Birthdays

Yesterday was my birthday - my seventy fourth, if you want to know.  And it set me thinking about my birthdays sixty to seventy years ago.

These days it often seems as though time flies and a decade passes in the time it took to get through a year all that time ago.  Birthdays were very special events, eagerly anticipated, excitedly prepared for. 

At infants' school there was a birthday cake.  It wasn’t edible, just a round tin covered in a white substance (plaster?) and decorated with candles to be blown out by the birthday boy or girl as the rest of the class sang, “Happy Birthday”. 

I would have a birthday party and special tea to which I could invite six friends.  Mother would buy a packet of six invitations which was a cunning way  of making sure only six friends could be invited.  My parties were usually all girls who would arrive in best party frocks with pretty ribbons in their hair.  She would bake a special cake, not the character cakes of today but a cake decorated with the appropriate number of candles and maybe "hundreds and thousands" or Smarties.

There would also be sandwiches which were cut on the diagonal as a special treat.  I have no idea why diagonally cut sandwiches tasted better but Mother had me convinced that it was so!  Sausage rolls were also mandatory as was either a trifle or jelly and blancmange. 

Then games.  Musical chairs, pass the parcel, blind man’s buff.  When Father came home from work he would come and play with us too.  At the end of the party each child would go home with a single gift, maybe a pencil or a packet of sweets, not the party bags of today.  Oh, and everyone took a slice of cake wrapped in a paper napkin.

And I would go up to bed, probably planning next year’s birthday.