RUBIES AND SOLAR ORBITS

Back to work then, after the birthday weekend.

It would be fair to say that I had the best time. My friends went far beyond what I had imagined, and organised a spectacular treasure hunt, every last detail of which, was carefully chosen and brilliantly planned. I was overwhelmed, almost to tears.

With my parents being somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, I had imagined that I might get through my birthday without hearing the story of my birth... again.

Nevertheless, my sisters were kind enough to take me out for lunch and tell me how all the pipes froze, my grandparents had to get portable heaters from the garage, the girls made prams out of cardboard boxes, and I squeaked like a mouse until my Dad suggested baby-oil and everybody fell about laughing.

Of course.

I joke - we actually had a very nice time together. Then I went home and read all the lovely things people had written about me. It's nice to be loved. It's really nice.

Then yesterday, according to tradition, I went to London and absorbed the National Gallery. I think this might be the last time I do a birthday museum trip. I might change my mind, but it almost feels as though a new decade needs a new tradition. Quite what, I don't know - I love the anonymity of wandering around, separating myself from the present for a while, and gazing into the past. That seems fitting somehow.

At the National Gallery of course, the past gazes back at you - from every portrait, every enigmatic figure peering out with a closed-lip smile. I took a sketch pad this time and tried to draw a few of my favourites.

I don't want to go on about it, as I've already stretched it through four days, but I've been really blessed by turning 40. I saw friends I haven't seen in ages, I felt loved beyond expectation and I grew almost embarrassed by people's kindness, generosity and friendship - which has always been there of course, but was brought into the full light like a glittering diamond. Or perhaps I should say a ruby, what with it being 40 and everything. Like every precious stone, it's the light that makes it what it is.

40 is a big scary number in some ways. Yet it is only a number in many others. There's lots to be thankful for, even when there's lots of sadness remaining.

"Is it okay, do you think, to be happy and sad all at the same time?" I texted Emmie in Canada. She said it absolutely was and then reminded me to "be who you are and embrace every day"

That's terrific advice.

Whatever I decide is my tradition, my method and my attitude in my forties... I hope it's at least that.

-

"I completed another trip round the sun at the weekend," I wrote to my colleagues, "and as ever, this has somehow resulted in cakes in the kitchen.

I can’t eat them all without shortening my chances of making further solar orbits, so feel free to help me out."

Two seconds later the stampede began.

"Hapf bufmday Mtt!" mumbled someone with a mouth full of doughnut as they walked by.

I smiled and said thanks.