our bus passes us. Aaaargh!
11.15pm - we admit defeat and get the underground.
11.25pm - we get some chips and a fritter from Philadelphia and eat it on the way up the road.
11.35pm - Back in the flat, we open a bottle of wine but have to admit our rock and roll days are behind us as we plod tiredly to bed after just one glass.
And there it is, a day in my life which just so happened to be my birthday. I saved all the cleaning up of cat sick for today so I wouldn't have to shatter my glamorous image by mentioning it... Anyone still with me? No, I don't blame you - this was long!
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