Hestia is......enduring her birthday!

A loud rap at the bedroom door startles me away from the delightful charms of the arms of Morpheus and a dream about being at a party consisting of hundreds of men and discovering my mini stuck inside a fancy apartment block.  I awaken groggily - last night I was out with the girls and I feel rougher than the skin on Pat Butcher's heels.  I feel a nameless anxiety bubble to the surface with me as I float away from the Land of Nod and up to conciousness.  What IS it? Oh God. No. It's my.....

'HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUMMY!!!!' choruses Sonshine as he bursts into the bedroom with my birthday cards and pressie.


Tertarus and Sonshine launch into a truly unique rendition of Happy Birthday. I forced myself into the vertical, peeling my eyelids off my eyeballs and set about opening my cards with a rictus smile fixed in place as the rest of me tries desperately to rejoin the wakened world.

My cards both had badges, which I am now sporting as I type to you.  Can you see them?  *Hestia opens her ancient M&S cardigan and thrusts badges at the screen* One says 'Wonderful Wife' and the other 'Marvellous Mum'.

Tertarus has finally bowed to years of pressure and agreed that I can keep chickens in the garden!  So, for my birthday from him I'm getting four scabby ex-battery gals delivered!! Can hardly wait!  But first he will have to build the run/hutch combo for them.

Remember, I'm now working on the basis that all men are slightly Asbergers....so I figure that I'll end up with a chicken coop/run that could repel even the most drugged-upViking invaders somewhere around Guy Fawkes night.  This year.  Hopefully.

Tertarus and Sonshine then swung into action and delivered me breakfast in bed, along with a MASSIVE birthday cake. Yes, that is the actual cake being modelled by Sonshine up in the top left corner.

Then, as I lay in bed luxuriating with my cards and How to Look After Chickens, Tertarus appeared in the doorway, sounding suspiciously and creakily leather-trousered.

'Are you going out?' I asked, raising myself on one elbow from the depths of my pillows.

'Yep.'

'On your motorbike?'

'Yep'

'On. My. Birthday.'

'Yep'

'On Friday the 13th?'

'Yep'

'On your own?'

'Nope'

All the while this sparkling Noel Cowerd-esque exchange of conversation is going on, he is anxiously waggling his helmet (no euphemism - his actual helmet), desperate to be off. 

'It's my birthday.  And you're going out.  So......are we doing something nice tonight?  Dinner?'

'Nope'  He at least had the courtesy to look a bit shame-faced. 'But we might go out tomorrow night.' he offered.  This was, in my hugely selfish Leonine opinion, too tiny a white flag for MY birthday.

'Who are you going out with today?' I asked.  But I didn't need a reply, I knew all too well.  His Other Half.  His Best Friend, T.

You would think, wouldn't you, that if you'd been laid low with cryptosporidium (a notifiably horrible bacteria that allows you to shit through the eye of a needle for a MONTH) as T has, that the last thing you would want is to encase yourself in black leather and hurtle your body through the Argyll countryside on a motorbike.  The fact that they both think that This Is A Good Idea....On my birthday....just re-inforces my theory that men are all slightly mentally impaired.  Well, compared to women.

Tertarus pulled on his helmet and flipped up the visor.  There was a muffled: 'I'll be back by tea time.'

'GREAT.  Go on then - ENJOY yourself.  I'll just sit here ON MY OWN..... ON MY BIRTHDAY' I shouted somewhat indelicately after him as he creaked his way downstairs.  If I could have thrown something after him, I would have.  A big jaggy knife would have been my first choice.

'.....And....' I continued, 'the only birthday present I want from T is NO CRYPTOSPORIDIYUM brought home with you!!!!'

Sonshine bounded upstairs.  'What age ARE you today mummy?'

'I feel about  FUCKING 400' I said.  No, I didn't.  I thought that, but I actually told him the truth.  'I'm 48.'

Tertarus, who had been standing at the foot of the stairs as my verbal onslaught bounced off his racing leathers like so many blue-bottles was pulling on his gauntlets.  He flicked open his visor and called up the stairs to me:  'No, you're not 48.  You're 47, you daft bat.'

I quickly did the maths.  I was 47.

'Oh, so I am.' I refused to grin.

'Not many women are going to get a chicken coop AND a year whipped off their age by their husbands,' he continued.

'Don't you push your bloody luck,' I shouted back.  'See you at teatime.'