Note from the Editor:
This article was kindly written for the SDC by member @Doctor Alan.

The expression ‘Many Happy Returns of the Day’ means that we hope the person to whom we refer will return to have many more birthdays. It’s a bit of an old-fashioned notion, but I always was a bit of a dinosaur! I suppose as we get older, we don’t have the same feelings about birthdays as we used to as a child and even as a teenager. We used to really look forward to them – our gateways to ‘rights of passage’ maybe. Most of us have been really lucky to be able to ‘celebrate’ our birthdays – we receive presents from friends and family, have a cake and sometimes, even a party. I say ‘lucky’ because not all of us have this privilege. Many ‘miss out’ due to poverty or family beliefs.



My first real memory was when I was five years old. On our birthdays, my two brothers and I would be able to stay with our ‘Nana’ on Box Hill in Surrey at an idyllic little house called ‘Rose Cottage’. Our grandparents had bought a little blue tricycle that we could use, and I remember proudly riding around Ashurst Drive and Headley Heath Approach that bordered Rose Cottage wearing a sign that proclaimed: “Now I Am Five!”. (That was in 1949 – when my father constructed our very first 9” television set!)

My Uncle Valentine (Val) and Auntie Thomasina (Tommy), who had no children of their own, would take us out on a ‘birthday treat’ – we’d be taken to Tommy’s office in London, where we’d wait until work finished. I’d be allowed to ‘play’ on her typewriter, making ‘soldiers’ out of the per cent sign and other letters. I’ve honestly forgotten where we were taken, but I think it was to a London show. I always liked Val – more than my other three uncles at the time – and it was he who introduced me to my first car when I was eighteen – a little 1933 Austin 7 ‘Chummy’ convertible. I like to think I was able to repay them in some part for all those birthday treats when I drove us all from Sydney to Cairns when they had a holiday in Australia.



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