Afterwards

It was recently Hilda 1s birthday. In honour of the amount of parcels she has taken in for me, and the fact that she is better than any guard dog you could possibly have, I bought her a plant. I even splashed out and bought it from a proper plant show not just the local garage.

Now usually our entire relationship is conducted over the garden fence (yes I know that makes me sound about 90, I’ll be buying a pair of sensible shoes specifically for driving in next) I find that as long as I stick to my side of the fence its a bit easier to get away from the latest round of which neighbour is the worst. This time though as it was a special occasion I decided to make the effort and actually step over the barrier.

She was of course very happy with her plant (although this was slightly overshadowed by the present from Hilda 2 which was closer to £199 rather than £1.99) and the coffee was drinkable. But I found it quite depressing. Never mind the fact that Hilda1 had no pictures on the walls, or books on the shelves, which I find odd. To top it off her mantelpiece had a grand total of 3 birthday cards on it– one of which actually came from a four legged friend rather than a two legged friend.

I’m not really a card sender, although now I may have to start just to make sure I get some back in return! I always find cards a bit sad. You get them, stand them on the mantelpiece for a few days (unless they were from family members as these always used to go on the tv, a bit tricky now with the advent of flat screens!) I usually then get so fed up with them falling over I take them down. But what about afterwards? Throwing them away seems such a waste, you can’t leave them up of course, you can’t frame them all but if you keep them what can you do with them?

The cost of cards is also ridiculous, I bought one recently and it was nearly £5. I think there is a niche market here for novelists. Instead of birthday cards, maybe novelists could all write short stories which people then buy and give to people instead of cards. I’d rather someone spent £5 on a short story I could enjoy, than on a card that might look lovely but is really rather useless.

Of course this wouldn’t have made Hilda1 feel any better, as she still wouldn’t have had any people buying them for her. But at least she would have been able to keep the three she got for next year, and they could have filled her empty shelves. Anyway I’m off to stock up on birthday cards to send to people…I must be getting old!