AMONG MY SOUVENIRS -- NO. 2

This is the second in a series of three of odd little memories. The photograph was taken in very low light, long exposure, hand held, and is out of focus.

I have had only two birthday parties in my life. That's quite enough. Having Happy Birthday sung at you is one of the two most mortifying things in the world.

The first party was on Halloween the year I turned eight. It was given by my sister, Sally, who was 12 years older. I found the party concept weird but she enjoyed it enormously. She met my guests at the door wearing a sheet over her head. She shook their hands with a rubber glove packed with crushed ice. They squealed.

We were blindfolded and asked to kiss the bible. When we did so the bible was quickly replaced by a plate of flour. Oh, hilarious! We bobbed for apples. I almost drowned. We listened to ghost stories in the dark. They all sang Happy Birthday. Auugghh!

The second was the year I turned 14. The party was given by my father's employer, Mr. Kress. This nice man was grateful to me for going to his office on Saturday afternoons and answering the telephone. I was dead keen to do it because I could practice typing on his whizz-bang electric golf ball typewriters and write screenplays. Can you believe it, they were all rejected.

A tent was put up in our yard. Mr. Kress had one of his lorries piled with hay bales and my guests and I were taken for a hayride around the city. It was a wildly unusual thing to do and was the talk of the school next day. When we returned there was food, soft drinks and a huge chocolate cake. There were Halloween pumpkins dotted about smelling of candle wax and burnt pumpkin. There was no adult supervision, nothing was organized and the party sort of fizzled out. If they sang Happy Birthday it is mercifully blotted from my memory.

I have nothing left from these events except the fake emerald and diamond earrings seen here on top of the Italian terracotta jack o' lantern. They were given to me by my best friend whose name is unforgettable -- Olive May Green. The annoying thing was that my birthday isn't even on Halloween, only very near to it. In typing this I realize that while I have given many parties and enjoyed setting them up, I always wanted to disappear once they started. People don't change; they just get older.