Showing posts with label Birthdays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Birthdays. Show all posts

Sunday, January 03, 2021

The Big Five Oh...

 

(My 50th birthday present to me)


Yep, I've hit the half century of years on this planet. So I figured it was time to make a return to Fictions, some four years and a bit after the last post. And yes, I do realise that it's effectively shouting into the wind with no one listening after all this time.

But yeah, 50. 



Seems so incredibly old. I remember thinking about age when I was back in school, back when I was sitting on the Priory School hall floor and imagining just what it would be like to be 20, 30, 40, 50 and just not being able to get my head around it. (I also remember thinking how good it would be to get up the courage to actually tell the little girl with the long brown hair how I felt about her - but that's another very long and very interesting story in itself.)

Anyway, back to the age thing. Back when I was 10 it seemed like a lifetime to get to 50. Back when I was 15 and my own dad turned 50, he seemed so bloody old. 




But now I've actually managed to get to 50 myself, it doesn't seem all that much at all. I don't feel old. Not in any way. I certainly don't identify as old. And I definitely don't think I'm anything like what a 50-year-old was like when I was a kid.

So happy birthday to me, 
Happy birthday to me, 
Happy birthday dear me, 
Happy birthday to me.




50 years on the planet.
I've lived in Dudley, Birmingham, Pocklington, and Las Vegas. 
I've been married twice.
I've got a wonderful 21-year-old daughter.
I've worked in many different places and never felt more at home than when I'm around comics, whether that was my first job at Nostalgia & Comics or what I know will be my last job as a writer.

And I've never been happier than I am right now.

50 years... no problem at all.



Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Happy Birthday to Mrs B, Happy Birthday to Mrs B....

It's the birthday of Mrs B today. A very important birthday (but aren't they all). I could tell you what it is, but I might as well let Molly's fabulous cake do it for me... Bake Off has nothing on Molly...

 
 

And that was her haul. Not quite the complete thing, as we're off to see Duran Duran later in the year... a proper treat...




Thursday, January 03, 2013

42



I have become a Douglas Adams plotline. Oh hell.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Molly hits twelve....

Twelve.
Oh My God.
Twelve.
How the hell did that happen?

This was the present haul this morning....


The highlight of the birthday though.....


Her new Ukelele. Now, fair enough, she'd actually asked for an electric-acoustic guitar. But I managed to head that one off by heading to the excellent Pocklington Music and showing her just how much they cost! She's still wanting one, but I think she's realised it's something she may have to save up for!

But a cheap Ukelele was a perfect substitute, and she absolutely adores it. 

So Happy Birthday Molly. And just to embarrass you - 12 years ago you looked like this.....




Monday, January 03, 2011

40




Oh yes. That's me.

Am I at all concerned with hitting 40? Nope.

What bothers me more is generally getting old.

But in the short term, seeing as I'm writing this a few days ahead and I've got stuff needs writing before I go to be - what bothers me right now is getting another G&T and writing 500 decent words about a comic.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me [sob]



Oh I do not like this getting old lark.
I do not like it one little bit.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Happy 10th Birthday Molly!!!!



My lovely, wonderful, incredible, beautiful little girl turns into a (as she so wonderfully puts it) double digiter today.

10 years ago I had no idea how much better my life was going to be with the addition of a tiny bundle of joy.

But every day of my life, I'm amazed at how much love I can feel for my Molly.

And every single day, from the 25th August 1999 to the day I die, I'll never love anything as much as I love little miss Molly Alice Bruton.

Happy Birthday Molly.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Molly Birthday - greetings from Andi Watson



This was so sweet. Molly thought it was marvellous. Her very own Andi Watson birthday card and recycled notepad from Andi's proof copies of his new Glister book.
That Andi Watson; not just a great cartoonist, but a very nice man indeed.

Thursday, August 06, 2009

More holiday stuff .... painting and painting and birthdays

Had a weird week so far. Painter came round on Monday to start on the house. Just windows, front door, front railings and garage door, just at the front. The house catches all the sun and all the rain on the front so, although we had the whole house done two years ago, the front is in desperate need of a new coat or two of paint. It's also about time we striped the front door done and attempted to reseal it so it stops leaking when we have driving rain.

