Tombola

I have a theory that birthdays should be like tombolas; you should celebrate any that end in a zero or a five. My selfie companion here - the mother of a close friend of mine - was 85 years old this week so we celebrated with a rather wonderful garden party in Hampstead Garden Suburb, that lovely north London architectural oasis in a land of dual carriageways, run down semi detached houses and dodgy shop fronts. 

There is something wistful about these affairs as there are so many widows and so few elderly men. Curiously average life expectancy for men born in 1939 is 63 years and for women 65 years which means that 85 is good by any count, but of course the social class variations are enormous. But it was a happy affair, blighted only by bloody awful traffic there and back.

We had to suffer another lacklustre performance by the England football team tonight, not that we watched it. They scraped a very lucky 2-1 win but there was a moment of hilarity as we had an Ocado order during extra time. TSM said to the delivery man "what about substitutions?" (for unavailable products) to which he replied "I think they should take off Kane and put on another defender". Actually we only had one, our favourite orange juice being replaced by another brand. But it was a rare moment of levity in a set of otherwise torturous proceedings.

TSM and I watched some Glastonbury highlights to round off the day which gave us a bit of a lift and which caused me to google the history of the festival. The first ever was held on my twelfth birthday in 1970 and was attended by 1,500 people. Fifty four years later the crowd exceeded 140,000 people.

We have a tense first week of July in prospect now, with England vs Switzerland and the tories vs the rest of the world to come. If I had to choose between the two I would definitely opt for a good outcome in the latter…