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Seán Moncrieff: Some people adore celebrating their birthdays. I’m not one of them

I find the whole business mortifying. I’d fake an asthma attack to get out of it

Have I had a birthday recently? You’d never know. Photograph: iStock

Seán Moncrieff's face
Seán Moncrieff
Sat Jun 4 2022 - 06:00

There are grown-up people who relish their birthdays: who luxuriate in the whirl of happy birthday wishes and shudder with pleasure at the prospect of attention, presents and parties. I’m not one of them.

I find the whole business mortifying. I did have a birthday party once, many years ago. It was so excruciating, I considered faking an asthma attack, just to get out of it. Except I don’t have asthma.

In my curmudgeonly way, I’m happier treating the anniversary of my birth – an event I had no part in creating – as close to non-existent. I’ll endure family members mentioning it, but for everyone else I keep it on the super-extreme down-low. Have I had a birthday recently? You’ll never know.

Herself is exactly the same, so all I can tell you is that she had a birthday within the last six months: one of those birthdays that other people might like to make a Big Deal out of. Because her superpower is crippling guilt, she did agonise over having a party – other people would want it – but finally opted for a No Kerfuffle approach. Instead, she went to Wales for the weekend, to visit an old friend who was also having a birthday. The following weekend, the two of us stayed in a hotel and went out for dinner. And the weekend after that she went out with her sisters. So, a bit like the queen, she had three birthdays. But kerfuffle-free.

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Mildly dislocating

All three events were enjoyable, though the trip to Wales was mildly dislocating for all of us. Herself remembers everything, both on her own and my behalf, (she’s my exterior hard-drive) yet even she couldn’t recall when one of us had been away from the house for a night. Obviously, it was pre-lockdown; which seems an eternity ago.

On the way to the airport, Herself admitted to feeling nervous, though she couldn’t explain why, and once she’d gone, the house seemed profoundly different. Daughter Number Two said she felt it as soon as she walked in the front door, while Daughter Number Four found it baffling and even a bit distressing. Not so distressing that she wasn’t prepared to milk the situation as much as possible: the degree to which she missed Mammy seemed to be in inverse proportion to how many treats she was able to get out of me.

She is, however, a huge fan of birthdays, and is happy to let you all know that hers is in January and she’s already drawing up an extensive list of potential presents. She likes other people’s birthdays too, and fell to the task of choosing a present for her mother with an admirable degree of seriousness. For once, she listened to my advice as we considered various contenders. (“Contender” is one of her new words.) We agreed that clothing was too risky. A teacup was too random. She did like a rather tacky pair of interlocking friendship necklaces, but then decided it would be a more appropriate gift for her best friend. So, we got that too. Another new word is “wheedled”.

Finally, Daughter Number Four settled on a posh candle, but not before she had studiously sniffed them all: one, she judged, smelled of “burnt ass”. I’m yet to discover where she got that phrase from.

Poetic sense

She’d never collected anyone at an airport before, but thanks to Hollywood, Daughter Number Four knew exactly how it should play out. I suggested various phrases, all of which she rejected for a form of words that, while syntactically suspect, made a poetic sense; and perhaps also explained the odd sense of vacancy we’d been feeling all weekend.

Normally, Herself might be a bit mortified to be loudly greeted by a bouncing six-year-old – she’d wheedled a chocolate chip cookie – holding a massive sign that read MAMMY IS LOVE. The airport crowds smiled at us, and her. And she smiled too.

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