February Birthdays

Today is my dear friend Kate Hardy's birthday so please go over and say Happy Birthday to her. It's a landmark birthday so she's a little bothered by changing that number at the start of her age. But I've just been reading a magazine article that declares that 70 is the new 50. Which makes KateH a new 20 - and me a new - er - something or other. Which also means that some friends I know are reading this are still way back in their teens - well, yes I can believe that! :-)

February was also the month of my father's birthday. He would have been 91 on Feb 9th. He lived most of his early life in South Africa but then studied medicine in Dublin which is where he met my mother. I have his passport from when he left SA at the age of 18 - and in the photo he looks scarily like my son (The Offspring). Later in life, he became almost the double of Humphrey Bogart - unfortunately right down to the cigarette that was almost always in his hand or his mouth.

My father was not the easiest of men - sadly he made a real mess of his marriage to my mother and they split up - but apart from this passport, in my home I have one substantial reminder of his part in my life - and his belief in my dreams. When I was 14 and he asked me what I wanted for my birthday, the only thing I wanted was a desk. Even then I wanted to be a writer and somewhere I have a photo of me - aged 12 - hair in pigtails - frowning in concentration over an ancient typewriter as I wrote my first 'book'! (And yes, as a result of popular demand when I first mentioned this in my old blog - when I learn how to do that sort of thing, I will try to post that photo up here.)

So my father bought me a desk. It was a cheap, pine wood desk. It came in pieces and had to be 'self-assembled'. It has six drawers, three to either side and it's a "ladies' version" (that's how it was advertised!) with a 'modesty panel' to hide my knees from the world. These days, I work on a posh, 'executive' desk - L-shaped and big enough to hold my computer and the printer and the scanner and all the bits and pieces (and, okay, all the Mess) that I have around me as I work. It also has room for Sid The Cat who lies alongside my keyboard as I write. But I still have that old desk - it's worn and battered and a couple of the legs wobble permanently as a result of being assembled and taken apart and reassembled somewhere else as it moved with me from place to place as I grew up, married, set up my own home. It's in the BM's office now - a much smaller room where it fits in perfectly. He works on it, writes on it, just as I did all those years ago. It's not a pretty desk, but it's functional - and it was given to me to 'become a writer' on it - and I did.

Not many people ever believed I'd achieve my dream of being published, and writing for a living, and possibly deep down inside my father never did either. But he never said so. He let me use the typewriter from his surgery to bang out my first attempts at stories - and he bought me what, in my mind, was my 'writer's desk'. He was a very difficult man at times but he let me believe in my dreams, which is what I remember when I look at that tatty, wobbly battered desk - and I know he'd be pretty damn proud of what I've achieved since he gave it to me.


So Happy Birthday Kate H! Happy Birthday Dad! And if you have a birthday in February too, I'm sending you the happiest of birthday wishes. Have a wonderful time - and remember to hold on to your dreams so that you can work towards them