Having announced yesterday that I intended to have an official birthday - today - guess what? there's a card, a very acceptable stylish pair of black gloves (is there any other sort?) - and a birthday lunch. Lush-sh meal at The Marsh Cat in Parkgate. Sadly no one in Parkgate has been prepared to speak to me since one of my characters called the place 'a swampside resort'. A character, folks, not the author. (It is though). So wear dark glasses. (It is actually sunny over their swamp). Have nice time. Husband says "Well I didn't think you'd want to waste your official birthday trooping the guard or changing the colour or whatever."
Correct, bach. But that doesn't mean I've forgotten you've lost your wedding ring.
"So this official birthday...?" he says.
"Main reason is February," I say, "as a month it needs something. It's short but grim. All it's got is St Pancakes Day - a carbfest followed by a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday eating twenty-two portions of fruit and veg to make up. And you never know when Pancake Day's going to be because they move Lent around to try to keep it a decent distance from Easter and you have to be Stephen Hawking to work out when that is. And then there's the worry about whether Angela's hens will bother to lay that week. Not to mention the lemon rage - and that's when I'm not boycotting whoever has lemons. And I have to make the pancakes because you
won't learn. Enough?"
The sun goes in over the swamp. A big black splodge is hatched in Wales and rushes across the Dee towards us, halving the light in the conservatory where they have The Marsh Cat's nicest tables. Where we are. The vast expanse of reed and soggy bits and river that is downtown Parkgate turns- I'll like to say whatever adjective you can make from Conrad: Conradish, Conrady, Conradesque? There isn't one.
"So what would you like to do on the rest of your official birthday?" he says. "My treat."
So February 28th it is from now on. Another date for him to forget.
"I might go home and write something. Just for a change."
Thursday, 28 February 2008
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