Courgette linguini; banana fruit cake and ice cream

Firstly, thank you all for the birthday wishes, both here and on Facebook: I promise you I read and appreciated every single one.

I spent most of my birthday repeating ‘it’s OK, it’s going to be fine” to mum, who once again anxiety-ed herself into physical illness over the thought of going to see the hairdresser she has known for years to have her hair trimmed to a length that doesn’t constantly annoy her. Mum makes fun of me (affectionately, I hasten to add) for how often I say “it’s going to be fine”, but what else can I say to someone who feels that anything outside these four walls is a threat?

Eventually she agreed to go to the hairdresser’s, and it was fine. The hairdresser was initially intimidated by the amount of work needed to sort out my hair, which was one matted knot of hair which had previously reached almost to my bum, but she sorted it and even managed to get it to the start of the gender-neutral style I ultimately want. I will admit, privately and between friends, that I keep stopping to admire it every time I pass a reflective surface.

Dinner was a ready meal of allegedly spicy chilli from Tesco, from which someone had apparently accidentally left out the title ingredient. And that was my birthday.

Today I woke up feeling exhausted from yesterday’s mammoth trek of maybe 50 yards in total. I should have rested, but instead I started planting out the jumbled mess of plants I received from an online garden centre. None of the plants were damaged, but most had fallen out of their pots so I had to fall back on my rusty knowledge of plants to work out which was which. A few remain a mystery that only time will unravel.

Then I made a banana fruit cake that is my current favourite: it’s great for using up overripe bananas, and is made using the “chuck the ingredients in an oven-proof bowl, mix together, put in the oven until cooked” method that’s made for someone with limited energy.

Then I cooked dinner – a Simply Cook recipe that I modified a bit and got three Mum-chelin stars (an unprompted “that was lovely, thank you”), followed by the fruit cake with ice cream which got a similar rating.

Then we watched a bit of Alanis Morissette’s Glastonbury set, which mum didn’t enjoy as she dislikes female singers (despite being one herself), but she did concede that “she’s got a good voice, if you like that kind of thing” which, trust me, is a huge compliment coming from mum.

I’m now off to look up the words to Thank You which, to my lk distress, I discovered I have largely forgotten. So there I have started with thanks and ended with it, which is as close to a proper conclusion as you’ll get from me.