Lucky me

Well, all things considered, a pretty damn great birthday.

First and foremost, my dear friend Catherine driving hundreds of miles to spend the weekend with me. That in and of itself would have been enough to make the weekend incredibly special.

When I woke up Saturday morning and started looking at emails and birthday wishes on Facebook I quickly realised I (along with the rest of the world) had been given a very special present – Joe Biden being declared the winner of the Presidential race. I really could not have asked for anything else.

But wait, there’s more!

My first cappuccino in my birthday present mug from my friend Jane.

A beautiful sunny day for a walk with Catherine at one of my favourite places on the island.

Dinner that evening at the lovely island restaurant, the owner of which had already agreed to put on a special specially for me. When we were led to our table this was waiting.

A bottle of my favourite wine from the wonderful Bad Girls Book Club. In case you can’t read it, the card says “Enjoy the day bigly! Happy Birthday from the Bad Girls. I was deeply touched and confess I had a bit of a Sally Fields moment.

One weekend, back in the day, back in Vancouver in the 1990s, when Mike had gone to Victoria to visit his parents, I decided to invite a load of women friends over for a potluck dinner. The evening was a riotous success, so much so that whenever Mike was away I’d have another women’s dinner.

Having Catherine here brought back memories of those dinners and I thought, well, why not? Maybe we could arrange a Zoom call on Sunday for a reunion of the Wise Women. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Given that one of the core members lives in London, eight hours ahead, 11am local time, 2pm eastern time and 7pm GMT.

Although there’s Facebook (creating the illusion of being in touch when you’re really not) and emails, I hadn’t actually seen quite a few of the women on the call for many years. It was wonderful. The only thing missing from back in the day was the wine flowing – with only Rowan in London guzzling during the call. (One of the participants in Montreal did crack open a bottle before the call was over.) General agreement that next time, Rowan would have to get up in the middle of the night so the rest of us could be swilling wine.

It’s sometimes too easy, when you live on your own with a cat, especially this time of year when the days are getting shorter and shorter, too easy to forget how incredibly lucky I am to have such fabulous friends. Something to cling to with snow in the forecast.

Lucky me.