It was Mrs Ray’s birthday the other day. Or rather it was what she now terms her birthday week – seven days during which flags fly, trumpets sound, corks pop and she can do no wrong.
I find it all quite exhausting. It’s not just the running up and down with cups of tea and gins and tonic, nor the plumping up of the sofa in preparation for another of her box sets, nor the cooking, it’s the firm ‘We have to/we can’t: it’s my birthday week’ that begins to pall.

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