Please Feel Free To Ignore Me......

How narcissistic is it to announce your own birthday on your blog? I have absolutely no shame at all, as The Mother is fond of telling me.

Today I am 41, which feels so much older than 40.

And I don't have any cards, because nobody loves me the striking Posties have buggered it all up. (Not that I mind them striking. I adopted Spanish working practices a long time ago, and don't resent them for wanting a bit of what I have.)

But all is not lost, because I have received an email from the Kooky Hypnotherapist at work, telling me that she is going to give me a 'right good birthdaying' today.

I can't wait.

You Know You Are Getting Old When......

.....you don't mind getting stuck behind a slow moving farm vehicle on your way home because it makes it easier to bird watch and drive at the same time.

.....the fact that you can download a Hilary Clinton ring tone from the PM blog makes you want to write a stiff letter of complaint about dumbing down. To Radio 4 and The Times (and you don't even read The Times.)

....you think who is that nice man talking such common sense? before realising it is John Major, the man who famously ran away from the circus in order to become an accountant.

All of which happened to me yesterday. I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled....

How Times Have Changed....

A recent conversation between a friend of mine and her 11 year old daughter.

Daughter: Mum, can I have pole dancing classes at school?

Mum: Pole dancing classes?

Daughter: Yes, Miss B is teaching us pole dancing.

Mum: Miss B is teaching pole dancing?

Daughter: Yes, on a Monday after school. But if I go I have to be free on Monday the 7^th of May because we are doing a display.

Mum: You are doing a pole dancing display?

Daughter: Yes, in the Town Hall Square.

Mum: Miss B is putting on a pole dancing display in the Town Hall Square?

Daughter: Yes, can I do it?

Mum: (stunned silence)

Daughter: Pleeeease mum. It’s for May Day.

Mum: Ah, (relief) Miss B is teaching you May Pole Dancing darling.

Daughter: Yes, that’s what I said. Pole dancing. Can I do it mum?

So to my friend and her lovely daughter, I hope your pole dancing goes down a treat today. And mind not to get the ribbons caught up in your legs when you go upside down.

Why Does Play-Doh Smell Of Marzipan...?

We have just spent a wonderful evening at the Bridgewater Hall, listening to Colin Carr playing Bridge's Oration, Natalie Guttman playing Britten's Cello Symphony, Ralph Kirshbaum playing Elgar's Cello Concerto and Yo-Yo Ma playing Walton's Cello Concerto. The concert was part of the Royal Northern College of Music's International Cello Festival. We heard four truly stunning performances. Although Elgar's Cello Concerto really belongs to Du Pre, Kirshbaum still made me weep.

As the music flowed through me I became quite fixated on the percussion section. The bloke playing the timpani had both hands occupied for most of the night. There was another chap with a snare drum and another kind of drum; he had a couple of snare rolls and a few bangs on the other drum. Next to him was a chap with a couple of cymbals. He got to have a go at the end of both the Elgar and the Walton, but I don't think he was needed much for the Bridge or the Britten. (My memory may be letting me down here.) However, he had to slip over to a xylophone type thingy (which may well have been an actual xylophone) during the Walton which I guess kept him on his toes.

And finally, there was a young woman with a big J. Arthur Rank looking gong. She wasn't wearing a toga though. She gonged a couple of times during the Britten and I think once again during the Walton. I got to thinking about being a percussionist. She was turning the pages, and I realised that she would have to be able to read music so she could see when it was time for her to gong. I know that reading music at that level takes a lot of skill. I once turned pages for a pianist friend who was playing Prokofiev's Sonata for Violin and Piano and I could barely follow the music to turn in the right place. Heaven only knows how he actually played it. So I am guessing that the gong woman could read music at a very high level.

But with all that skill, all she gets to do is gong the once in a 30 minute piece of music. And the problem is, if she gongs in the wrong place it is a complete disaster. Ergo, she has to be both competent and confident. So, I wondered, if she is both competent and confident, and can read very difficult music, why doesn't she play an instrument where she gets to play a bit more of the time? Even the bassoon had more play time than she did. What prompted her to think 'I want to be a percussionist. In fact, I want to be the gong person'?

I'm not saying that being a percussionist is easy. Not at all. It just seems that it is both a responsible and yet a potentially dull role to play in an orchestra. I eagerly await correction from my erudite blog readers.

As a little aside, the evening was slightly marred for me by my current acute sense of smell. I have been finding many ordinary smells quite offensive this week. I walked past someone eating a hot dog in the street on Friday, and felt nauseous. I had to leave our staff room ten minutes later because someone was eating soup for lunch. (Perfectly nice carrot soup, but I couldn't bear the smell.) Tonight I was sitting next to a woman who smelled of marzipan. I tried to get my son to swap places in the interval but he couldn't be bribed. I thought it might be her perfume, but son suggested helpfully that perhaps she was made of Play-Doh. I was tempted to squeeze her leg just to see.

If I didn't absolutely know better, I might think that I was pregnant. (I'm not.) When I was pregnant I couldn't bear any strong smells, apart from the smell of rubber which I craved and would frequently pop into my local bicycle shop for a deep sniff. Is there another explanation, dear readers?

On Weddings...

I have never been a wedding kind of person. I grew up with the firm belief that marriage was a way for blokes to get a very cheap housekeeper and nanny (for them, not the children) and was determined from a young age that fate would hold more for me than that. Clearly I was not a romantic child: no dream of a knight in shining armour for me. (It came as something of a disappointment to discover that ‘living in sin’ - as The Mother calls it - is not the radical anti-marriage stance I youthfully envisaged but entails broadly the same domestic arrangements for most people.) And then I met the man who persuaded me to actually marry him, and I have to confess that our wedding day was a hoot. Since then I have been hooked. I am the perfect wedding guest: I cry at the ceremony, I can bore the pants off strangers at my table, I laugh like a drain at the Best Man’s jokes and dance like a deranged child at the crappy 70’s disco. I can even be persuaded, with enough champagne, to have a blazing row with the groom’s sexist mates and be sick in the toilet. I think my superior talents as a wedding guest must be well known, as this weekend I am going to the wedding of someone whom I have met only twice before. The fact that I will not know a single soul should, I think, give me permission to make an even bigger fool of myself than usual. I really can’t wait.