Not giving a stuff about birthdays is great – but try to remember your children’s

Birthdays are now officially on the trigger list. First birthday cake in the office was banned (hard to refuse, therefore liable to make weight watchers feel awkward… think that was it).

Now, a woman whose employers sent her a birthday card at home when she was off sick is suing them for harassment.

Admittedly this appears to be more about the unwanted contact than the actual card, but one glance at the headline and I just assumed the complainant had gone to court because she had been made to feel old when she was trying to forget all about her birthday. Or the card wasn’t appropriate. Or it wasn’t personal enough. Or it had not been signed by one of the managers and only sketchily signed (no message) by Janet, her mean coworker. Or the card was sent second class, so the chances of it getting there on the day of her birthday were zero, therefore making it a somewhat insulting box ticking gesture, and so on. There are so many ways you can get a birthday wrong – I get it – and birthday anxiety or acute birthday sensitivity (ABS) tends to build over time until one day, at some point after your fiftieth, praise be, you no longer give a stuff about birthdays.

I’m not even one of those people (let’s be honest, females) who take birthdays seriously. I come from a family where you’re lucky if you get a text and if you do it’s at 8pm and only because you reminded one of them. When I met my husband, he was grey faced in the lead up to my birthday having experienced, in previous relationships, a thousand shades of birthday expectations, and a lot of tears and wailing on the day. Once he realised all he had to do was remember it and get me a low key present that wasn’t clothes a size too small – or any clothes – it was plain sailing, or as plain sailing as a woman’s birthday can be.

You’re always going to be a bit more alert for signs of thoughtfulness, versus “here’s something someone in the office told me to get, in my lunch hour, yesterday”. You’re always going to scan the card for Special To You features and feel a bit sad if it’s the same one you sent the dog. Even if you’re not one of those birthdayzillas who wants bunches of their favourite flowers and breakfast in bed and tickets to a show and enough cards to cover two mantelpieces, you can’t help thinking of your birthday as a litmus test of the state of the relationship and all your friendships – a bit.

Still, the good news is that the heat, even the mild sort, goes out of birthdays once you get past 50. That very small nagging birthday gremlin that may get to you on certain birthdays, the one that whispers: might it have been nice to have been thrown a surprise party like Mariella Frostrup’s with all my favourite people gathered in one room and speeches? Or, couldn’t they have got it together to ring me on the day? Or don’t they know by now that I’m allergic to bath oil (do they even care, really?) Or, doesn’t he realise that if you’re going to give your wife the top of the range meat thermometer she begged for, you must also get her something small and lovely that she mentioned once, in passing, on a car journey six months ago? That voice almost shuts up altogether.

In place of the low level hum of birthday (am I appreciated?) anxiety, you get into a whole new zone that is trying to avoid letting down your children on their birthdays. We’re not doing well on this. Last year, the youngest rang his father one evening who hissed down the phone “can’t talk we’re at your cousin Harry’s birthday dinner”. “That’s nice,” he said good naturedly. “It’s my birthday too.” Years of good birthday work down the drain.