Teeth and the cake

Yesterday was my birthday – pause for a quick roll of drums. Amazingly I seem to be 45. I say amazingly, as in my mind I am just past my student days, a mental aberration which is intensifying as I read my way through Stephen Fry’s, ‘The Fry Chronicles’, detailing his life at university.

The past fortnight has been in the nature of an ongoing festival of parties, dinners and outings for all sorts of occasions to the extent that I rather feel as if I have been on a celebratory high for weeks, so yesterday’s birthday came as a culminating moment. I had a lovely day and felt very spoilt and cosseted by the human members of my family.

The dog, in contrast, rose to the drama of the moment and leapt onto the kitchen table where he devoured the remaining half of my birthday cake – he spent the rest of the day lying his basket looking very sick and sheepish – as well he might. Irritating though he is in many ways, he is not normally a food stealer, knickers yes, food no; but he does have a bad track record on the birthday cake front having previously guzzled his way through a significant portion of a lavish cake made for my mother. Unfortunately, on that occasion he got to it before any one else did. Fortunately, it was a square cake and with a few flicks of a large knife that I had seized with the intention of disembowelling the black fiend, I was able to convert it from a square to a circle, albeit with interesting markings round the edges where I had attempted to disguise the canine teethmarks.

Birthday euphoria vanished pretty quickly however as I flossed my teeth this morning – a birthday always brings on a raft of new resolutions such as regular flossing I find. To my horror, during this particular flossing frenzy, half a tooth fell out. This has not unnaturally sent me into a morose tailspin with my thoughts running along the lines of this is what happens once you cross the 45 year old line – your teeth fall out. Have therefore decided to abandon all the healthy living birthday resolutions such as flossing as they obviously only usher on the inevitable at speed – instead I am going to focus on the good living resolutions which will definitely be more fun emphasising as they do, wine, chocolate, and regular bouts of hysterical laughter and wild partying.