The plan was Monday; strip paint, undercoat, Tuesday: gloss. But it hasn't worked out like that. Monday went well, Tuesday not so well. About half 1 he'd finished but decided the front door needed a second coat the next day. Unfortunately soon after he left the rain started here and carried on through the early hours of Wednesday. So no painting Wednesday. And since the paint hadn't gone off (or whatever the technical term is) enough when the rain started both garage door, front door and railings needed another coat. Thursday and Friday he put another couple of coats on.

The bad thing about this is that most of the week we've had to have the front door open. This isn't really compatible with going anywhere or doing anything. We've gone out and around town in the mornings when the painter was there, but most afternoons we've just had to stay in and generally relax. Board games, computer, drawing, playing in the garden, bit of cookery but nothing too exciting. Thank god that she arranged to go swimming with friends yesterday!

The other thing that I've had to do this week is sort Molly's birthday out. A big, big surprise for her this year. She's not expecting this at all. She's had a birthday list for ages, with lots of bitty things on it since she knows there's no way we can get her this........

(and you have to promise not to tell her.......)



Oh she's going to be very, very excited in a few weeks when she opens that one. Molly (and Louise) have wanted one for ages. But it's never been the right time and we're not the sort of parent who buys something this big and expensive at any other time than birthday and christmas. So this birthday, with nothing large being asked for, we figured we could just about stretch to getting it.

If I'm really lucky, I'll manage to get a photo of her face at the moment of realisation.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

More birthday thoughts....

It was the third birthday of the blog yesterday and originally I had put this up then, but writing about the final DFC rather took over yesterday so I thought it best to move it.

Just looking through the first few weeks of doing this, it's amazing how horrible some of the writing is (and for all I know it hasn't really improved that much in the time since). But what I am proud of is how quickly this post on Wacky Warehouses appeared. In fact, here it is again - think of it as a birthday present:

Wacky Warehouses and the like........

God I hate them. On the plus side they're lovely for Molly and I can get a cup of coffee and a sit down. But the shit you have to put up with.....

If you didn't want children maybe you should have taken a little more care with contraception? Moronic parents with a pint in one hand and their mobiles glued to their ears whilst their 8 offspring wander around the wacky hitting my child. But heaven forbid the parent who points this out. The little chav devils can do no wrong in their chav parents eyes.

Of course, I say Chav parents, what I should have said was chav parent. Singular. Seemingly always singular. Which is not to say I have anything against single moms. But experience and observation lets me make some hideously sweeping generalisations about this.

Take, for example, the single mom in front of me. I'm assuming she's a single mom of course. But she's with a bloke and her child keeps calling her mom and him dave so it's either step dad or boyfriend or she's picked a really dumb place to have an affair.
Her: Chav, horrible, cheap chocolate brown velour tracksuit, hair pulled harshly back onto scalp, designer label clothes and shoes, two mobiles on the go constantly.
Him: short, shaven headed and having that vaguely threatening manner of a football hooligan in waiting. The sloping brow, the dull, lifeless eyes and the slightly disbelieving looks at anyone who flaunts their ability to read. Of course, the deciding factor is the crap birmingham city chain round his fat, corpulent neck.
Why do single moms always seem to go for this sort of bloke? Why do they always cling onto them in public, mauling each other with the same level of passion your laborador uses to greet you. Of course, after a little while this passion will transmute into violence and they'll spend hours wasting police and hospital time.

And possibly worse are the Harbourne mums and dads.
You all know the sort..... just insert your own area (West Bridgford mums for Nottingham I hear)
Middle class or at least want to be, organic/ free-range / hand-reared bioyoghurt, alternative remedies, packed lunches of celery sticks and carrot puree, french at 6 months, violin appreciation classes from birth, that sort of thing.

Just go down to the Botanical Gardens and observe the playground, it's all liberal attitudes and swirly chiffon skirts and desperately trying to outdo every other Harbourne mom there by signing your child up for Mongolian Yak farming courses or whatever is in-vogue that week.

They seem to find it impossible to discipline their children. At least the bloody chavs can't be arsed. Harbourne mums are worse, they've made a conscious decision to neglect this rather important aspect of parenting.......

"Little tarquin doesn't mean to kick everything he sees and run around shouting like a monkey on acid, it's just his nature."
Absolutely, his nature is to be an arrogant and aggressive fuckwit, just like his dad and an ignorant, pompous harpy like mommy.

