Birthday weekend - part 1

I woke up yesterday a whole year older than I had been when I went to sleep. I'd finally hit 40, somehow!

Helen had asked me on Friday what I would really like to do for my birthday, but I could think of nothing else I'd rather do than relax on our patio and maybe have lunch or dinner out somewhere (something we've not done on our own since last May, which is quite some time considering that at one point in our lives back in the UK we would generally eat out together most weekends).

I started the day with a lie in, and just as a cup of tea arrived courtesy of my lovely wife, the tablet PC started ringing. It was Mom calling to wish me a happy birthday via Skype from her bed - so she and I both sat in our respective beds chatting and sipping tea for half an hour before signing off to start our days. Since mine was an hour further ahead than Mom's it was now already 10am, so I had a shower and went downstairs for breakfast.

"Happy birthday!"

After breakfast, I decided that how I really wanted to spend the remainder of my birthday morning was to drag Helen around a couple of local garden centres/nurseries in the hope of buying some more shrubs - showing my age, some would say, but either way I enjoyed myself and we returned from our trip with some young lavender plants and a couple of hydrangeas (oh, if my 20-year-old self could hear me now...!).

On the way back up the valley, we stopped at Amanda's to buy some lunch. By now, I had decided that I didn't even want to go out for a meal today, as that would disrupt the relaxing afternoon I had in mind, so lunch from Amanda was the compromise - and a lavish affair it was too! We spent almost €20 and walked away with a chilled bottle of Tuscan Chardonnay, ten slices of Tuscan prosciutto, ten slices of coppa (another type of cured meat), four meatballs, two fillets of breaded cod and a heap of rosemary roasted potatoes.

But before I could dive headlong into my birthday lunch, Reggie needed a walk so after unloading the plants and food back at the house, we got straight back in the car and headed on up the road to the quarry track just beyond Vellano where we let Reggie have a good stretch of his legs in the hope we'd reap the rewards and have a tired puppy for the afternoon.

By the time we got home it was 2pm, so it was a late lunch but well worth the wait. As we sat on the patio with our chilled glasses of wine waiting for the fish, meatballs and potatoes to heat through, we tucked into a plate of cured meats and bread - a simple pleasure, but oh my word I was a happy boy (not sure I can call myself a 'boy' any longer!).

Lunch was a leisurely and drawn out affair with probably more wine than was sensible, but it was my birthday, and we had such a lovely afternoon talking about life and the universe that we got a touch carried away and afternoon turned into evening before we knew it! When the light started to fade, we retired indoors and Helen cooked me our artichoke gnocchi dish for dinner, after which we vegged out in front of the TV for an hour before collapsing into bed feeling fully rested, fully fed and thoroughly happy with my Tuscan birthday.