Birthday Bulges

1 x large Double Chocolate Fudge cake, Sainsbury's £5.49 (purchased for Boyfriend and I to celebrate my special day; ate one slice and licked the plate of the remnants of icing)
4 x Green & Blacks’ Organic Dark Chocolate Flapjack biscuits, gift (devoured throughout the course of today)
1 x Raspberry Bake, Costa Café, gift (still wrapped up… the mere scent of sticky-sweet cake is giving me a headache)
1 x Chocolate Cupcake, Waitrose Patisserie, gift (all boxed-up… if I ignore it, maybe it will disappear!)

I feel bloated and sluggish and another year older – when exactly did birthdays lose their zing?

Waking to the sound of my two-year-old niece singing down the phone line, her own rendition of “Happy Birthday” complete with a “Pip, pip, hooray!” definitely put a smile on my face. And the steady stream of phone calls, Facebook messages from friends and birthday salutations from colleagues have each added to today’s general feeling of ‘specialness’… but really, is that it?

I remember when birthdays were the be-all-and-end-all. Parties would be planned, invites sent out, special outfits bought and innumerable lists written and rewritten to ensure parents and friends would buy exactly the right thing. But for me parties stopped at age twelve (when I developed an irrational fear that none of my invitees would show up!) and my teenage years saw ‘special outfits’ being purchased every other week for general nights out. Birthdays slowly became redundant.

The one thing I can rely on my birthday for is glutinous excess. Friends ‘treating' me to cakes and chocolates, drinks and dinners so The Day itself is spread over the course of a week. My jeans get noticeably tighter, my wallet lighter (I can’t let friends pay for everything, after all) and ultimately I start to feel every bit a year older.

Next week I’m going to detox. Not diet, just cleanse. Lots of green tea and vegetables and definitely no sweets!

Happy Birthday to Me...