The Big Two Three

My second German birthday was an approximately one-hundred percent improvement on last year’s. It began on Saturday evening when Adam arrived laden with presents and cards and orange squash and continued into Sunday, which disappeared rather too quickly.

Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday messages, the first of which arrived at 8am from Mum and Sister and the last was at 11.45pm from Chief – I apologize for not replying to messages but now that I am back on a pay-as-you-go sim (anything rather than get involved in that contract debacle again!) I’m afraid I’ve become, let’s be honest, tight.

I received this same card from both Will and Helen, and Disco and his new girlfriend of two weeks.

It appears to be a bucktoothed vampire cookie monster with blood-shot eyes, and I am a little worried that at least two of my friends chose this independently as something that would appeal to me. In his card Will claimed credit for the bouquet of flowers that arrived on Monday morning, as Adam had mentioned in the pub that he’d sent flowers but not put his name on, signing the card “the man that loves you.”

Disco Dave has thrown himself wholeheartedly into his newly minted relationship and is enjoying being in a couple to the full, which includes, among other things, writing Disco and Lucy on cards; on closer inspection the and Lucy was in different handwriting. In an apparent effort to appear casual he seemingly passed her the card to add her name almost as an afterthought. So he’s not so serious after all. However, on even closer inspection, and Lucy is indeed Dave’s writing, albeit in a different colour ink and using his left hand.

Perhaps it is because I am living in Germany and am missing the opening stages of his courtship that he feels the need to expend such a level of guile and cunning to infer the state of his relationship through the subtle medium of the birthday card. But this is Disco Dave, so who can say?

Adam and I went for a meal on Monday evening and returned home to watch two episodes of 24 whilst drinking red wine. Adam lay on the couch whilst I sat on the floor at the coffee table, putting raspberries on a cheesecake we made that afternoon and giggling at his newly developed Bill Buchannan impression.

I spent my birthday morning sitting on the balcony eating breakfast and opening cards and presents and not enjoying another of what Adam thought was a hilarious joke. When he’d arrived he’d put some presents on the table and said I wasn’t to touch them, in particular the very small box on top. He said this was a very special present and I would love it. He had a huge grin stretched across his face as he said this, which I initially found suspicious as he usually frets about gifts and only smiles when he has got something he’s pleased with and knows will go down well but he seemed so confident that I would love it that I began to get excited. You can almost see what’s coming can’t you?

I spoke to Mum and told her about the little present that he was so pleased with.

“Let me know what it is when you’ve opened it. It must be something good if he wants you to open it last.”

“I know, I know, I wonder what it is?!”

Adam had wandered in from the kitchen at this point and heard this. At the time I should have noticed the panic that had suddenly descended onto his shoulders and if I’d looked closer I could have probably seen the metaphorical back peddle of a man whose plan is about to go horribly wrong. Call me naïve but it didn’t occur to me that even Adam could spend two days setting up a joke of which the punchline would be delivered to a girl in her dressing gown half way through a croissant with no immediate access to weapons and whose patience with practical jokes has waned over the years.

I opened my cards, the one from Adam chosen because the polka-dot pattern on the front put him in mind of my underwear, and then he thrust the small present towards me with the same grin back in position. This is when suspicion returned in full force. My heart began putting on its snorkel; something said this sink was going to be a deep one.

“I thought you wanted me to open this one last?” I asked in a voice that could be described as shrill.

“Yeh well, I think you should open it now….!” he replied heartily whilst edging his chair back a couple of feet.

I opened it slowly. Fortunately my early warning alarm had alerted me in time and the disappointment wasn’t too severe but my face fell so far that I needed a crane to haul it back up. If not before, then this must have been the point that Adam realised he had made a grave error in judgement in wrapping up a box of paracetemol and spending a solid 48 hours laying the ground work for a genius prank.