And at least Chav kids are only running around MacDonalds causing havoc, Harbourne mom's little angels run around the restaurants I eat in.
And that really wont do.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Happy Birthday to Fictions - 3 today



Happy birthday to blog. Three years doing this. Gosh. Seeing as I'd never managed to keep a diary beyond the second week of January before that's rather impressive really.

First post: here. Comics, moaning about comics and a pilgrimage to visit Mrs Thatcher's grave when she eventually does the decent thing. (Having her go mad was entertaining enough, but it's boring now. Would like her to get on with it please.) So that was obsessing about comics and ranting from the start.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Birmingham weekender; Rachel's 18th



This weekend we travelled down to old Birmingham for Rachel's 18th birthday party. Rachel is Louise's niece and somehow managed to convince her parents that it was a very good idea to let her hold the party at their house. This insanity was somehow validated by Rachel's numerous friends all being delightful, polite and generally lovely.

Of course, put that many 17 & 18 year olds in close proximity to alcohol and there's bound to be casualties: the first was at just 10 o'clock, as one girl passes out in the loo and gets carried upstairs to lie down. Lightweight. And after that we had lots of staggering and very polite drunkeness. Oh, the joys of being young! We were with all the family and the old folk inside the house, whilst the young people wandered between the gazebo in the garden, the toilets and the drinks.

One strange thing about all these teens; despite having beers and stupidly coloured alcopop things in the gazebo, a hell of a lot of them ended up raiding the bottles of spirits in the kitchen. So at half eleven I ran out of Gin. Luckily, Rachel has an older sister and Helen had a secret stash of Gin. Thank you Helen (your replacement bottle shall be with you soon).

Molly had a great time, was pronounced cute many, many times and rather enjoyed both the attention and staying up until 1am. Thanks very much to Rachel and family for the lovely night. I imagine they spent today clearing up the wreckage left by that many teenagers, no matter how nice!

The rest of the weekend was spent catching up with folks and visiting Birmingham. As usual, this meant a visit to Nostalgia & Comics. Lovely to see folks again and nice to actually spend some time browsing comic shelves for good stuff. Had to be very strong this time and try not to grab too much stuff. The grand plan of trying to reduce the 30+ books to review on the shelf. Did alright as well, only added four more things to the shelf.

A busy weekend but a very good one. Happy Birthday to Rachel and thanks very much for inviting us all.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

My Birthday T-shirt



Useful for those moments at the school gates when I have a complete blank and have lost my voice. A wonderful gift from a wonderful little girl. She was so very excited about my birthday. It's quite strange really, because usually I don't get excited at all about the annual plus one to the age. But ever since Molly's been old enough to grasp the idea of other people's birthdays it's been really joyous. She enjoys getting presents more of course, but she still really enjoys handing them out.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Happy Birthday to me .....



Yep, 38 today.

God, I hope this year's better than last year. Although I feel it's possibly up to me to make it that way, since most of my bad year last year was of my own making. Or rather, my particularly bad reactions to bad events.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Molly's Birthday - the pictures

This time it's something different. These are all pictures taken by Molly of her presents using her new camera, of which she is very, very proud. It's better than mine in every way except for having a bit less zoom. She doesn't care. It's hers. She is now promoted to the role of official Bruton Mansions photographer:

100_0007

100_0032

100_0061

A very good day and a very happy daughter, who will be even more pleased to see these up online, especially when I show her that she's got her own Flickr account.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Nine, Nine, Nine, Nine, Nine ! Happy Birthday Molly




9 years ago I was in a delivery suite, although in truth I wasn't the one doing all the hard work.
And the result of that night is now, incredibly 9 years old.
9 amazing, wonderful, joy filled years.

Happy Birthday Molly.
Everyone loves you more than we can ever possibly say. Although we certainly wont let that stop us trying.

Happy Birthday Molly



Tonight we did the usual thing where we get all of the presents together, wrap them up, look at them and then start panicking that we just haven't got her enough! Madness! Having reassured ourselves that all is well (after all, one of those presents is a digital camera) we arrange them nicely and await the excited screams of joy in the morning.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Molly's Birthday Party

Like I said back here, today marked the start of a looong celebration of Molly's birthday. For one reason and another her birthday, which is this Monday, seems to be spreading over the next ten days.

Today was day 1 of the celebrations - Molly's birthday party:
The plan; Off to Kung Fu Panda at Pocklington Arts Centre at 1pm. Get out at 3pm. Head to Burnby Hall for fun and a runaround. Off to Pan e Vino at 5:30 for food and then all home at 7.

