Birthdays these days come and go without much of a kerfuffle. Last night, B and me popped down to our local ‘gastro pub’ for a very enjoyable, yet quiet dinner and a 'couple' of glasses of wine, but that was all...
The days of wild, outrageously-themed parties, fuelled by obscene quantities of cheap alcohol and resulting in hangovers that last well into next week are long over for us. They sort of fizzled out when the seemingly never-ending round of raucous 21st and 25th birthday parties finally rampaged to an end in the last days of the 20th century. There was a momentary, half-hearted revival of the “Party Like It’s 1999” days for some 30th birthdays, but we never really got up off the couch long enough to cause a stir...we are officially Old Farts.
For me, the best birthday parties were those of my childhood. My birthday fell just before the end of the long, summer school holiday, when the days were hot and sunny and carefree. Birthday celebrations were simple affairs, usually only lasting a couple of hours at most and followed a set routine. The whole school class would be invited to arrive promptly at 2 pm, when the festivities kicked off with the party games... predominantly running races but also the old favourites of pass-the-parcel, balloon relay, musical bumps and scavenger hunt.
My older brother took charge of the games at my birthday parties...what a great brother! you’re probably thinking, but he did have an ulterior motive. Any prizes left over at the end of the party would usually be divided up between the two of us, so he suggested “Let’s not be too quick to dish out the prizes, Nat....the more left at the end means more for us!” I was not 100% keen on his plan, finding it a tad unfair on our gift-bearing guests...but back in those days I believed Big Brother knew best.
BB decided we’d set the bar high....awards would only be given to the winner of three races in a row, and then it was a chocolate frog or lollipop only for the child in first place, nothing for any others. As the house that my family lived in at the time had a huge garden that backed onto vacant scrubby bushland, these running races became mini marathons....and had two friends reaching for their steroid pumps long before the games were over. Strangely enough, before responding to their invites to my birthday party the following year, the asthmatic duo first asked if BB would again be organising the party games....
Hot and exhausted from all that running about, we’d gather round the dining room table, which would be laden with the feast that Mom had probably spent most of the previous week preparing. A typical menu at my parties would be a salty/sugary/E-number overload from a combination of crustless sandwiches, sausage rolls and mini meatballs, crisps, cheesey curls, fairy cakes, rainbow jelly cups, biscuit happy faces and ice cream cone clowns, all washed down with lemonade or cream soda.
The party would culminate in the age-old rendition of “Happy Birthday”, with blowing out of the candles and cutting of the novelty birthday cake...again imaginatively and painstakingly created by Mom. My favourites were a guitar (with liquorice strings), a chocolate cat (with liquorice whiskers) and a kitchen stove (complete with chocolate biscuit dials). Every child went home with a 'present' of a piece of cake wrapped up in a paper napkin (and the more athletic ones with a chocolate frog or lollipop).
As we grew older, the parties became more sophisticated and expensive, and therefore restricted to only close friends. Two of the more memorable ones I was invited to were lunch at Wimpy (hamburgers and milkshakes) followed by a trip to see 'Canonball Run' at the cinema, and an afternoon of unlimited ball sinking at the putt-putt (miniature golf) course. Summer swimming parties and sleepovers were all the rage aged about 10 to 14, and thereafter childish birthday parties were replaced with the dreaded teenage (boy-girl) parties....
Those painfully awkward times are best left forgotten.
Savage chickens found
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