Big four-oh

In La Cañada’s ‘Irish’ pub

It was quite a celebration. Not just a simple birthday, at least not in the sense of a specific day. More a serial celebration over the best part of a week.

I’m not talking about my birthday, although that kicked the process off. My celebrations, in which I’m always proud to say that the whole nation of Australia joins, under the mistaken apprehension that they’re marking their national day, were happily confined to the date in question. Let me stress that ‘happily’: it was just right, with excellent food in a lovely setting with wonderful company.

But I wasn’t the only one to have a birthday with a zero in it. Just three days after my 70th came my son Michael’s 40th. He’d joined us for the celebration of both.

The aim, you may remember if you read my last post on the subject, was to go for a Chinese meal on his birthday and follow that up with a visit to the Irish pub next door. Danielle and I had seen the pub several times but never gone in. Michael, however, had tried the place with his sister-in-law Sheena, with whom his last visit had overlapped. They’d liked it and he wanted to go back with us.

Eventually, the day dawned. Danielle baked Michael the cake he wanted, a Black Forest gateau, which he enjoyed, as did several of our neighbours: Danielle doesn’t hold back when she’s baking and likes her cakes to be generous.

Michael with his cake

But then there was a bit of a debate about the evening meal, in the Chinese restaurant. It quickly emerged that no one really felt like it. Michael, who likes to adapt his desires to the reality of circumstances, quickly modified his ideas. We’d go to the pub that night and a Chinese meal another day. 

It was only an Irish pub in a loose sense. It had clearly been decorated by a company that has a kit of ‘Irish pub’ accessories, delivers it and puts the contents up. But it seems to be pretty hazy on geography. For instance, one of the items up on the wall was a first aid kit box (yes, you read that right: a first aid kit box, and before you ask, your guess is as good as mine) from Redruth Rugby Football Club.

Now, I know a Redruth in Cornwall, which is in England, but to my knowledge at least, there’s no Redruth in Ireland. Or if there is, it’s not important enough to have a rugby club.

What I’m absolutely sure of is that the football scarf up on the wall, adorned with the words ‘Aston Villa’, is associated with one of the longstanding traditional English football teams, in this case in Birmingham. Nothing Irish about it.

What’s more, of course, this being a village on the outskirts of Valencia, everyone on the staff is Spanish, not Irish. To start the evening, I had an Orujo, a well-known drink in the Spanish province of Asturias, completely unknown, I’d guess, in Galway or County Down. 

I didn’t want two and wasn’t sure what to follow it up with. 

“I’ll have a Bloody Mary,” I eventually decided.

No good.

“They don’t do cocktails,” Michael told me.

But having thought about it, he went on, “Hold on a moment.”

I followed him back to the bar.

“Do you have Vodka?” he asked.

“Yes,” came the reply.

“Do you have tomato juice?”

“Yes,” again.

Now came the difficult one, the one where a positive reply was far less likely.

“Do you have tabasco?”

“Yes,” the manager told us, to our surprise.

With Michael in the pub. Note my supersized Bloody Mary

Well, a really good Bloody Mary has more ingredients than those, but they’re enough for a basic version. And, since the barmaid had never made a Bloody Mary before, she just kept tipping vodka into the glass until there was enough there for at least three strong ones. I had to get a second tomato juice just to make it drinkable.

We had a good time. Michael reckoned it was one of his best birthday celebrations. There was a price to be paid the next morning but, hey, it was fun while it was happening. “Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday,” the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam tells us, “why fret about them if today be sweet?” Damn right too, even though when tomorrow managed to get born, it provided a little to fret about. 

That left the matter of the Chinese meal. Our Chinese restaurant is shut on Mondays and Tuesdays, the two days following the pub trip, so we decided to head into Valencia itself for lunch in a restaurant called “The Spicy Soul Hotpot”. It doesn’t offer souls, but the rest of the name is accurate. We hesitated between ‘medium spicy’ and ‘very spicy’, having ruled out ‘super spicy’. We opted for and enjoyed ‘very spicy’, but I’ll just say that next time we’ll go for ‘medium’, to spare our throats.

