The other day was my birthday.

For many years, I hated my birthday. So much so, that all our children were born in late spring or early summer.

As a child, I never, ever had a birthday party. My parents were teachers; living in a choir school (where home was work, as in a vicarage); working up to and including Christmas Day. So as soon as that was over we went away and didn’t return until the beginning of term.

I can remember my mother saying, as if it were a badge of honour: you’ve never had a birthday at home.

My brother gave me one side of an LP for Christmas and the other side for my birthday. Surpassed only by the other brother giving me the second glove of a pair.

I did somehow have a low-key dinner party for my twenty-first, a dozen of us round the table, presumably after the event.

No huge dances filling a marquee in the garden, like some of my friends.

My first birthday at home was in my mid-thirties: my first party in our London vicarage.

Shaun took me out for a drink in the early evening, to the pub across the Green. He got a call from one of the children, we went home and the house exploded with corks and shrieks and friends and party poppers.

The thing about surprise birthday parties is they become more challenging year on year.

Even last year they managed to pull it off. I knew something was afoot: of course I did. And the quick drink with Shaun in the pub all those years ago, had turned into a hugely expensive clay pigeon shoot to keep me out of the house.

What took me aback was the scale of it.

The entire close harmony group staying on for Beef Wellington, twenty-six of us in evening dress around the table, Shaun not getting a bite because my father decided to stay downstairs with his carer (which would have been delightful except it was one of those evenings when my father decided to be miserable… and he hated rare meat anyway) and there simply wasn’t space for another plate or chair, or another slice of the boot, so Shaun waited on the rest of us.

Ben said afterwards it would have been a lot cheaper to pay his musician friends than feed them…

What I can’t quite recall is the exact year when it tipped over.

When I realised that, far from being at the worst time of year, my birthday is the best.

All the decorations still up. Lots of food left over from Christmas.

The family still at home.

Everyone off work.

And – lucrative bonus – we can let our house out for the most popular night of the year – thus paying for all of Christmas and my birthday, both – and not mind at all, because we celebrate the New Year two nights later.

Erm… Hmm.

The more astute of you may have spotted a disconnect there. True, we still have decorations… a few, from our sadly scaled-down Christmas. And food, ditto.

And some of us in the family still have work.

You change your perspective, don’t you?

Whenever I’m feeling particularly a failure, or dissatisfied, or unfulfilled, I say to myself:

Suppose I’d spent five years in a concentration camp, and just been released. I’d be pretty happy now, wouldn’t I? Simply hearing the birdsong. Being allowed a glass of water. Sleeping without terror. Or fleas.

I wouldn’t beat myself up that I hadn’t written a world-shattering symphony.

So it was on my birthday.

Alexander gave me double-ditzy daffodil bulbs for Christmas.

Six months ago, I would have thanked him and immediately thought, how can I pay someone to shove these in the ground for me? So I get the fun of seeing the flowers come up, without the chore of digging and delving and all that dross.

Now, I see this as at least half of the present, half of the pleasure, half the perk.

I spent a good two hours of my birthday, and of the few days beforehand, alone outside, churning over the soil. Breathing the exercise and fresh air deep into my soul. Enjoying the cold sun in the bare branches. Free mental health without the bore of joining a gym.

And making a new friend. 

In a time when we’re not allowed new friends.

Here he is…