They Say It's Your Birthday

I’ve had some memorable birthdays in my time. Some for obvious reasons and others not so much.

Take for example my birthday in 1987. For reasons now lost to the mists of time, me and my mates decided to take part in a treasure hunt organised by the 6th form college. Not sure what enticed me to spend my celebrations searching muddy fields for clues, but that we did. And thoroughly enjoyed it - although you wouldn’t think that from the photos. We look cold, fed up and not exactly impressed by our surroundings.

Not sure that's correct treasure hunting attire!

That’s not something I can say about my birthday in 2000. On that occasion we marked by 30th by spending the week in Interlaken in Switzerland - one of my favourite places on the planet.  Being October and in the mountains, the weather was a bit changeable but there’s nothing like being in the Alps. We even managed to have a snowball fight on the top of the Jungfrau. 

To help keep the costs of the trip as low as possible, we kept to our usual holiday lunchtime diet of cheese and ham sandwiches - the ingredients for which were readily available from the supermarket and didn’t take much effort in the way of preparation. By the end of the week we were well and truly fed up of cheese and ham but had saved a packed. Well we had to subsidise the beer costs somehow. You can image our joy when we got back to family from the airport and were served as our welcome back snack....you guessed it....cheese and ham toasties!

Snowball fight anyone? 

A few years later we spent my birthday weekend in Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire. Autumn had definitely arrived and I  think it rained almost all weekend. Still at least the pub was dry. We even managed to avert disaster when my Dad managed to shut the door of the place we were renting…..with the keys locked inside! Thankfully the loo window wasn’t locked and after a little bit of clambering we were back inside. And dry. Climbing through a small loo window after a few pints was quite a feat though.   It could've been very messy indeed.

Then there were the wonderful trips to Bellingham in Northumberland. We would stay in camping pods -  I guess you would call it glamping these days - whilst friends stayed in their caravan. Even though they were essentially nothing more than the equivalent of garden sheds, they were quite comfortable. And how could I forget the time in 2009 on one of those trips when my back seized up and I spent the rest of the trip in agony. Ahh happy days. 

And who could forget my first birthday in New Zealand. It was a very pleasant change to have a spring rather than Autumn celebratory day. And the Auckland weather didn’t for once disappoint. It was a beautiful day with temperatures in the high teens and we’d decided to visit Waiheke - the self claimed island of wine. 

I was so excited to visit Waiheke for the first time, and a newbie when it comes to New Zealand springs, that I forgot to bring a hat with me. A school boy error if I do say so myself. As a sun burnt napper/head would be a rubbish thing to inflict on oneself we had to make an emergency purchase before getting on the ferry. Yes, spending the day in the sun, enjoying beautiful scenery and sipping wine….well there are worse ways to spend a birthday. Even if I was wearing jeans and sweating far more that I should've done. I'm pleased to say that I've got the hang of spring days now. 

Coffee in hand and beer keg ready to go! Oh and a nice new hat of course.

We had big plans for my 50th birthday last year. A trip back to the UK had to be postponed, and as Auckland was just coming out of a Covid induced lockdown, a large gathering was out of the question. No matter. Plan C was just as memorable. We took the safest option and gathered a few friends together for food and drink in our local. We were just about the first ones in to the venue that evening and were definitely the last ones out - we only left because they wanted to lock up for the night! Looking back, I was pretty lucky to be able to celebrate at all. 

But for all a totally different reason my 2021 birthday is going to take some beating on the memorability stakes. I didn’t do anything. Actually, I'll re-phase that. I couldn't do anything. Unfortunately Covid had once again reared its ugly head and Auckland was locked down. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Ironically we’d invested the flight vouchers from our cancelled 2020 trip in return flights to Cairns in Queensland so I was fully expecting to be snorkelling in the Great Barrier Reef on my day of celebration. It was not to be - the trip was cancelled some months earlier and travel outside Auckland was forbidden. 

Faced with the depressing thought of working from home again, I decided to take the day off. All things considered it’s been a pleasant day. I went for a long walk this morning up one of Auckland's many volcano cones - the spring weather was ideal for this - and then spent the rest of the day idling it away. I may have even got a snooze in there. Or at least I think I did - I’ve got a 45 minute gap I can’t account for!

Not a bad place to spend a birthday morning!