It is common knowledge that I suffered a massive stroke 14 years ago that has left me with a left sided wealness meaning that I use a wheelchair to get around and only have one working arm and hand.

What some may not be aware of is that my husband, Alec put his own life on hold to become my carer.

At the beginning of the year I was chatting to a friend telling her that as Alec was going to be 70 in June, I wanted to do something to show my apprication.

She came up with an idea that I held a surprise birthday meal at a local restaurant, This sounded good, but how was I going to fund it without my husband finding out as we gave a joint bank account? She then suggested that everyone who came could pay for their own food.

I made a few phone calls ( while Alec was out walking the dog or shopping) and decided to book the function room just off the restaurant. This required a holding fee that my son said he would pay so my husband wouldn’t see the bank transfer. My son also told me that he would sort a cake as he had a friend who makes personalised celebration cakes, My husband is a huge Only fools and horses fan we went for that theme.

I spoke to another friend who said that she would decorate the room if I got some things.

The next time I went to town on the bus here

I bought a few 70 banners, candles and table confetti, which my friend took home with her.

Alec’s birthday was on 28 June so when Boris announced that he was planning on lifting all covid restrictions on 21 June I went into overdrive with my plan.

On one occasion my husband came home from doing a supermarket shop and told me ” I have been trying to ring you all morning to make sure that you were alright and each time I rang the phone was engaged!” ( I quickly thought of an excuse to cover up why I had been on the phone all morning inviting friends).

As the months went by there was talk from Downing street that the restrictions’ may not be relaxed as early as hoped: I mentioned this to Alec several times when we were listening to the news, he replied that he didn’t know why I was bothered as what difference would it make to me? ( If only you knew, I thought to myself),

We move house at the beginning of March and although we were still living in the same village, Alec had said a few times that he missed some of the neighbours, so I made a decsion to invite some of them along too.

A few of these people I hadn’t met as being disabled I didn’t go out as often as him, so I asked a friend who lived across the road from our old house if he would invite them for me, He said that he was willing to do this, but as he didn’t know some of them as well as my husband did. He asked that I email what I wanted to say and he would print it off and put through the letterboxes rather than knocking on the doors and disturbing people.

I sent him an email explaining what I was intending and asked everyone to text me on my mobile with their replies. to my delight, everyone I had asked wanted to come along and were more than happy to pay for their own food.

Then I received a message from the restaurant saying that the food would be needed to be ordered 2 weeks before the day; so then I was back to contacting everyone again asking them to chose what they wanted to eat.

I started making a list of who wanted what and tried to hide it so a certain person wouldn’t find out what was going to happen.

Everything was coming together until the P.M. announced that he was holding back the restrictions for another month.

I managed to postpone the meal until 26 July and had to contact everyone yet again : As a few people had booked the first date off work they said that they were unable to make the new date, including 2 of our sons.

On my husband’s birthday I gave him his card in which I had written that I was planning on taking him out to lunch with our son’s and their partners but as there would have been more than 6 of us I had made reservations for a months time.

He seemed pretty happy with this, until I felt that I had to warn him that 2 of our children wouldn’t be there. The following day he asked me to cancel it, saying he would rather wait until they could all come.

Long story short I came up with a few white lies that convinced him that we needed to go on the date I had told him about.

Then I heard a week before that the restaurant had been closed for a few days because so many staff were being ‘pinged’.

I was beginning to wonder if someone was trying to tell me not bto do this.

Eventually after 6 long, quite stressful months we did celebrate Alec’s 70 birthday with 21 family members and friends, with ages from 4 to 88 years and everyone enjoyed themselves!

The moral of this post is that if I can pull off a surprise birthday celebration during a global pandemic and from a wheelchair anyone can!

As always questions and comments are welcome.

Until next time.

Karen

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