How do you do 40?

I'm about to celebrate one of those allegedly important birthdays. You know - the ones that end in 'oh'. I'm not sure if that's more an 'oh - did I make it his far,' or an 'oh, is that it?' or perhaps it's more an 'oh!' Which we're all entitled to, I guess.

I was on the phone to a good friend this evening and she asked me, 'Well, what are you doing for it?' I was going to mention the planned trip to London as being something a bit different to do for a birthday, but I thought I might surprise her with that one. She's not forgiven me for jetting off to Paris with Insane Husband for her birthday, back in June. That's my insane husband, not her's... I think she'd definitely not forgive me that one. Sorry this is beginning to sound like a plot for a pink novel...

An-y-way. Some suggestions for milking this 'oh' birthday might be useful. As long as they don't involve chocolate and smearing in the same sentence.

Busy Bee

Really busy this week, or at least I'm kidding myself that I will be. I've started wallpapering my bedroom, stripped as it has been for the last three months. Although I did like the blank canvas effect for a while, it seems a lot cosier with the new wallpaper one third up already. There already was a dado rail (don't really like them but what can you do, when the previous encumbent has left them?) splitting the wall almost in two. I put a pale gold paper slightly embossed with a feathery grass repeat pattern on the top and a creamy match on the bottom. I was going to do them the other way around but thought I'd see more of the warming gold colour if I put it on the top.

Funny thing was when I got the paper up to the quarter mark, I wryly remembered The Yellow Wallpaper short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, from our Level 2 Approaching Literature course, which features a female protagonist suffering from post-natal depression, in the days when the prescribed cure was to lock you away from everything. She ends up going a bit bonkers behind the wallpaper. Read the story, it's rather good.

I remember feeling like that a few times after popping a few of mine, but I put it down to having so much to do with all the others, besides whichever baby happened to be current. Maybe my wallpaper choice is an advance-reverse reaction to that idea of the madwoman in the attic. Oh dear.

I'd better finish the room early this week, as there are some great poetry events coming up over here. On Wednesday 17th there's the Revival Launch, which I mentioned I'm attending before, but the journal launch paled into insignificance, when I realised that the Belfast Poets would be performing at the White House Poetry Revival too! These guys are worth checking out, they're not long back, last year, from a tour around Australia (the lucky buggers!). Oh joy! Noel King told me that you can never have a bad night at the White House, (pardon me Dubya) but I think it's now been lifted into the category of legendary!

And next week on the 25th, I'm off to Galway city. I've never had a bad night there! The event is the Over the Edge series of readings organised by Kevin Higgins and Susan Millar DuMars, featuring Elaine Feeney, Mary Mullen & Todd Swift. Can't pass on that one!