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My birthday!

I woke up at 5 am in agony with my back and after taking some painkillers I watched the sunrise at Stonehenge via the English Heritage website, it was cloudy so a bit of a nonevent good to think about the history of it all in any case then I tuned into space.com for the annular eclipse over Middle East Asia and India!!

Went back to sleep and then Max came back up and we listened to some records, I have a portable turntable in our room.

I spoke to my friends Rachael and Kevin and Kaitlyn in Perth, I have been inundated with birthday messages and lovely cards and gifts.

Max gave me some fantastic leggings and a new dress and the boys gave me a ukulele book as I’m learning that again now. A beautiful candle from Sue Lindenberg and a super posh bottle of Remy Martin champagne brandy from my brother and a beautiful orange scented rose that lasts for a year, I don’t know how they do it!

My family made me incredible cards too.

Then my sister Alexandra, partner Jon and daughter Thea came up for the afternoon in the garden, Thea made me a delicious Victoria sponge with strawberry filling and strawberries on top and sparklers for candles!

Max bought my DJ equipment down and I did a set in the garden which was great because I haven’t had an audience since before lockdown, everyone really enjoyed it and it was great fun for me.

Gulliver played guitar so did Janette and I sang and Erin sang a bit, Alexandra recited the Jabberwocky, then Jon told some ghost stories, great fun all round.

My friend Iain popped over with a birthday bottle of wine for me but I couldn’t ask him in because I already had a garden full of people, after they had left our friend Kate and Tim came round and we have shared a bottle of fizz on the roof terrace with them, my family quite wanted to play a game but my back has been very bad and I was just too tired so we watched a silly film on Netflix instead.

It’s been a wonderful day



Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.