I decided as R transferred the birthdays I would make a list. It is so easy to miss a birthday, especially if they are at the beginning of the month and you don't see them until you turn over the month. Then I decided to add years of birth for those who we know or have noted down so we can check before we buy a birthday card if the person is having a significant birthday. There are none this year. Damn, Brighton Antique Dealer's year of birth is not noted. I did find it in my blog as we were at her 80th birthday party and I searched my blog with the name of the venue, Masque. After the party I wrote this. I really quite like what I wrote. Some of you will remember bits of it but newer readers won't have read it.
Dear Dame M,
Gosh, it is seven years since you died. How times flies. I think of you often and what your friendship meant to so many people and especially us. You'll be pleased to know your little gang still all catch up with each other every so often. Let me think, you were 82 when you died, so you would now be 89. I think you may have become crabby by the time you reached that age, so maybe just as well you went a bit early. You were already quite imperious you know. There has been an English show on tv called Downton Abbey. You would have enjoyed it and done as well in the role of The Dowager Countess of Grantham, played by Maggie Smith.
Anyway, through you we came to know our friend Brighton Antique Dealer. Can you believe she has turned 80. We had a great celebration on Friday night for her birthday at a place called Masque, just walking distance from us in Park Street. BAD has not changed much but she now lives a medium rise retirement enclave not far up the same street as her shop house, which she sold. Haha, I remember how regal you looked as you descended her stairs on her electric stair chair. You should have had a ciggie in one hand and a martini in the other.
Do you remember BAD's daughter, the dyke, daughter of her first Arab husband? Btw, he died a year or so ago in Daylesford. BAD was surprisingly distressed. Remember what BAD said when she first saw her first husband undressed? She thought my god, that monster is not going to fit anywhere. She has a son, but by a different father, and the son was living with his what I guess is kind of his step father. He sounds like a bit of a loser. Ah yes, the daughter. Well, she organised the event and she did a great job. It was an open bar and I suppose there were over fifty people there and plenty of finger food too. It must have cost a bomb. Gee, I doubt I would have fifty people at my funeral, let alone rustle up fifty people for a party when I am eighty.
Your boarder of thirty years attended of course, in the guise of Jasmine. Naturally Jazzie had to do a couple of numbers. She is quite amateurish, but she looked great and the straights loved her. I took photos. Speaking of which, I had to check when you died and I had forgotten I put a few photos of you on my blog. Take a look here. Commenters on the post back there are no longer readers of my blog. Such is the way of the world Dame M, but you are the last person who ever needed educating about ways of the world.
At your funeral your Boarder made a speech, a very long one, as he pranced back and forth across the stage in full flight and eventually the metaphorical crook with a hook came out, and he was hauled off. His speech at BAD's birthday party was equally torturous, but mercifully short. BAD's daughter made a brief speech with her mother at her side and BAD became quite emo. BAD has endured some personal hardship since you departed, but of course, what hardship is there really when you have money. Insurance paid for her flooded shop house, health insurance paid for top care for her broken bones when she fell.
Never a problem for you Dame M, who arrived at parties late, held court and then departed before things became messy, but I find parties so hard and try to avoid them. But BAD's party was really great. We even danced. Remember our black friend and your boarder's hairdresser friend? They both had a bit to drink and the more they had the more uninhibited their dancing became. Oh, but here is a downer you might not know, the hairdresser had cancer and a double mastectomy. She disconnected from us all from diagnosis to full recovery. Just her way of dealing with it.
Did you know your house has been divided up into rather nice flats? The upstairs flats are still there but your house and the downstairs flat have been turned into about five flats. I peered through windows before they were sold and there are still bits of your house there such as the lounge room mantle piece and the arch from the dining room to the lounge room. Great that your house wasn't demolished.
Anyway darls,
missing you heaps,
Andrew.