Michael with the hotpot

Then came the end of Michael’s stay and we still had the bottle of Cava, Spanish sparkling wine, I’d put in the fridge to cool for our celebrations. So we got it out and finished it off, much to our enjoyment. That marked the third celebratory event for his fortieth and, therefore, a full week of festivities starting from my seventieth.

A birthday week. Highly pleasurable. And it kept going for far longer than a mere birthday day.

Three score years and ten

It’s been a curious experience, turning 70, as I did this week. 

It’s a bit of a milestone. The aged inhabitant of the little village of irreducible Gauls in the Asterix stories is called ‘Agecanonix’ in French. That’s based on the notion of canonical age, although it misapplies it, since canonical age is the age specified by Catholic canon law, and it’s different for different things – like when you can first go to confession (ridiculously young – seven) or receive confirmation (twelve). 

Sprightly but no spring chicken
Agecanonix, or Geriatrix to his English-speaking fans

The Asterix people are clearly referring to the span prescribed for human life, three score years and ten or 70 years, as specified in the ninetieth psalm. Which is why they show the character as old, if sprightly. 

In the English versions of the Asterix books, Agecanonix is renamed Geriatrix. That’s probably more accurate. On the other hand, it’s a bit galling. I know that ‘geriatric’ just comes from the Greek for ‘old age’, but in my mind its connotations are all about decrepitude. Others may think that notion applies to me, but whether it’s simple denial or not, I refuse to apply it to myself.

On the contrary, I feel it’s a bit of a breakthrough to have reached 70. After all, if that’s the allotted span, then as of this birthday, I’ve been enjoying time added on. A bonus. Which is a good thing, right? After all, doesn’t ‘bonus’ mean ‘good’?

So I’ve started on my bonus time. I completed my seventh decade, my allotted span, as my birthday dawned. Then I started on my seventy-first. Which puts me ahead of the game.

Tom Lehrer once announced, “it is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years”. It’s an even more sobering thought that by the time Mozart reached my age, he’d been dead for as long as he’d lived.

I suppose a rather less agreeable sense in which I’ve gained some additional years is with respect to my father, Leonard. I’ve now lived nearly nine years longer than he did. More to the point, it is approaching forty years since he died. I do keep thinking how much he’d have liked visiting us here in our home near Valencia. I can imagine he’d have found it very much to his taste. It would have been fun to have him join us for my birthday, though he would have had to make it to 101 to pull off that trick.

As for my mother, I have a long way to go to catch her, and it would surprise me if I did. Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if I didn’t – I assume that not catching up with her would leave me in a state incapable of surprise. She managed the neat trick of splitting the difference between her mother and grandmother. 

Blume, my great-grandmother, got out of Vilnius to escape Russian oppression – and, boy, don’t we know about Russian oppression today – and lived, as a Jewish immigrant to England, until she was 97.

My grandmother, Yetta, made it to 91.

And my mother, Leatrice, neatly bisected them. She reached 94. And, as I’ve mentioned before, cleverly made it to her own birthday before shuffling off this mortal coil.

The big question is which side of the family do I pull towards? Time alone will tell.

Meanwhile, we made an excellent celebration of the day. One of our sons, Michael, was with Danielle and me. He too will be celebrating a birthday with a zero in it – his fortieth – in a couple of days’ time. He’s decided he wants to go to our local cheap but immensely cheerful local Chinese for dinner, followed by drinks at our local curious but immensely cheerful Irish pub next door. That should be fun.

For my birthday, we all three went to the local restaurant I like the best, Vaixell, which means ‘little boat’ in Valencian. The cooking is wonderful, the setting delightful. And, it turns out, they were running a four-day truffle fest – it seems it’s the season – so we had truffles with every course, of which there were four, including the dessert which was a truffle (in the chocolate sense), including truffles (in the other sense).