Good plan.
Rather falls apart when Kung Fu Panda finishes at 2:30 though. Ooops.
Okay, a change of plan, back to our house for a quick play and then across to Burnby Hall with 5 very excited children, especially Molly. Hyper doesn't really begin to cover it. Hyper hyper perhaps. Although even that doesn't really begin to explain how she's been today.
Next stage of plan falling apart rather. Just as we're heading out of the door - it starts raining. Oh poo. Back inside to play in the garage and wait out the rain. Half three. Two hours before food. This may be a loooong afternoon.
4:00pm. Rain looks like it's stopping. On with coats and off to Burnby Hall. Get as far as the entrance when rain starts again, although somewhat mysteriously the sky appears to have nothing but blue sky and fluffy white clouds. No idea where the rain is actually coming from, but it is making us wet so it's off to get an ice cream. Ice creams take 10 minutes and by this time the rain has stopped. Children head for playground. Rain starts again. Back into the tea room for drinks and a look round at the Stewart Museum at the gardens. Shower turns to proper tipping down.
A quick check on the bag shows me I made the right decision to bring every one of Molly's waterproofs and brollies along. We have just enough to make it home with the children dry. Of course, I managed to forget mine.
Finally home at 5pm, just in time to get dry and ready for a meal out.

A lovely day, chaperoning 5 children. It didn't go according to plan, but was a great day out nonetheless. A most importantly Molly and her friends had a great time.

This is just the opening salvo in the Molly birthday weekend. Next up we have friends around on Saturday and Sunday and then her actual birthday on Monday. And it carries on until next Monday in one way or another. By the end of it all I imagine she'll be exhausted or she may well have exploded with excitement.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The end of the holidays looming...

In the final straight of the holidays, always a difficult time. It's difficult to express the feeling at this point. Having had a month off suddenly not working becomes the norm rather than it just being another holiday. Of course, the end of August is always marked out by a double birthday, first Louise, then just one week later and effectively marking the end of the holidays it's Molly's birthday. We've had Louise's now so it's full steam ahead with Molly's birthday.

Much excitement this year as she's finally getting the party that she's missed for the last couple of years. When we were in Birmingham it was too difficult organising her friends to get together on the bank holiday weekend. A combination of being away for holidays and the distances that her friends lived away from the school made it very difficult. We tried a few times to have something either before or after the holidays but it never really worked. And last year was the first in Pocklington and we didn't feel we knew enough people to organise something.

But this year we're off to Pocklington Arts Centre to see Kung-Fu Panda with four of her friends. After that we have a little down-time, either at our house or at Burnby Hall for a runaround and an ice-cream. Then, to top the day off we're all going out for a meal at Pan-e-Vino, our favourite Pocklington restaurant. And guess who gets to be chaperone for the five excited 8 & 9 year olds until Louise finishes work to come along for the meal?

Me. I'm expecting an afternoon of giggling and fun and hopefully no upsets at all. Or at least I'm hoping that's how it will go.



We also went to the pictures last week to see Space Chimps. It looked like it was going to be a really film from the trailers. But although it was pretty good, there was nothing marvellous about it. A real shame. Molly enjoyed it though.

Highlight of the week was a trip to Cruckley Farm. It's a working farm near Driffield full of rare breeds and absolutely perfect for children with a lot of paddocks full of sheep, goats, pigs and chickens that you could go into, walk around and be surrounded by animals all very keen to take the food from your hands. Molly and I went last week and had a fantastic time.







Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Happy Birthday Louise .....

She doesn't get that many mentions on the blog, at her own behest. "Don't write about me, don't you dare" was I think her actual reaction.

But it's Louise's birthday today. So Happy Birthday love.

Okay, here's what Molly and I have planned for the day; Presents are all bought and today we're spending our time baking and finishing off Molly's present for mummy. Every year we have the triple problem of what to do; Christmas, Mother's Day and Birthday. No matter what we get her as presents I know it's the present from Molly that Louise looks forward to the most. Over the years we've run through everything possible, from mugs, pictures, a book written by Molly, I love you Mummy novelties galore. This year we're doing something slightly different, as Molly came up with the idea on her own; writing a thank you letter to Mummy. We've bought special paper, envelope and pens. From what Molly's done so far I think we'll be seeing tears from Louise on her birthday. Which always means we've done a good job.