Fifty

When I turned 50, I started to keep account of the things that happened to me during that year. The list included great happiness and deep sadness.

I hosted a party. DJ Ron was requested to play all my favourite tracks and I was stuck to the dance floor only to leave for a quick visit to the pie van for a cheeky sausage roll.

Due to the encouragement of many, and determined hard work, my physical health improved. As a result I was able to tackle walking up hills with ease. On one of these hills lived some sheep and I bottle-fed one of the offspring – a first time encounter. The bottle was comfortingly warm and I had to keep a firm grip to avoid it being taken with force by the hungry lamb.

My brother accompanied me to some gigs as we are huge fans of live music. We saw the Happy Mondays ( a maraca was possibly featured) and Orbital at Dreamland in Margate. We still laugh about dancing all evening, chatting with friendly strangers and the downside of queueing for drinks and the toilet.

My sad times included the death of a neighbour. I loved her so much. She was a beautiful person – the children in the opposite house, sweetly named her ‘the garden lady’ as she spent much time tending her flowers. When the ‘love your garden’ TV team came to transform a well-deserved Gurkha’s garden in the street she took up home-made chocolate brownies for the film crew.

During the year my mum‘s physical health deteriorated greatly. I felt an overwhelming wash of melancholy for her as she had, in the past, played tennis and hockey for her home county of Essex.

Out of the many happy experiences included watching the whole of 2001 A Space Odyssey, celebrating 28 years of marriage, and supporting my amazing pupils in their music exams.

My 50th year was only 365 days out of a lifetime. A year, like any other year, of taking the rough with the smooth. Yet those days I can remember as my special yesterdays to treasure, like a gift, forever.