Celebrations. 
Note that I wore grey, so our hair wouldn't feel lonely

To make sure joy was unconfined, our daughter-in-law Sheena, son Nicky, granddaughter Matilda and grandson Elliott (the last two may not have had much agency in this fine gesture, being three and one and a half respectively), had the restaurant provide us with a fine bottle of Cava, Spanish sparkling wine, at the end of the meal. While Danielle had made one of her extraordinary orange cakes, which even the restaurant staff sampled and found exquisite (that’s my rough translation of ‘muy rico’).

We had a great time. It struck me as a fine way to enter my 71st year. And just the kind of celebration we needed.

After all, there was plenty to celebrate. One of my favourite Spanish authors claims that the thing about old age isn’t to complain about it, but to be glad you made it.

Or, putting it in other words, the only way to avoid growing old is to die young. And, having reached 70, it’s clearly far too late for me to do that. 

Which, in a way, is a relief, isn’t it?

 

Anniversaries and coincidences

Every year, I’m taken by surprise by the fact that my wedding anniversary coincides with my wife’s.

Don’t worry. I’m perfectly prepared to admit that it isn’t really a coincidence and that I shouldn’t be surprised by it. The feeling is no doubt caused by the fact that it’s the only anniversary of its kind: others are individual, such as birthdays, or public, such as Christmas or, when we’re being French, the 14th of July. It’s therefore a little different when two of us celebrate the same day.

Today, as it happens.

What makes it even stranger, however, is that there’s a real coincidence today. Our granddaughter’s birthday falls on the same day. 

That wasn’t something we planned. In fact, our wedding involved pretty minimal planning of any kind: it was the only day our local registry office could fit us in and still allow us to be sure that it would occur before the likely birth of our first son. And that was important because, had he been born before we were married, he would have had French nationality alone and not British as well. As French law then stood, that would have left him liable to call up at eighteen for several months of completely worthless square-bashing and route marches, as a national serviceman in the French army. .

By the time he actually reached eighteen, French law had changed and he only had to do a single day’s service. I won’t repeat the story here of how it took him several attempts to do that day, because I’ve told it before, but he eventually completed it without much difficulty. That meant we didn’t have to be in such a tearing hurry back in 1983, but hey, there was little point in hanging around and I wasn’t sorry to make sure he’d be at least as much a Limey as a Frog anyway. In any case, we had no idea then we didn’t need to help him avoid the horror of national service (we didn’t know we were going to have a boy, because we preferred to be surprised than to cheat with an ultrasound, but it was always a possibility).

A little coincidence. On top of the large one.
On top of what isn’t a coincidence at all

The other coincidence, this particular year, is that the eleventh day of January happens to be our granddaughter’s eleventh birthday. That’s not something that will ever happen to her again. Come to think of it, it’s our thirty-third wedding anniversary, three times eleven, but I may be straining a bit to establish that as a coincidence particularly worthy of note.

Still, the anniversary and the birthday are worth marking anyway.

So to my granddaughter, happy birthday. To my wife, happy anniversary. And happy anniversary to me too. 

Uncoincidentally.

Luci's diary: I can celebrate a birthday even if I don't understand it

Luci's Diary. I haven’t the faintest idea what a birthday is, but hey, who isn’t into celebration?

5 November

Today’s my birthday!

I have no idea what that means. Except that it’s mine, and I know what that means.

My cat Misty tried to explain.

“OK. Things go round in years,” he said.

I looked around the room. Everything seemed to be standing still.

“Nothing’s going round,” I carefully explained to him.

“No, OK. Not like that. Right now it’s cold and the leaves are red. In a while there won’t be any leaves at all and it’ll be colder still. And then the leaves will come back again, all bright green. And after that it’ll be quite hot again. Well, since we live in England, it’ll be quite hot when it isn’t cold and raining, but that’ll be pretty often. OK, let’s say quite often. More often than now, at any rate.”

It was coming back to me.

“Yes, I remember,” I said, “when things were like that.”

