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Happy Birthday to my wonderful mother, Barbara. The sun shone bright for her 50th birthday (I have decided that the confetti doesn’t lie and took us 30 years into the past) and friends and family gathered round to celebrate another decade of life for this remarkable woman. My dad said he wasn’t going to do a speech because at their golden wedding anniversary he had talked more about the Yorkshire Ripper than about his wife. As most of the guests hadn’t been at the Golden Wedding he then had to explain why that was the case. And so told the story again. And thus talked more about the Yorkshire Ripper than about his wife at her birthday too.
It’s hard to believe that mum is 80, partly because I don’t believe that I am 50, but mainly because she looks 20 years younger. And had she been born in Somerset that would still make it possible for her to be my mum.
There was about half an hour of mild panic when the caterer hadn’t turned up and the guests were starting to arrive, but luckily the food made it in time and so the weekend of gluttony could continue. I had brought my running shoes in the hope of running around the reservoir, but it did not happen. I resolved (as I have on pretty much every Sunday of this year) that tomorrow my diet would begin. So I had to eat as much as was humanly possible today.
My sister made a moving speech, which didn’t even mention a famous serial killer (I mean, has she learned nothing about the art of public speaking?) and there were tears and applause (Phoebe actually clapped all the way through the speech in what might have been interpreted as a sarcastic gesture). Mum’s cake was multi-tiered and beautiful and didn’t have swear words all over it, which I suppose marks out the different path our lives have taken.
But by late afternoon it was time to go home and see if we could get our daughter to bed at a reasonable hour. It was another tough and long drive, punctuated by a stop at a service station, where weirdly, as we arrived, we bumped into my father-in-law as he left. They had been at the party too, but left after us and it’s perhaps not too amazing that they stopped off at the service station that was halfway home, but it was still a slightly weird coincidence.
Despite the rigour of all the driving it was a lovely little holiday with the family just before things get super busy and crazy. The Herring/Edmonds clan stretch from -3 months to nearly 81 years old now and it was good to have them all together in one place again. We had a photo taken in the garden and I remembered a similar one we had taken 24 years ago with me wearing one of my trade mark loud shirts and my youngest niece being a babe in arms.
It goes fast and it goes slow. Life is short and life is long. It’s all surely just a crazy dream, but I am glad I ended up with this group of crazy idiots. Where will we be in another quarter of a century? The answer my friends, is blowing in the wind.
There's another four signed, limited edition, first edition Emergency Questions books up for sale, all with a bonus unique, hand-written question. There aren't many more of these to put up and there are only a handful of First edition books left which I am selling at gigs and podcast recordings.
So don't miss out and bid here. The money goes towards paying for the filming of series 11 (and hopefully 12 as well).
Thanks for the amazing support on this.
