My 60th

8th October 2012  Monday 

My 60th Birthday

But I’m the littlest, the youngest - how can I be 60.....

Ist text this morning from my niece in Beirut at 7am and then all day wonderful messages and phone calls - my dear family and friends remembering me.... still in bed - opening the cards I brought with me and my husband’s sweet message in his card with the teddy bear on the front with the pearls and high heels and wonky glittery hat...

It’s misty and drizzly - he goes to buy croissant and wine - I slip into the freezing cold swimming pool  - christening my new turquoise costume - feel compelled to mark this day somehow with something from me beyond my usual limits...I swim 5 lengths and climb out shivering and blue and invigorated and the sun burns a hazy halo behind the grey cloud for a brief welcome greeting and I know it’s going to be OK.... even though my husband asks me what invigorated means and what hazy means......

He makes breakfast - croissant -  and pain au chocolat - which I didn’t want after yesterday’s ones but he forgot and bought them again. Instead of eating mine I cut a slab of the fresh crusty loaf he also bought and slathered it in butter and honey - a new resolution  - don’t put up with stuff if you can change it.....

We put on glad rags and drive out to La Terrace in Meyronne - posh restaurant in deserted village on top of hill next to medieval church. Plat du jour - piece of cod  - only thing on menu I could eat at 35 Euros.....decide we aren’t hungry enough for lunch anyway. Instead spend wonderful hours with the Barbary Apes of Morocco at the Foret du Singes - and their cutest babies with old mens’ faces and kitten skittish legs......sun comes out, autumn leaves falling on paths lined with hawthorn and their blue black berries, peaceful empty melancholic park....afterwards we sit with chocolate icecreams and I send more birthday text thankyous.

On to Rocamadour - perched high up against the rock face - we walk down steep winding path shaded with huge trees and wander round the medieval sanctuaries. My husband goes inside the chapel  housing the famous Black Madonna.

‘Whats madonna?’

Mary, mother of Jesus Christ.

Is that her surname then?

He buys me a lovely leather purse in multi colours in one of the gift shops lining the streets below -  to go in the birthday handbag he also bought me  - or rather I bought and he paid for -  at the Cider Press centre in Totnes a few weeks ago.

It’s 5pm and I’m getting shaky with low blood sugar, and toy with the idea of an omlette and salad in a terrace cafe but decide to go home instead and go out for a crepe for supper.

Back home my husband cracks opene fresh walnuts and makes me tea while I struggle with the DVD player and get Mama Mia stuck in it and get cross and snap at him when he makes suggestions which don’t help.... finally get it out...

We have a bath - more glad rags on and out to the creperie where we eat huge square gallettes stuffed with smoked salmon, cream and potatoes followed by more mini crepes with maple syrup, jam and maron glace and a coffee. I tell the waiter it’s my birthday and when we leave he gives me a little striped wooden cat because we loved and petted  the restaurant cat which sat on the chair next to my husband and it felt like we were 3 for supper....

Now my lovely husband has gone to bed with a headache after we watched the whole of Mama Mia and it’s the end of my 60th birthday and the beginning of a new decade in the shape of the old me.....looking for a way to see with eyes of kindness. One moment at a time...