“Well, that’s it. That’s what I mean. Those things come, and then they go, and then they come again. So when the leaves are red, that’s autumn, and that’s how they were when you were born. They’re red again now – autumn’s come back – and it’s your birthday: a year since you were born.”

Born? What was he getting at? I’ve always been here. I can’t remember any time when I wasn’t here.

But Misty was still explaining.

“It’s your birthday. Your birthday’s here because autumn’s back. You’re an autumn dog. Each time things come back like that, a year goes by. You’ve had one year, you’re going to have another one now, and that means you’ll have all those things happen again.”

Luci, the autumn dog

I nodded and tried to look as if I’d understood. But I was still baffled. How can things happen again? I mean, I met Misty for the first time, ages and ages ago. Am I going to meet him for the first time – again? How can that make sense?

Oh well, I’ll just have to see how things work out. I often find that’s the best thing to do, because lots of things don’t make sense to me.

Like the other day. My human number 1 was all dressed to go out. So I was jumping around her waiting for her to put my lead on. And then she said to human number 2:

“I’ll just pop out then. I’ll be back shortly to take Luci out.”

Where’s the sense in that? Coming back in to take me out? Why not just take me out straight away? Honestly. Humans do talk a lot of rubbish sometimes.

That was almost as bad as finding Misty eating my food last weekend. His food is kept up high because he can jump all the way up there, and I can’t. But my food is kept down at ground level. Basically for the same reason. The trouble is that he can get at my food even though I can’t get at his. Which was only fair because he didn’t like my food.

Part of my food is this super good “eat me, eat me, eat me” mix of rice and bits of meat my number 2 human makes for me. Ah, one of the great joys of the day is when he puts out my portion for me. And it lasts me right through to just before we go to bed.

Well, Misty decided to have some of it the other day. My best meal. Now that wasn’t supposed to happen. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first.

It didn’t make sense, so I decided to make sense of it. I jumped on top of him. That often makes sense of things that seem incomprehensible. I’m getting quite good at it. He complains but he puts up with it.

“OK, OK,” he said, “you can get off me. I’ll stop eating your stuff. I don’t like it anyway.”

It may have helped that Number 2 was having a go too.

“Misty! Eat your own food. Leave Luci’s alone!”

So things got back to normal. I suppose the same will happen with this “year” thing Misty was talking about. It’ll start to seem normal after a while. I’ll get used to it.

Meanwhile, it’s my birthday! I’m going to enjoy it.

“There’ll be extra rice and turkey mince for you,” Human number 2 told me.

Birthday Treat

Yay!

Hey, Australia! Happy birthday to us

I can’t remember meeting an Australian I didn’t like. Fine people and a joy to know. 

Not that I like facing them on a sports field. I can’t imagine that any fellow Englishman does. In a bar, however, on a beach, in a dining room – all the ones I’ve had the pleasure to spend some time with have been excellent company.

They’re open, warm-hearted, cheerful, generous, amusing. I’ve been out there on a couple of occasions, at a time when I was living in France. The banter I encountered in Sydney was so like what I was used to in England that it felt like a homecoming. But with more heat and sunshine.

In fact, ever since that experience, I’ve found that an excellent opening gambit to a conversation with an Australian is to tell him that his country is ‘just England with better weather.’ I always find it gets things off on just the right note.

England with better weather

But that’s not the reason I want to pay tribute to the Australians today.

It’s because the entire nation has had the goodness of heart to celebrate my birthday. I appreciate it deeply and thank all those fine people warmly. It strikes me as great generosity on their part to hold Australia Day on the 26th of January.

Now some might think that my daughter-in-law has a better deal than I do: born on the 14th of July, she has the whole of France celebrating her birthday with her. There are nearly three times as many people in France as in Australia. But I say it again, I like the Australians, and I’m more than satisfied that is they who’ve chosen to celebrate with me.

I’m off out shortly to mark the event. I’ll raise a glass to you, Australia. Many happy returns to us both.