A significant day – depending on how much numbers mean. From today I’m 60 years old. As work commitments spread ahead for at least two years, and I’m demanded by dozens of people and causes every week, I don’t sense any great turning point here. My eyesight began to deteriorate twelve years ago but my hearing would probably benefit from nothing more than a cleaning out of the ears and I can still haul myself over Parliament Hill and the Heath without walking.
I drive up to Hampstead Town Hall (described by Pevsner as ‘a disgrace to such an artistic and prosperous community’) to deliver the sound system [for my 60th birthday party]. Phil Daniels (the personification of a Centre Manager – the new administrocrat) lets me in. ‘Would you like the door open now?’ he asks, in a tone suggesting many years’ practice at putting in official requests. As there’s no other way of getting into the building that I can see I indicate this might be a good thing.
The Victorian tiled floor and hallway looks very fi ne and Phil’s staff (all on time and a half today) are sweeping it and one of the women is titivating the skirting board with a feather duster.
Already had some ingenious and very different presents – Bernard Heyes [editor on the ‘Hemingway Adventure’ series] mocked up a National Geographic cover – with my face replacing Sir Ed Hillary’s above the title ‘50 Years of Everest’. Helen has given me a chunky Guy Taplin boat with fish hanging
from a line and two pipe-smoking male figures looking out to sea.
Complete speech, change, and drive back up to the Town Hall by midday. Balloons in place, and soon Miriam the violinist arrives. She was an unknown quantity to me, a recommendation of Tom’s, and again I’d been occasionally fearful of how she’d work. No problems here – with her curly black locks of gypsy-like hair, upfront, American (I guess) personality and great playing skill, she helps bring the oddly clumpy Grand Staircase to life.
Miriam fiddles on the stairs, Monica’s team pop open the champagne (Taittinger from Majestic) and the white wine (Domaine St Hilaire from Anne and Jonathan).
Party Party’s banner has clearly been created by a dyslexic. Michael is spelt ‘Micheal’, and only moments before the party begins Will notices that ‘Happy Birthday’ reads ‘Happy Birtday’. Will improvises an H.
A wonderful cake, covered with souvenirs of my life – school scarves, Cloudy Bay bottles, miniature Patrick O’Brian novels, Sheffield United badge, the three cats, etc. Sits on the piano and is much admired.
Helen MC’s the speeches on the theme of reminiscence at various stages of life. Then Terry J, determined to lay my reputation for niceness, takes my life through the seven deadly sins and checks me off against each one – finding me guilty of all of them.
Then the children. Rachel is funny and quite straightforward, then, almost at the end, chokes back an attack of emotion and can’t really finish. Of course, this finds a response in other parts of the room and is really quite endearing. She’s followed by Will who is, by now, a confident speaker and very funny too, in a generously subversive way. I finish off the ‘entertainment’, and avoid anything too emotional, or any gushy tributes. In a sense the party itself is my tribute to all these good friends.
Share some happy but insistent tears with [my niece] Camilla over Angela, and how much we both wished she were here. Graham in his recollections of me in our Sheffield youth, ‘Whenever there was trouble, Michael was nowhere to be seen!’
The children’s gift to me is a series of photos, taken at the One O’Clock Club on the Heath in the same location as the famous ones that Stuart Robertson took nearly 25 years ago. Shots of them 25 years on, up against the same fence, playing on the same swings and clambering over the same obstacle course. It shows time can’t stand still, but that families can make it seem that way.
The children’s gesture means as much to me as any of the presents. I think partly because it’s a recognition of the fact that they had a childhood happy enough to remember and celebrate (I can’t imagine Angela and myself doing the same for our parents) and partly because, though different, they all support, nurture, advise, tease, irritate and seem generally fond of – each other!
As a final treat we watch ‘East of Ipswich’ on BBC Four. Just H and myself. Both sexagenarians now. And still up at midnight!