Happy Birthday

Today would have been Muv’s 58th birthday. It would have killed her to be so close to 60, if she wasn’t already dead.

While she loved birthdays, she hated the idea of aging and due to her woeful grasp on mathematics the kids had her convinced for about three years that she was still in her early 20s when she was really creeping rapidly towards 30. She laughed about when she realised, but was secretly devastated.

She always acknowledged she was crap at maths and spelling, but she excelled at anything homely: gardening, cooking, sewing, being a mother, a friend and generally making a house a home. She even took evening classes in upholstery so she could redo the Chesterfield. I remember the horse hair going through the washing machine in pillow cases and stepping on a tack.

Every year she would make us a cake on our birthday. The year H had her appendix out, she got a cake in the shape of a bed with a little marzipan mouse tucked under the blackest. Peeling the icing blanket back revealed a tiny scar on the mouse’s belly. G had cakes made in the shape of a carp. S had ‘Big Sal used to make me coffee cake on my birthday... She knew it was my fav...’ L remembers ‘the clock cakes in yellow and red’.

She’d make the cakes after we’d gone to bed, she’d hide the cake in the high cupboards, which was an achievement because she was only 5’3, she’d design and ice while we were at school. We knew we’d get something special, but we’d never cheat and look. At least I wouldn’t, I can’t speak for the others.

I remember the year of the Rubik’s Cube vividly, Rachel and Laura had come around for dinner, so I was about eight or nine years old, still at St. Thomas’ of Canterbury in Merrow. I had been asking for a Rubik’s Cube for my birthday and I had been slightly disappointed that I didn’t get one. But the cake came out and it was a cube with nine squares on each side, iced in blue, red, green, orange, yellow and white, black liquorice laces divided the coloured squares. I was ecstatic. You can imagine my surprise and delight when the knife wouldn’t cut all the way through, my heart pounded, Laura and Rachel squealed, there was a hard mass in the centre of the cake. I had to cut around the lump. The cake slid apart to reveal at the centre a cube wrapped shiny tin foil. It was a Rubix’s Cube!



Happy Birthday Muv; wherever you may be.