May. The Birthday Month.

May; the merry month of May; the depths of spring. Whatever May means to anyone who might be reading this, May is now: ‘May, the birthday month’. No real reason for this other than the fact that there are birthday stories to tell and May is the month The Celebration Herald has chosen to tell them.

It only seems fair to start with my own recent milestone birthday. Other than the 18th and 21sts, oddly milestone birthdays have a zero attached: 30th, 40th and my recent ‘favourite’ 50th, etc… I haven’t experienced an etc yet, but it is less than a decade until I do, so keep reading my blog and who knows it may be momentous.

In the months running up to my 50th I was regularly asked how I felt, how I was intending to celebrate turning (strangely always muttered in hushed tones) 50 (and clearly in bold, underlined, italicised and followed by many exclamation marks). There were moments when I sought refuge in the problem pages of women’s magazines – and women’s magazines clearly intended for the more mature woman; the woman who has found her way in and out of Country Casuals and may just have arrived at Jaeger – in the January sales (though I draw the line at considering The People’s Friend – reminds me of my nana’s friend Nellie Higgins). Apparently it was a milestone, this turning 50 was going to be massive, it couldn’t and wouldn’t be ignored. Seemingly it would matter, it would be visible, I would be 50 (in bold, underlined, italicised and followed by many exclamation marks).

The days of offering excuses was over – I now had to be doing what it was I said I would be doing when I grew up (what the heck was that; any old Marymount friends and teachers remember?); I would be transformed into the sort of woman heralded in the headlines, you know the ones: ‘fabulous at 50’, ‘stunning in palazzos and ballet pumps – simple, elegant’; it was all just a tiny bit terrifying. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t want to lie about my age because the age thing has never bothered me. I’m 51 now, and it is quite a nice number 51. Not the age (my knees and hips are definitely not what they were) but the actual number, 51. Unbalanced and unless I am very much mistaken a prime number to boot. But 50! Divisible by all sorts, and redolent with others’ expectations, and a high chance of disappointing one and all.

So, what happened? How did the founder of The Celebration Herald actually celebrate (other than dreaming up The Celebration Herald)? A January birthday can often get lost in the post-Christmas blues period, or alternatively I am a great person to take to the January sales – my powers for getting people to spend lots of money on themselves is legendary. But my 50th was a lovely round of lunches, many dinner parties, shared bottles of wine and a fantastic surprise from my best chum.

Now this chum was once involved in organising a surprise birthday party for me, prior to travelling to India and a prolonged period away from everyone, and she knew that it was not really a pleasant surprise. Being confronted by a room full of people yelling ‘surprise’ when I hadn’t showered, washed my hair, put on any make-up, changed out of my husband’s oversized and totally unflattering jumper, is not up there on my ‘favourite moments of all time’ list.

But in the previous October my chum asked me to keep two days free around the time of my birthday, which I promptly put in my diary – she admitted she was organising a day out but that the details would remain a surprise until the moment I woke up on that day. However we have developed a tradition of sending cards and cryptic messages to each other and so said chum handed me a set of anagrams on New Year’s Eve, each anagram a clue for the surprise day out.

Two weeks passed and as I was about to get on the train to London my husband handed me an envelope with a book in it. The book was for my chum, something she had expressed an interest in when we’d seen her at New Year, blah de blah – basically any similarity in my husband and chum’s reading materials tends to be in the fact that the materials are paper-based, split into pages, and those pages have words on them. But hey what do I know. It was New Year, I’m Scottish, what do I remember? Suspicious? Well as they say in these parts, ‘was I ‘eck as like’. I should also add at this point that I had only worked out one of the anagrams – Jackson Pollock – and again my chum and I go to as many exhibitions as we can so I thought a gallery with the odd JP in it was clearly on the cards.

A lovely evening was spent, with chum chortling to herself from time to time and holding monosyllabic telephone conversations with her mum and others, all ending with the same closing remark, ‘no, she hasn’t got a clue!’. I settled myself onto the sofabed and dozed off, then one of those Eureka moments hit. Paris! She was taking me to Paris! I nearly leapt out of bed to dash into her room to show off my puzzle-solving skills, but then thought, ‘but what if it isn’t? What if she’s taking me to Bognor Regis because there’s a JP exhibition on there? She’ll feel awful because she wanted to take me to Paris but had to settle for Bognor instead.’

No sleep was had. I dozed and giggled and giggled and dozed, and as the night progressed I couldn’t shake the notion that I was right. At 6.30 the next morning the taxi arrived to take us to our point of exit, and as we got into the cab my chum handed me a small package – a card with a picture of the Eiffel tower on the front, containing a EuroStar ticket and our itinerary for the day – a Jackson Pollock exhibition and the renowned Picasso exhibition. A carnet of Metro tickets dropped out of my passport – which of course was in the supposed book envelope from my husband to chum. I was in my element and shrieked like a middle aged banshee for the rest of the journey. I didn’t cry then, I saved that for the Picasso exhibition when I saw one of my all time favourite paintings, Manet’s Olympia, for the first time, in the flesh so to speak. The bottom lip was a bit quivery mind.

The day was amazing. Breakfast on the EuroStar was lovely and the staff suitably charming on finding I was celebrating a milestone birthday – unfortunately no cries of, ‘you can’t possibly be 50, you just don’t look it’, but perhaps they are trained not to lie. Dammit. There was snow on the ground in Paris, and we wandered between galleries and cafes, marvelling at fabulous patisseries and feeling slightly inadequate looking in the windows of Hermes and Chanel. Both exhibitions were fabulous – though the Jackson Pollock contained only French notes, (thank you Ms BB for equipping me with enough French to sort of know what was going on) and to add insult to injury, I had to wear my glasses to try and read the explanations. A sharp reminder of my declining years, though they are really cool glasses.

The Picasso was literally room upon room of works that I had only ever seen in books. It was wonderfully curated and I was probably quite embarrassing as I yelped regularly and ran between pictures now knowing quite where to give my attention. And yes I really did cry when I stood in front of Olympia.

The return journey was in itself a wonderful treat – champagne on tap and gorgeous Parisian macarons. We staggered into a cab to get home and chatted about the day until the early hours. I still marvel at the military precision and organisation of the day, not to mention the secrecy that was maintained – though as two surprises have been sprung on me by my loved ones I am clearly more gullible than I like to think I am.

And so a challenge: 8 ½ years to my 60th so get planning everyone. I’m expecting a classic – and have I ever mentioned how much I would love to see Alexandria?

The next chapter in May, The Celebration Herald’s birthday month, follows soon…