Queen of the South: See what I did there? Queen? Dumfries. Oh, please yourselves. Pic: PA
It was my birthday yesterday. Not a particularly auspicious one, but a birthday all the same. I celebrated my birthday by going home, washing the kitchen floor and sitting slumped in front of the telly with a microwave meal for one. This low key celebration of my advancing years prompted a period of quiet reflection and a review of my 49 years on the planet. Y’know the kind of thing…je ne regrette rien and all that. However, no use dwelling on the past, eh readers? So I turned my attention, such as it is, to things I’d like to do before I die.
1. I’d quite like to say the words “Oh I’m gagging for a bit of salad” or ‘Mmmm, this dry lettuce tastes wonderful”.
2. I’d like to have naturally pert bosoms again, now that I’m brazen enough to appreciate them and want to show them off. By extension, I’d like to be able to pop to Marks for a bra off the shelf instead of having them Clyde-built and reinforced by rivets and high tensile wire.
3. I’d like to be able to watch a documentary about the Large Hadron Collider and not zone out and start thinking about fluffy bunnies.
4. I’d like to sleep right through the night without waking up at 3am for a wee.
5. I’d like to be able to produce a perfectly acceptable boiled egg. Ditto poached egg. I’m rubbish at both. My boiled eggs are always snottery and my poached egg yolks are more often than not estranged from the white, possibly due to overzealous water swirling on my part prior to the dropping in of the egg.
6. I’d like to learn how to be a tidy person. The kind of person who can greet unexpected visitors with a tidy house and an oven fresh scone.
7. I’d like to be able to wear the kind of shoes I wore when I was in my twenties and my centre of gravity was in the right place for slutty footwear.
8. I’d like to be able to spell diarrhoea without resorting to a dictionary every flaming time.
9. I’d like to finish just ONE project before starting another one. I cite as evidence the dress I intended to make for Becky’s wedding, stripping of wallpaper border in spare bedroom, weeding the patio, and organising my DVDs into alphabetical order and keeping them that way for longer than a day.
10. I’d like it not to be against the actual law to sneak up behind men with ponytails and cut them off.
Finally, although this one isn’t on my list, I can stroke it off my list of things I’m not really bothered if I do before I do, but would do if the opportunity presented itself. I saw the Queen and the Duke of Embra. Yes Phil and Betty descended upon the bonnie toon o’ Dumfries. Literally descended, as it happens, because I understand they flew in by helicopter. Despite not wearing my comfy-fugly shoes today, I stood and awaited their arrival at the Dumfries Midsteeple, which is also, incidentally, a stone’s throw from arguably the best chippy in Dumfries. The air today, however, was not fragrant with the smell of chip fat. No no. Perish the thought that Her Majesty’s nostrils should be tainted by eau de fish supper. Instead the air was fragrant with disinfectant and fresh paint. Even the bins were discreetly removed for the occasion. I have some grainy unfocussed photographs of the occasion on my iPhone if anybody wants to see.
Meanwhile, that’s another birthday over and another year older. Nice of the Queen to visit for my birthday. She didn’t bring me a present, but if she had, I imagine it would have been some lavender scented Bronnley bath cubes that make your bum feel gritty when you sit on them in the bath.
