It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to!

Happy Birthday to me! It’s a big one, I’m not telling you which number.

I am supposed to be on my way to the Caribbean via Miami today for our lovely holiday. But instead here we are in lockdown. I really liked the Quarantini martini card above that I received. This message below I received via what’s app also made me laugh:

I had a busy morning of present and card opening and birthday text messages and e-cards. I have had some beautiful and funny cards and well chosen gifts and I do really appreciate the efforts my friends and family have gone to for sourcing gifts online at this time. Everyone has wished me a fantastic day. It has been quite nice, although I can’t say fantastic. The truth is that having a birthday in lockdown when you just want to go out and see your friends, and go on holiday, sucks. We can’t even plan when we might reschedule celebrations at the moment as life is on hold.

It was raining this afternoon and I got quite excited that maybe if we walked in the rain there would be less people around.. but alas this was not the case. Too many ****** people everywhere, we had to cross the road multiple times to avoid them all. They obviously had not got the memo about my birthday. I took a few snaps on the way, with the raindrops falling over my phone screen..

The “Bear and Wine” shop seems to be open again. This always makes me smile. I still haven’t been in and asked for a grizzly or a teddy with a bottle of Prosecco..

The “Spirit”also makes me think of “The Holy Spirit” rather than spirits. It is rather a modest shop to encompass such an impressive range of services.

A highlight of the day, I kid you not, was treating ourselves to a little order from Beelivery. I noticed we were going to run out of milk before birthday tea and I didn’t fancy going to the shops today, so we placed an order with them for the first time of milk and a few other bits. They sell basic groceries the same as you’d get in any supermarket or convenience store for about double the price for each item. They allocate you a driver, in my case Mohammed, who accepts your job, does your shopping, discusses any substitutions with you while in the shop and delivers to the doorstep all within 30-90 minutes. Mohammed was on his way after 30 minutes with all my stuff except TV Choice for my mother-in-law. As I know this is important to her I asked him to go back in the shop and buy any TV magazine available, which he duly did. (In fact he got the TV Choice in the end so he must have gone in another shop). So within 50 minutes he had arrived and dropped everything off, great service if a little expensive. We didn’t need any today, but good to know you can get a bottle of wine for £11. delivered within an hour in case of emergency!

Mohammed also delivered some nice croissants which we had for lunch which I stuffed with emmental cheese and ham and heated up in the oven. Just pausing blogging now to order our takeaway dinner… back in a minute!

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Part two

Birthday dinner disaster! I was looking forward to a takeaway tonight from Gurkha Royale, our local Nepalese fusion restaurant. All seemed to be available and good to go on Just Eats until we tried to pay and then suddenly the restaurant is no longer available and they also are not answering their direct phone line. So plan B, we have selected a “Cook” meal from the freezer of Basil and Mascarpone chicken with a side of dauphinoise potatoes. We will probably have petits pois with it. Pudding will have to be Cornish vanilla ice cream as we have nothing else. I am now wishing we had some strawberries or raspberries but there are only bananas or tinned mandarin oranges so we’ll probably just stick with the ice cream au natural.

Looking forward to the pink champagne in a minute. Also in a way looking forward to tomorrow when there’s not so much pressure to “have a fantastic day!” What a grumpy old woman I’ve become, it must be my age!