Dear Reader, it cannot have escaped
your attention that yours truly has just passed the magical
threshold. The various stages of celebration went on for almost a
week, reminiscent of the famous story of a royal relative sending a
belated cable to the Czar of Russia: “For three days running we
have been toasting your health”, to which His Majesty replied:
“High time you stopped”.
About a year ago when I first started
planning my sixtieth, there were many options I considered. One was
to bring the whole family over to Cambridge and have a big party
including local friends. It probably wouldn't be unreasonably
expensive, but the logistics was too complicated. Therefore I asked
the family to keep the date open and await further instructions. Ten
years ago, for my fiftieth, I had a huge fancy dinner for friends,
colleagues and grown-up family members. I couldn't possibly repeat
the grandeur of that one, and I also felt that I wanted all the
grandchildren to be present. Eventually we decided on a family-only
dinner. We considered a stately home outside Stockholm, but again the
logistics would be hard, so we found a very special place in town
where we had been and knew the food was superb. It turned out they
also had rooms.
That done, I started looking around for
some form of celebration here in Cambridge. My first thought was that
I only had been here for a short time, I didn't have many friends...
and then I started counting, and when I got over forty it was pretty
clear – apart from the happy realisation that I did have
plenty of good friends – that some event was unavoidable. Moreover,
it definitely felt a pleasure rather than a duty.
However, I didn't want to have a garden
party at home. I've had those, and the house is big enough, but
somehow it felt wrong for the occasion. I made some investigations
and decided that the Combination Room at Homerton had the necessary
ambience and that their catering would be good value. I decided that
a Monday afternoon would be suitable, since people might not want to
come in on the weekend. My first attempt was discouraging since the
catering people demanded room hire double the costs of the reception
itself, although I suggested that as a Fellow I might be allowed to
use college facilities for free. I emailed a polite “Thank you,
I'll look for another option”. Half an hour later they got back
saying that the college Bursar had waived room hire.
As I was relating it all to Morag she
wondered whether I would accept, as a birthday present from the
teaching team, a fancy dinner. That sounded nice. More or less at the
same time, Staffan announced that apart from the family dinner on the
day, there would be a surprise lunch with two overseas guests who
just happened to be in Stockholm. The serendipity wasn't very
convincing, but he refused even to hint who the guests might be. I
had my guesses, but he wouldn't confirm or deny. I was almost hundred
percent sure the mysterious visitors would be from Finland because it
was the only reasonable guess, and I thought that perhaps they would
offer me an honorary doctorate. Another option might be a
festschrift, but I didn't quite believe it.
As I sent out invitations for the
reception at Homerton, two people replied with a comment that their
birthdays were two days later, on May 16. I had never, ever met
anyone with the same birthday as mine so I wrote back pointing this
out and suggested that we three born-on-May-16 ladies should go out
for a drink together. Which both thought was a brilliant idea, and we
even managed to find a date, after a Faculty meeting the week before.
Meanwhile, my thoughtful daughter Julia
wondered whether I seriously considered ignoring all friends in
Stockholm and volunteered to do a reception for me which was a very
noble action. She immediately created a Facebook event, and the two
Facebook-passive friends also received invitations by email. Most of
them responded at once and were delighted.
Thus the celebration was to continue
over a week: drink with born-on-May-16 ladies on Thursday, Homerton
reception on Monday, flight to Sweden on Tuesday, surprise lunch and
family dinner on Wednesday, reception on Thursday, back to Cambridge
on Thursday evening, and a dinner with close friends on Friday. For
each occasion, I very strictly specified: no presents, no flowers,
although I was sure at least some people would go against my wish or
simply fail to read the instructions. As the date approached, I was
torn between happy apprehension and horror. Some days I wished I had
decided to disappear to an undisclosed destination.
To be continued.
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