Forty-eight today – and I still have homework to do

I am 48 today. Forty-eight doesn’t seem very old to me, but many of my fellow 1962 babies prefer not to mark the occasion, fearing they are past it. One told me this week that she hoped I was buying myself a present and admitted that she knew only one way of dealing with birthdays – throw money at them. Personally, I think 48 sounds much more grown up than 47, and I’m delighted to have got there.

I am planning to celebrate with Mr M and all three Cost Centres, who are home for the Easter holidays. The plan is to fly to the Isle of Wight, but let’s see what the weather is like! CC#2 has become an ace navigator. Recently he looked out of the window at the fields of middle England and said that he could see that Stalin had a point. Not knowing many of Stalin’s points about middle England, I asked him to elucidate. Look at all these little fields, he said, how can they be efficient units of production? If we wanted to make food cost efficiently, we should bulldoze the hedgerows and farm vast but much more commercially viable land areas, as Stalin did after the second world war.

There then followed a long homily from me on (a) hedgerow conservation (b) food security and (c) the merits or otherwise of collective ownership. This was quite a demanding mental exercise, especially when carried out while flying an aircraft. I must say that I am not finding parenting any easier as I – and they – get older. It is not just a matter of having to stay one step ahead of them academically to make sure that I can help with the homework. After I worked through a mathematics exam paper with CC#2, he – rather than commending my mastery of second-order differential equations at the age of almost 48 – asked me why I had bothered to learn calculus at school and university. The only use he had ever seen me put it to, he said, was helping him with his homework. Could I name another? No, as it happened, I couldn’t. Is that why he was learning it, he asked, to help his children in the future? In which case, wouldn’t his time be more productively spent on Facebook?

One thing I have learnt about birthdays, or indeed any other social occasion, is that I must plan them myself. With a husband and three sons, there is no female input into any domestic celebration in our house other than mine, and men in my experience are not much use at planning dates. I was recently invited to have a drink with a captain of industry. As he lives west of London, too, he suggested we met in the early evening somewhere in the Paddington area. While I acknowledge that Paddington is not blessed with trendy drinking haunts, his choice – the coffee shop of the Paddington Hilton – had to be the least appealing venue I have ever visited. At one stage, in total desperation, I went and swiped a tea light from the restaurant and brought it back to our formica table in an attempt to create a little atmosphere, but the hordes of people milling about nearby made it all but impossible to make oneself heard, let alone aspire to anything as welcoming as atmosphere. How can it be that someone who has run a public company for many years and who makes hundreds of decisions a day cannot find somewhere more salubrious in which to entertain me?

For the men planning dates for women born on March 27, let me give you a tip. It doesn’t matter if you are dating Mariah Carey (40 today), or (in your dreams) Swedish supermodel Caroline Winberg (25 today), or my artist friend Absent Angela (too embarrassing to say, but it starts with a five), or even me, it is easy to find out what women of any age like doing. I am not a difficult person to entertain. I like eating fish, drinking Krug and cannot resist white chocolate. J. Sheekey, by way of example, can provide all three. This was true when I was 18, 28, 38 and now 48. Happy birthday to me!

mrsmoneypenny@ft.com