Big Birthday Month

Among our friends and family there are quite a few birthdays in August which need cards, and a lot of them are for men. Sorry, chaps, but I’m afraid you’re really hard to make cards for! My repertoire is heavily female-orientated, and features an awful lot of flowers, whether they are from artwork that I’ve bought and made into my own design, or whether they are photographs that I’ve taken. It’s also hard when you make one every year and you have to try not to repeat a design! (My way of ensuring that doesn’t happen is to use only designs or photographs that I’ve acquired during the year since the last birthday.) 

I took this photo of a Just Joey rose in our front garden in May this year, and I decided it was quite a suitable photo to send to a man, and rather liked how it looked when it was printed off. I made ten birthday cards like this one and five cards with no words that can be used for any occasion, and I'll use a few and then the rest will go into stock for sale at the Atrium café at church.

Anyway, it’s been a good day today because, apart from making those fifteen cards, I have whizzed through my daily to do list and ticked off all the items – bar one. And that is a birthday card for the inestimable Smithers for next Sunday. I confess I am absolutely devoid of ideas; I have him made so many cards over the years and I simply can’t think of anything original. I’m sure I’ll come up with something, I always do, but at the moment I have no idea what.

The only other piece of excitement today was the discovery by the traveller two hours before he was due to leave for the airport that he couldn’t find his passport! He and Smithers spent some time searching for it before they shared this gem with me, not wanting to worry me. I went into ‘logical’ mode, and quizzed him about what he was wearing when he arrived home a couple of months ago, and he said he’d checked his coat pocket, which was hanging on the back of his bedroom door. We thought through all the various scenarios and checked down several sofa cushions, to no avail.

My experience tells me that something you lose is almost always in the place where it should be, and not in the weird and wonderful places you search in desperation and panic. So I thought again, and went downstairs to the cloaks cupboard. Lo! Hanging up in there was a thick woollen jacket which I remembered he’d been wearing when he arrived, having had to wear it to save it going in his luggage. Coming from the heat of Malta it was not a comfortable method of travel! By the time I’d opened the cupboard door he was standing beside me. He caught sight of the coat he'd actually been wearing when he got back home, and knew immediately where the passport would be. "Left hand inside pocket!" he shouted. I triumphantly pulled out the necessary document. Phew! That was a close shave.

Was he grateful to me for finding his passport for him? Oh no, he was incredulous that I’d done something so stupid as to put a coat away in a cloaks cupboard. I mean, what sort of idiot does that? I think he thought it should have sat on the hall floor for the duration of his stay …

Panic over. He’s on board his plane and is just about to take off. I can’t wait until he gets back.