A Birthday cake. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)It was my birthday this weekend past.No, let me not beat about the bush. It was my birthday on Sunday, 1st of April.
For more years than I care to remember, I have cursed my mother for not either letting go earlier or just showing a bit of fortitude and hanging on a bit longer in order to avoid lumbering her daughter with such a birthday.
As a youngster faced with mother's not so subtle campaign of undermining confidence and attempting to induce guilt I used to wonder whether she had done it on purpose as it fitted her campaign so well. Then decided that she probably hadn't but would have if she could.
A plain little girl with glasses I grew to anticipate the mocking cries of 'April Fool' from those playground sharks who can detect unerringly the vulnerability of an unhappy child.
In later life, armour plated, it was a marker of people to avoid.
People who wanted to use that ritual to take me down a peg or two - not as friends can do with jokes be they never so coarse or brutally hard hitting - but slyly, waiting to see if they could draw blood.
No chance by then...they would have been better off trying it on a stone.
But I noted the attempt.
I escaped mother, gradually loosened the carapace I had adopted and had a pretty reasonable life. I enjoyed my work, I had friends and, finally, I was loved.
The birthday faded into the background.
Only to come bouncing back!
Last year Mr.Fly decided we would try a Peruvian restaurant which has a great reputation but which, being in a part of San Jose off our normal beat, we had not visited.
My birthday would be a nice occasion to try it.
We were house hunting at the time, so decided to explore the area nearby which is supposed to be developing - according to the Mayor who wants to attract investment - before going to lunch.
Had I wanted to live in an area without local shops, but with a plethora of car parts emporia and decaying sixties housing it would have been ideal, but as it was it did not fit the bill despite the handy public transport belching fumes down every side street.
The development proved to be three tower blocks nattily brick clad to match the tower housing the tax offices alongside, conjouring up the horror of returning home three sheets to the wind and finding yourself in the wrong tower while someone waves a tax form at you.
As the area was so disappointing, we decided to head for the restaurant, crossing the central thoroughfare of San Jose, the Paseo Colon. Now, before Those Among You with a certain sense of humour start sniggering, 'Colon' is Christopher Columbus and no, the town has not named its main artery for a part of the human intestine.
We walked a couple of blocks to the restaurant, arriving some ten minutes before opening time. No sign of life, so we sat at one of the tables on the terrace.
A waiter emerged, and told us we could not sit there as the restaurant was not yet open.
'But we have booked for opening time and would like to sit down and, perhaps, have a drink.'
'No. It is a house rule. If we let you sit there today it would be tramps tomorrow. Nicaraguans even.'
Clearly we did not figure as his idea of the 'beautiful people'.
One lesson I had learned in France was immediately acted upon. If restaurant staff are sniffy, it's time to be off like an Exocet before worse befalls and you are expected to pay for it.
We decided to take our custom elsewhere and walked down the side street towards the city centre.
The side road was free of traffic fumes...but something else assailed our nostrils.
Not the smell of urine from the street sleepers...all was washed down here...but something much worse.
Something that reached down your throat and twisted your intestines.
It was not just a smell...it was a Presence.
We looked over the wall.
Directly alongside was the open back door of the restaurant kitchen, bins ranged alongside.
We continued walking.
The Lebanese restaurant we had been heading for was closed, so we eventually partook of my birthday lunch at the counter of the Turbo caff at the Mercado Borbon - and very good it was too as evidenced by the roaring takeaway trade for the stallholders.
This year, it so fell out that we had invited friends for Saturday and had been invited in our turn for Sunday before I remembered about my birthday. Still, what could be more enjoyable than seeing friends. That was fine.
But there was something lacking from my calculations.
Birthday cake.
Costa Rican bakeries have displays of large birthday cakes that take me back to the days when rationing finally ended and cakes of all sorts manifested themselves, exploding with ersatz cream, jam and butter icing at every orifice and bearing enough sugar flowers and ribbons for an army of fairies.
Costa Ricans like to give birthday cakes to friends and family. You see men walking to their cars with three or four in a gravity defying tower, preparing for a family get together on the weekend.
The first cake arrived on Friday morning, its kind donor almost invisible behind it. Two more followed later. Two more on Saturday, one with each group of friends. Another on Sunday.....
Agreed, in every case the donors arrived mob handed which saw off a fair portion of the cake - but there was always some left over and no way of recycling it discreetly to neighbours as it was the neighbours who had brought it or its fellow.
The fridge was beginning to resemble a cake shop.
The dogs were becoming indignant.
By the time we had returned home on Sunday with the remains of the cake given us by our friends the thing had run out of control.
What to do?
I decided to scrape the sponge layers free of jam, cream and butter icing and freeze them to make a trifle at some future date - no, more like four trifles...
The dogs were happy, jam cream and butter icing adorning their whiskers.
I was happy. Not only had I been spared the singing of Happy Birthday, I had also been spared the horrors of April Fool.
No one knew of this European tradition....and I wasn't about to tell them!
