Tuesday

... singing along to that well known tune, 'Happy birthday to' ... us ... we're 64 years old today! My twin sister says she isn't ready to be 64 so my suggestion that this is the year she can really connect with the words of The Beatles' song went down like a lead balloon!!

I have a vivid recollection of our fifth birthday. In the reception classroom we sat at the 'twins table' with Jill and Janet (our friends since birth), and Dennis and Denise who we met when we started school and who shared the same birthday with us. On that day, in a school where we didn't have to wear uniforms, we all turned up wearing blue and white striped dresses (the girls) and a blue and white striped shirt (Dennis). I think it was all a bit much for the class teacher because the birthday child wore a special crown and was her helper for the day so she'd had to make extra crowns and then spend the day racking her brain to find enough special jobs for all her birthday helpers. The birthday 'show and tell' took much longer that day as well!

Another memory of childhood birthdays is that until we were about eleven years old we were always given exactly the same gifts so we used to sit back to back to open them. That way we still had a surprise if the other one was faster at opening presents. The same applied to opening cards and also at Christmas.

When my sister's children were very young they knew we are twins but couldn't quite grasp that it meant that we celebrated our birthday on the same day. I have memories of quite a few birthdays, opening my gifts surrounded by their scowling faces and cries of 'but it's Mummy's birthday, not yours'! 

The aim, now we are mature sensible adults, is to be the first one to wish the other a happy birthday. Apparently sending a text at 1 minute after midnight is cheating but I put that attitude down to sour grapes because she didn't think of doing it herself. That spectacular win was some years ago and since then the 'rule' is that you can send the text as soon as you wake after a night's sleep ... of course, rules are made to be broken and creative cheating is to be expected. This year I typed the text message the night before and set my alarm. I pressed 'send' at 5am!!

This is the painting I bought yesterday ... my birthday present to myself! It's titled 'Colours' and is by a local artist, Maria Van-Tintelen.