The Original Rock n Roll Princess Rides Again

Pour moi? C'est la vie!

I'm twenty eight! After I turned eighteen, I delighted at perching there upon the bar in my local dive, (then sympathetic to under eighteens) and spouting the very words "I'm eighteen". This was met by an equally delightful reaction, of drinks arriving before me, forthwith. I carried on with this little performance for two weeks, until I had squeezed every bit of usable life out of it. By which time the question "Is it your birthday?" Could be answered no other way than with "Not any more, but I'm still eighteen!"

This year I was treated to a Sunday birthday. My mother had all of her babies on Sundays, bar one of us, who kept her in labour for three hours longer into Monday morning, in order not to share birthdays with her. We also all met our golden date in the same year. This is when you turn your age on the date of your birthday. Which by default took our mother back to age of 21 in 1999. Wowee!

My weekend began during an extraneous downpour on Friday afternoon. I was wading through the North Sea, as it was falling from the sky above me. Though I was refusing point blank to let it put a dampener on my spirits. (Vodka, Rum and Tequila.) Which made my hands go numb from the weight of my shopping bags. The rain gave the outside of my wool coat the scent of one part Thierry Mugler's Angel and one part wet sheep and eau de sweaty MoFo on the inside. Luscious. I arrived home, stripped off my funky threads and got straight on the phon-e-mail to sell a creative concept, with which I have fallen deeply and romantically in love, to the powers that be of a well known boutique festival. Task complete, I ran aeroplane-style to my local organically-sound-supermarket for further replenishments. On arriving home once again, my biceps flexing under the weight of fresh limes and exotic cocktail bound juices I heaved into the arms to my still long suffering BFF, like a salt sprinkled dying slug. To my good fortune she came equipt with luxury massage, kit and kaboole and Rioja. Praise be!

I am certain that if it wasn't for my treat of a birthday massage, my head would have popped right off, like the corks in our Cava, through sheer frenetic, over-excitement. My laid back limber from loafing about the white sands of the Caribbean, has long since worn off, here home sweet home on the english riviera, sunken deep in the depths of bleak mid-winter. But on having my surging sinovial fluids probed, my shoulders eased away from their lofty perch; clamped to my ears and the rate of my heart and thankfully also my speech, significantly slowed. At least now my compatriots, due imminently at my palace gates, would find me almost coherent. It was at this point I was given the verbal small print. I would be drunken and probably disorderly, as quick as the speed of light, as a result of my stimulated blood flow. Kerching, cheap date!

Soon my girlfriends began to arrive one by one for an evening of guilty pleasures. We slipped, stretched and slopped into pyjamas and proceeded to party the night away. There were games, there was getting into fancy dress, there was sliding down the stairs in our sleeping bags, there was hula hooping on my bed, there was tightrope walking on my bannisters, there was a swear-a-thon. There was a Wonsey. A fabulously high-waisted, fairisle printed, pinky coloured, all-in-one outfit. So we all had a go. Who would have ever known so much joy could be squeezed out of (and into) such a fanciful thing. There was also a bag of flour. Originally for use as part of a traditional party game from my family history, involving picking up chocolate out of the flour with your mouth. But it is only right, that with such an amount of flour amoung such company, that the flour should learn to fly. It filled more than our faces. It filled our ears and our noses, it covered our clothes, it covered the carpet, it filled the air, it stiffened my hair! So I scrawled my name in it on the back of the sofa and jumped into it to flaunt my handywork with pride, dressed as a rabbit. Obviously.

But we are ever such good girls. Naughty but nice perhaps. We got straight to task with the vacuum cleaner, before the messy lounge fantasy could get any more out of control. It was at this very moment that the front door swung slowly open, to reveal to us the BiG Bear, my landlord. Revealing to him some sort of haunted housework nightmare! But my crack team of girls-in-pyjamas were too strong a force of charm. Sassy commanders of good will. So of course, if you can't beat 'em, you gotta join them. If you've got a problem maybe you can hire them... But then the face packs came out and another fight broke loose. The results were muddy faces all round.

We made much mayhem.

We also made treats to eat, cocktails and tall tales, mended outfits and darned. Vacuum cleaned and charmed. Fought, taught, shared and declared. We held court over boys and girls, births, marriages and deaths. Did things we'd never have guessed. This birthday was my best. Well done to all of us who made it so.

Thanks for coming

I am so blessed by the generosity and thoughtfulness of the whimsical, twinkley, soft and scented, specially selected gifts bestowed upon me by such beautiful women. Even for the pure alcohol uber-hangover that shackeled me to my duvet when my zenana came to depart one by one. But now that I have burned my candle at both ends and lit a cigarette off it, I feel melted in the middle and if I don't give my body a health spree, it's going to kill me. Until next week of course. The Original Rock n Roll Princess rides again!