Happy birthday Auntie Mo

Well, today I went to the Flying Pizza, in Leeds, for my Auntie Mo's birthday. There was me and my 2 cousins, Jo and Mandy, and Auntie Mo's sister, Sheila and their cousin, Kath.

I was late getting there. As usual. Now it's hardly ever my fault being late, 'something' always happens. Today I got in the car at 11.50 to meet them 12 miles away on a route that involves pretty good roads and a couple of country lanes. It normally takes me 20-25 minutes.

I got in the car, I turned on the engine and reversed out of the drive. My phone rang. I stopped to answer it. It was Theo threatening to walk out of school because his friends had gone down town and left him and he was alone and freezing and hated school et cetera et cetera. So I pleaded with him to stay at school seeing as it's the only day he actually has to be there this week, he hung up. I rang Jonathan who was at home (I'm still at the end of our drive) and asked him to ring Theo and sort it out. After a bit of a screaming match, Jonathan said he would. So I set off again.

Ooooh, I got about 50 yards down the road and the phone rang again. It was Jonathan - I could still see our bloody house - saying that Theo was just ranting and had hung up on him. I told Jonathan to deal with it. (Now I usually deal with this sort of stuff, but I had to be somewhere so had to leave it in Jonathan's 'capable' hands.) Set off again. Theo rang. Set off again. Jonathan rang. I rang Theo. Theo rang back. I rang Jonathan. And then set off again.

I have a trip computer on my car. It had taken me 20 minutes and I hadn't even managed one bloody mile - and I was on my third fag.

Eventually got to the Flying Pizza only half an hour late thanks to driving like a turbo nutter bastard - after a few more calls and text messages. Walked through the door and yet another bloody phone call from Jonathan. Christ, how would he managed if I dropped dead? Given the amount of cigs I had smoked on the journey, 7 (I knew I'd smoked a lot so I counted how many) and the texting and phone calls while trying to drive/stop/start, it isn't going to be that far in the future.

And then I joined the birthday 'party' and it made me laugh - a lot. There was me, and my 2 slightly younger cousins. My auntie (looking fab for 70 in her super-trendy Belstaff boots á la Kate Moss), her slightly younger sister, and their cousin of a similar age. I love my auntie very much - and she loves me very much too. But I always feel like a little girl when I'm with her. So it really tickled me when I arrived later than the rest and had a second to observe, as an outsider, that we were in fact a bunch of middle aged to elderly ladies having lunch. And yet, all through our great lunchtime, we behaved like tittering teenage girls.

Our bodies may have shrivelled but our spirit remains.