Another year gone then . . . what's for dinner?


July signals the end of the school year and, in my case, the beginning of a new year. Having a birthday in July is a mixed blessing. In my school days, I longed for some reason to have a birthday at home and always felt thwarted that I only just missed out on this treat. I don't what I was imagining would happen - at school you got cards from everyone and presents and a cake and the bumps. At home, it would have been a much quieter affair. In those days, when your father was in the Armed Forces, your family moved to a new place every two years. If you went to boarding school - which we did - you never got to know anyone long enough for them to think about remembering your birthday.

The value of having a birthday during term time has been brought home to me by the realisation that Youngest Son, whose birthday is in August, will always miss out. And even though we have no intention of moving anywhere for decades, his little friends will no doubt be off on their holidays as soon as term ends and so he will never have a full cohort of buddies to attend his celebrations.

This year was significant in the sense that it was the first time since I was 13 years old that my birthday fell on a Friday 13th. I recall scoring 13 rounders on that day, and we won the match, so it was probably a very good day indeed and the fact that we were playing rounders indicates that the weather must have been good too.

This Friday 13th, sadly, was not so auspicious. Birthdays do not usually bother me too much, so it took me by surprise to find that I was SO p***ed about this one. It is true that Mr Darnbrough did take me to see the new Harry Potter film on the Saturday night but I did have to make my own birthday cake and the boys did have to be dragged from playing with their new hot wheels track in order to sing happy birthday to me. It doesn't really make you feel appreciated.

Eventually, I realised that it wasn't so much the birthday being a bit of a damp squib it was the fact that, as many mothers will probably recognise, I was just feeling as though everyone else's needs took priority over mine - all the time. It happens occasionally. You find yourself at the kitchen sink, or shoving washing into the washing machine for the umpteenth time and you think: "I didn't spend four years at university to end up doing this!" It can make you very crabby and difficult to be around while it lasts but it does eventually wear off.

That feeling of being at the bottom of the heap was summed up for me by Youngest Son, who has been busy planning his own birthday celebrations. Initially he had decreed that no girls would be allowed to come. He has relented sufficiently to include me because "you can serve the food, Mummy."

Note to self: This summer to be the point at which the boys start taking more of a share of the household chores - and Daddy helps to set an example.

Note to self (and any Significant Others): next year I want to go to The Henley Festival.

Earwiggings: Overheard in a cafe . . . .



A woman describes how her husband bought her a hand blender for her birthday. She was seriously underimpressed.

"And then I thought, OK we'll see how he likes it. We'd been saying we needed a gravy boat for ages so I bought one for him for his birthday. He got the point . . . "

Earwiggings: Overheard in a cafe . . . .



A group of women are talking about all the things they could do now they've hit 40.



"I love thinking about all the things I'd like to do. It gives me so much pleasure . . . ."

Don't we live in momentous times?







What a couple of weeks: Gordon Brown is now Prime Minister; terrorist attacks get thwarted (thank you God!); Federer wins his fourth Wimbledon; I harvest the first of the courgettes and the Marcos (garlic bulbs to the uninitiated) and my cousin Owen in Peru forsakes geology to set himself up as a classic car entrepreneur with a social conscience. . . . oh, and Mr Darnbrough has taken a sledge hammer to parts of our kitchen . . .

I expect everyone has read and talked all they wish to about the first three subjects and I am sure that they can wait patiently for the latest veg patch bulletin. The subject I wish to turn to now is my cousin Owen and "Clasicos con Carino".

This is a charity which he has set up to train orphaned and underprivileged young people in Peru to restore classic cars, thereby giving them marketable skills which they can use to to get jobs or to set up their own businesses. Owen reckons that the classic car market is on the up in Europe and North America and will improve in Peru as the Peruvian economy picks up. He wants to use this to the charity's advantage.

Talking to him about this is like being hit by a hurricane. He is SO committed to it and so full of ideas about how to take it forward. From its beginnings a couple of months ago, he has already organised one event on 24 June and is now planning the official launch of the charity later this month. I will be covering the event for this blog (sadly from this side of the Atlantic). Might even work out how to put pictures up . . . .

And so we come to the veg patch

The Marcos are wonderful. They slip out of their skins like broad beans out their pods. This is fine because you don't have to do very many of them to get enough - when you are shelling broad beans it can get a little tedious - and they roast divinely. I shall definitely be planting garlic again next year.

The first courgette was a triumph. I insisted the whole family gather in the greenhouse to be there when I cut it. I was going to share it with Mr Darnbrough but Youngest Son was sufficiently impressed with the whole business to ask if he could have first taste. In the spirit of encouraging your children to eat more vegetables, I let him have it. . . . after all, I do have about eight plants . . . . anyone interested in some courgettes in a few weeks time?

Washing fruit and veg thoroughly before eating has now become an absolute priority owing to the fine layer of dust that has settled over the fruit bowls (and every other surface). It was Mr D's intention to have this particular kitchen project finished before he started his latest job (as of today he's going to be doing a lot of travelling around Europe for the next few months). . . . The result is that we are now living with the fridge freezer in the middle of the breakfast area and a bomb site were the utility room used to be.

It would be easy to point the finger and say that DIY enthusiasts always underestimate the size of the job that they take on but that would not really be fair in this case. Events really have conspired against him. The final nail in the coffin was the fact that we had not one but two sets of visitors staying the night over the weekend. Lovely though it was to see them all, it did not make it easy to get on with the job in hand. He managed about an hour and a half on Sunday afternoon in between the first visitors leaving and the next ones arriving. I expect it will all get sorted out eventually. In the mean time, all meals get taken in the dining room and I have decided that the next job on the list will be to take down the wall between that and the kitchen.

What with chatting, holding pieces of plasterboard, making endless cups of tea and soft drinks, cooking, keeping children amused, getting them up, putting them to bed and feeding them, we didn't see very much of the tennis.