No bushel for the birthday light

 As far as my birthday is concerned, I have never been one for hiding my light under a bushel.

"Oh I don't celebrate birthdays" one hears some people cry. I do. I most certainly do, and for anybody who wants to get involved, my 65th birthday will be celebrated next week on March 8.

 Yes I will be becoming an OAP, but it won't lessen the fact that the birthday will be celebrated.

There have been some great ones over the years.  An evening out with all my fellow members of the RSC on a nightclub boat called the Tuxedo Princess in Newcastle.  A quiz night in the Polish club in Balham.  Taking over half of Joe Allen's for a particularly recent milestone. All of them highly enjoyable occasions.

And there have been holidays. Birthday holidays. A fabulous spa week in Saint Lucia, trips to New York, Venice, Bath, Istanbul, Dubai, and Rotherham  have all added a particular gloss to March 8. That's March 8, in case you hadn't managed to make a note of it yet.

With Richard's birthday following hot on the heels three days later,  it's normally a week of celebration and I see no reason to change that as a plan.

 I have no doubt that this year will bring designer pension book holders, as well as a slew of Jo Malone, and a selection of those gifts that the elderly never knew they wanted.

Mercifully it will also bring a weekend in New York.  The chance to show someone the city who has never been. Then landing back in the UK on March 8th (Important date)  there will be a theatre trip and dinner.

Later that week on the Thursday I'm hosting a dinner at my club  forsome very good friends who have  been fabulously supportive in 2022 and then the Friday brings a mystery trip to an as yet undisclosed location for Richard's birthday dinner.

I've been lucky to have a great deal of good fortune and in a time when that seems to be in very short supply, in the world in general as well as sometimes personally, I think a moment of celebration a Read it
s therapy.

 To do something that makes people smile. To give people a common cause to raise their glass together. Each and every day is disturbing at the moment.  I look at the morning news and feel helpless as to what is in my control, both in the world and in my life. And although I have often mentioned the phrase "don't worry about what you can't change", it's impossible not to be affected.

So while this shameless self publicity about my birthday (Tuesday, March 8)  may at first seem irritating, I just hope that the celebrations next week of both my birthday and Richard's give people an opportunity to be together in happy communion. Our birthday joy is something we want to share.

As you get older three things happen. First, your memory goes, and I can't remember the other two, but what I do know is the following.

Count your age by your friends, not by years. Count your life by smiles and not by tears.

 And to all my fellow Pisceans who have a birthday coming up in the next week or so, have the happiest of days.