The Birthday Party – Part 2

This is me welcoming everyone to my party

As my lovely goddaughter Georgia said, when she was helping me send out invitations to my birthday party, it was unlikely that all 60 plus would come.  But very nearly all did, battling through the snow, to my delight; all ages, from 3 months (Stella’s babe) through to sprightly 80-year-olds.

The chefs at the Royal China Club outdid themselves, piling on the dim sum, and the duck and all its important trimmings (I’m getting hungry just thinking about it, despite my current nausea).  Even my friend, infamous for his strange tastes – he’ll only eat seaweed at Chinese restaurants – was personally accommodated with enough to drown in.

We wrote a seating plan – not me, I was too sick, but Georgia and a friend did, almost entirely at random, because they didn’t know who many people were.  So a lot of shuffling together happened, and friends of mine going back decades met other friends who go back decades but in a separate strand.   They could have been at a masquerade party, because guests only knew a few other guests, and the chances of their being sat together were slim.  It made for some interesting conversations.

Fortunately, my friends are from a broad enough sweep that no one was in danger of running into their enemies or their ex-partners.

But all the young people were sat together, because it’s important to me: this is where friendships of the future are formed, here at Chinese restaurants celebrating an ancient friend’s birthday, rather than the usual, school and uni and the rest.

The most touching part of the evening was a Robert Frost poem recited by the actor and dear friend of mine, Richard Griffiths, who substituted my name for that of Frost’s daughter, Lesley:

The actor Richard Griffiths reciting a Robert Frost poem at my birthday party

The last word of a Blue Bird

As I went out a Crow

In a low voice said, “Oh,

I was looking for you.

How do you do?

I just came to tell you

To tell Margie (will you?)

That her little Bluebird

Wanted me to bring word

That the north wind last night

That made the stars bright

And made ice on the trough

Almost made him cough

His tail feathers off.

He just had to fly!

But he sent her Good-by,

And said to be good,

And wear her red hood,

And look for skunk tracks

In the snow with an ax -

And do everything!

And perhaps in the spring

He would come back and sing.”