Significance?

I had a ‘significant’ birthday yesterday. It was fine and weird as many significant things are. The ‘proper’ celebration will be at the end of March, when another trip up to London is required. Hotel, restaurants, maybe some retail therapy you can’t do here in the boonies after an appointment on the first day.

We had two storms last week: Dudley (I think that’s right) hit Wednesday and Eunice Friday.

Thursday was eerily calm – like nothing moved, literally nothing — just waiting to see what would happen next. My yoga teacher talked of full moons and their affects.

Friday … it was mad here, utterly and completely and totally loopy. Gales all day, rain on and off. I spent a lot of time standing at the back of the house watching the eucalyptus tree in the garden behind sway this way and that, asking Mother Nature to keep it in place (she appears to have listened).

I saw one of my neighbours yesterday who commented that she been very worried the tree would come down on my house (that would be both of us).

Then, it all moved east and Saturday morning was once again eerily still and sunny, with a very pale blue sky that looked like it didn’t belong in any normal world.

Anyway, that birthday. Friends had sent parcels which I’d piled on the kitchen table. I had bought picnic food on the somewhat settled Thursday (brie, prosciutto, olives, bread) because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get out Saturday. I had settled on buying a box of really fancy chocolates by William Curley and a piece of brownie with nuts, marshmallows and something else from Sara’s as sweet for the day. Oh, and I’d bought the makings of cream tea for breakfast. I can no longer drink alcohol so I got fizzy water and rose lemonade in.

Woke Saturday morning, ate breakfast, opened gifts, wrote thank you emails. Looked at the damage in the back garden. The small compost bin was across the lawn, but otherwise the damage was minimal: lots of branches down but no trees. Took the dog to walk in the village, where there was also minimal damage: only saw one house where a tree came down and someone was out with a chainsaw.

Raised my direct debit amount for my monthly contribution to the local food bank. Started my new book, the most recent in the Inspector McLean series by James Oswald. Bought a new pair of jeans, some of the serum I love because the website had given me a 15% off voucher as a bday gift. Went to the garden centre to buy a plant a new pot, among other things. Bought some more wood to see me through early March.

It all sound very quiet and restrained – almost banal, if the movement around the sun can ever be banal. And that was mostly ok because I was trying to get my head round feeling like I’d stepped over some sort of invisible line and was now looking at a different sort of being – but what sort I haven’t yet fully deciphered. Unfettered. That’s what I feel like.

I had a back and forth with a friend about taking some of the tax free portion of my pension now (she laughed and said [she’s younger than I am] that she’d already done that so they could do work on the house). That left me a bit flummoxed — I had the ‘what am I waiting for feeling’ one gets when you’ve been doing something needlessly for reasons you can’t quite define.

At 6 AM this morning I woke from one of the strangest dreams I’ve ever had. Quite literally up there in a handful of ‘oh, my, oh, wow, that was … I don’t know what that was’.

It started with me and my son on a bus in London and I’d taken along my pillow and duvet. At some point we both got off, I lost my pillow and duvet, and when I got on another bus he wasn’t on it. When I got off that second bus, I was in Brooklyn, near where you get the A train in the downtown area. I tried to message my son but none of my electronics worked.

Then, I woke up and it literally took two hours and a dog walk before I felt normal.

So, if you have interpretations of that I am open to any ideas.

I’ve been wearing very small sprays of Lutens Arabie for the past week, as its cumin-spiciness feels grounding when the world around has been swaying and shifting. Also, Arabie counters well the weird ozonic smell that’s been around.

Yes, there you go. What about you? Have you had a birthday after which you’ve felt like you crossed some kind of line? What was that like and what did you do?