I think that for a lot of women this disappointment would quickly bow to anger but not so in this case for these reasons

1) This was Adam and he does like to play this kind of joke

2) Not liking the German sort, I had asked him to bring me some paracetemol

3) Three weeks ago I found out he had bought me an amazing present, which was tickets to see Norah Jones, whom I love, in Manchester in August. He’d wanted it to be a surprise and asked me to keep the weekend free. I had written in my diary England? but that was immediately scrubbed out and written over with Cara’s Hen Party –Berlin!! and thoughts of L plates, strippers, and pink deely boppers meant that I completely forgot about the surprise.

Obviously I felt awful when I found out and this, combined with the 24 DVD board game that I unwrapped along with the new Jasper Fforde book after the paracetemol, meant that instead of being completely cross about the joke I was only marginally miffed.

Other presents I received included this office toy from Brid, which allows you to launch a tiny boss several feet into the air and release several weeks of stress in one pull of a trigger.

The ginger boss doesn't seem to fit in with the others; he has lost his jacket and is leaning over at an angle that suggests he has spent the night in his office drinking cheap whisky and wondering if he can pay for a prostitute on the company credit card.


I received two Fanta Vier CDs and a DVD from Brendan, Janine, and Claudia, and Zoran bought me a subscription to the Guardian’s online crosswords, a gift I was very excited about and immediately printed off several hundred crosswords that I haven’t a chance of completing.

The Guardian crossword, and we’re not even talking the cryptic here, has recently become the bane of my otherwise relatively unbaneful life. My mother is somewhat of a crossword snob. She is very good at them, and knows it. The Saturday Guardian contains a cryptic and a “quick”, or as Mum calls it, the “thickies”, crossword.

Every weekend she’d take the cryptic and I the quick. She’d be halfway through hers while I was still stuck on 1 Across. She’d come stand behind me, looking over my shoulder and smirking, saying such helpful things as “You don’t know 4 down?! Really? Wow.” I had to be careful where I left the paper as I’d come back with a coffee, determined to think long and hard about the clues, and find it completed, in handwriting casually scribbled with no crossings out and that clearly said “this took me two minutes”.

In all deference to Mum, she is very good and has the patience. She can spend days on a clue. I sometimes see her on maybe a Thursday night standing at the back door smoking a cigarette, brow furrowed staring at the newspaper resting on the ironing board. I know she’s thinking about 10 across. The way her face lights up when it all clicks into place is intriguing.

A few times she’s tried to teach me. I thought it was simply a matter of knowledge but there are subtle tricks to solving a crossword and they can be learned. Initially I couldn’t even understand the clue, let alone find the answer but thanks to Mum’s hints and Zoran’s present I am improving.

The Guardian website has a collection of crosswords called “Quiptic”, which, as you’d imagine, are somewhere between Quick and Cryptic, and which I am having some level of success with. I am hoping this will be the key to the transition from Thickies to the Real crossword but it may take some time.

In some ways I find I am turning into my mother. Perhaps it is because I have reached the milestone age of 23, which, as she has mentioned several times recently, was the age she was when I was born.

On Tuesday, for example, I had a party at my house. I’d invited everyone round for food and drinks with every intention of going to the Café Central later on to see “Der Beste Band der Welt” and redeem a promise from Mike of one amusing dance in the style of Carlton from the Fresh Prince. In the end we didn’t go (Silent Thomas, who Brid found disappointingly chatty, said it was 16 euros entry and that sealed it) but I insisted on this from Mike to ensure I don’t miss out:

I learned all my hostessing techniques from Mum, and so I found myself spouting this stream for most of the evening:

“Have you a got a drink? Do you need a drink, do you want some more wine? I’ve got some cheesecake, will you have a bit of that? You will, I’ll go get it! Hang on, where I’ve put my wine? Did I do enough pizza? I hope everyone’s eaten enough….shall I put another one in the oven? I think I will. Was that the door? Have you a got a drink? Who needs more beer? You’re driving are you, I’ve got some juice, do you want some juice? Whose is this bag? Have you had some cheesecake?” and so on, whilst getting drunk very quickly and burning two fingers on an oven shelf that I hadn’t considered might be hot after two hours at two hundred degrees.

The big two three has begun well.