©Julia Welstead

A fiftieth birthday card and invitation arrived for me from the NHS last week – and everyone in the UK who has passed this important corner on life’s Monopoly board (do not pass ‘GO’ do not collect M200) will know what the card looks like. For younger readers, I’ll give you a couple of clues: it is divided into three sections, includes three little spatulas (spatulae?) and is sent from the bowel screening department.  I think I might write to the NHS and suggest that they tinker with their computers to the extent that these cards are sent out when one is 50 plus a few months. Arriving, as mine did, that day before the big birthday, when one is trying so hard to feel all positive and excited to be entering the next decade of one’s life, it is a little daunting to say the least: a nasty reminder of one’s mortality. Perhaps it would sit better among the pile of pressies if enclosed within a real birthday card, with a jokey cartoon depicting a jovial NHS patient with various bits falling off and a ‘congratulations, we’ll be getting our hands on you soon’ kind of message within. Perhaps the mental health team should get involved in the sending out of these sorts of invitations, so that their arrival doesn’t cause such feelings of doom amongst the fifty plus.  A bit of psychology wouldn’t go amiss here.

Apart from that, my fiftieth went off rather well, or at any rate without further incident. Challenged by my boys to do something different (skydiving was put down as the gauntlet) I chose to go to a music festival.  This may seem banal to those who regularly choose to camp in muddy fields with tens of thousands of fellow souls in order to listen to incredibly thumpy music whilst a constant mental calculation is ticking away at the back of one’s mind, as to which stretch of portaloos will have the smallest queues and be the cleanest (and witnessing a bunch of swaying men pissing into a mid-field circular urinal, so focussed on their aim that they seemed unaware that the receptacle was full, and said piss was flowing straight back out over their quagmire-bound feet). To me it was a big deal, the surprise being that I quite enjoyed it (not that I’m suggesting I might do it again). Having dispensed with the migraine on the Friday night, I found myself relaxing into the scene during Saturday and appreciating the amazing talents of a few of the smaller, quirkier bands. Dizzy Rascal – the headline act – I found to be boringly predictable and monotonous – but Dizraeli and the Small Gods were fabulous. Mostly though, I have to admit, I found myself admiring the beautiful old oak and beech trees, the rolling landscape and the herd of farmed deer, and wondering how the land managers planned to recover the grass sward currently being trampled into a quagmire.

Today I’m back at my desk with various bits of writing work to be done, some financial conundrums to shuffle back and forth (how will I pay a £500 roofing bill from a standing start of zero?) and a part-time post-grad diploma timetable to contemplate (yup, I thought another qualification might help). Yet what keeps popping into my head is this big speech bubble that just says !!!50!!! How can this have happened? It’s ludicrous that I should have reached this giddy age! I mean I still haven’t found out what I want to do when I grow up and, even with the hugest slab of optimism I have to assume that I’m at the half way point. Sacre bleu, I’d better get my A into G.

Meanwhile though, there’s so much else to achieve: drive Son Three to his volunteer job at the Botanical Gardens; visit Mum; remember that I’ve forgotten to leave a key under the stone for my niece’s boyfriend, who will be returning from night duty any minute; phone Son Two to ask him to get up and unlock door; get home to find Son Three’s sandwich box on kitchen table; phone him to see if he has money to buy some lunch; hear his phone bleeping in his bedroom (aaaargh, I thought it was only old ladies who forget to take their mobile phones with them when they go out); apologize to postie who has left a note to say post not delivered for past three days due to ‘vicious dog at large’ (could that possibly describe our daft mutt of a Hairy MacLary, or is he referring to our killer mini-dachshund?); hop down to Dumfries to paint three bedrooms in bid to transform them from teenage hell colours (aubergine, tomato and pea) to serene white, and to tame wild garden prior to marketing house in dismal economy (does anyone want to buy a lovely home in Dumfries?); sort out Son One’s error when applying for university funding (he didn’t tick the box for getting his fees paid) and send reassuring emails to him in America, where he’s uber-busy teaching American kids to swim and canoe and whatnot;  walk the dogs.

Oh phew, that’s better. Walking the dogs is my route to sanity when all else is becoming untenable. Edinburgh is a great place for dog-walkers, with several hills and lots of green bits in between. An unseemly amount of green space seems to be given over to the pursuit of the small white ball, but there is still plenty of choice for me and my mutleys to go galloping and rabbit chasing. My favourite is Holyrood Park. By taking the routes avoiding Arthur’s Seat itself, we can pretty much have a free run without meeting more than a handful of other human/canine parties. On a clear day the views are glorious, stretching beyond the city to hills and oceans and recovering in me a sense of freedom and peace. On rainy days the same can be achieved in the intimate solitude that only a swirling mist can give. Last Sunday my niece and I ventured up there in a tropical storm of warm rain and had an invigorating couple of hours of slip-sliding up and down the hillsides, with rain washing our faces and bare legs, and then went dripping round Waitrose scooping up delicious things to eat later in front of the Olympics (with apologies to the Waitrose staff for our muddy footprints).

It’s hard to work out in which free five minute slot I’m going to magic up a career for myself. I can see a clear moment approaching (everyone is settled for the day in their various places, the dogs are fed, the fridge is full, the washing is flapping in the sunshine, the postie has been, and I was there to prevent attack) in which I could have a go at planning my future, but I could do with a coffee and there’s something interesting (for once) in the post pile – the Edinburgh Adult Education Programme booklet. I asterisk all the classes I’d like to attend – bicycle maintenance, drama, pilates, psychology, sign-language, singing, Spanish, woodwork, yoga – and wonder what ‘emotional freedom technique’ is, and then realise that most of these classes are 7-9pm, which is when I cater for hungry boys, help with homework etc. Ho hum.