Daisy Suzanne Allen
Born Sunday 6th March 2011
9th birthday
Her life: 4 to 4¼ years ♥ 4¼ to 4½ years ♥ 4½ to 4¾ years ♥ 4¾ to 5 years ♥ 5th birthday ♥ 5 to 5½ years ♥ 5½ to 6 years ♥ 6th birthday ♥ 6 to 6½ years ♥ 6½ to 7 years ♥ 7th birthday ♥ 7 to 7½ years ♥ 7½ to 8 years ♥ 8th birthday ♥ 8 to 8½ years ♥ 8½ to 9 years ♥ 9th birthday
In summary: Index ♥ From birth to four years old ♥ Four years old to nine years old ♥ Nine years old onwards
Special features: Golden Bear (reprise) ♥ More cookery
The day before her 9th birthday and the usual living room preparation has been done (no doubt by Lynne - I just looked on in approval and maybe did some present shifting).
And the morning did come, earlier than ideal (this is before 7am), but then it is very exciting at this age. Daisy poses moodily while Gregory looks crazy-haired and innocent in the background (a standard look in reality).
Time to start ripping them all open, with Daisy kindly letting Gregory get involved (at this point anyway; it could easily have changed in a heartbeat).
As was my standard approach, I took a picture of all the presents with a very happy Daisy by the side. Notable are the two forms of transport: scooter and skateboard. Daisy clearly wanted to get places.
The Harry Potter onesie was quickly adorned (it's not even 7.30am yet).
Meanwhile, I magicked up a boiled egg and soldiers for breakfast, which Daisy tucked into.
It was a Friday and therefore still a school day, so that got in the way of any daytime fun. I took the afternoon off and did the double school run, meaning that I was ready for an early evening trip to Miller & Carter's. This is a cracking starter selection, as evidenced by Daisy's delighted face. She is tucking into nachos, but we also have some beef filled mini Yorkshire puddings with beef dripping sauce on the side (they were ace, but unfortunately they don't do them any more) and halloumi fries (which, writing towards the end of 2024, they still do).
Moving onto main and it's some steak action (obviously), with Daisy's smile looking a bit fixed. Sorry, Daisy, but it's important that we record these things otherwise this webpage wouldn't exist. Then where would we be?
In many cases, and birthday meals at restaurants are no exceptions, things come in threes. This looks like some kind of banana cheesecake offering for dessert.
The next day, it's time to try out some presents. All padded and helmeted up (the ground can be hard), Daisy is ready to try skateboarding.
It's not as easy as it looks. (I say this but she could have mastered a trick by now - it's hard to say in a freeze frame. Probably not, though.)
The other wheels are currently parked up, ready for action after some minor construction work.
Later that afternoon, Daisy engaged in the next wave of present opening, as the Allens were in town.
She was pretty happy to receive some Fuzzikins, whatever they might be.
For our evening meal, we headed to another favourite of the time, Frankie & Benny's. I've gone for a pretty chunky-looking burger. (It's rare that I am featured actually, and the first versions of these were absent of me, but clearly we had some staff help.)
Rolling onto Sunday for the final part of the triple header, and Daisy's birthday party with her friends. There was, as is clear, a Harry Potter theme.
The table was all set up ready for the party, with party bags seemingly already constructed. This is all Lynne's organisation, of course.
First up, was a game of cut the chocolate. The rules were broadly (if I remember correctly), if you roll a 6 you get to cut the chocolate into pieces and eat the pieces, but first you have to put on the Harry Potter scarf plus a hat and gloves, which takes time and the gloves makes it trickier, as does using a relatively blunt knife and fork. Then, if someone else rolls a 6, they have to swap over the paraphernalia and the next person gets to do the cutting.
I seem to remember someone (Rosanna, maybe) got on a good run early on, with a risk of overdosing on chocolate. Daisy finally got to have a go a putting on the winter clothing...
... and using a classical vertical chisel approach (the fork not being that useful) to chop up the chocolate.
This is just a little bit freaky, as Daisy, Sophia and Rosanna all wear Harry Potter masks.
Next up, it's time for the pull down individual strings to see if it explodes. Daisy had first dibs, naturally, but nothing happened. Not surprising really as it would have lost a lot of the tension. And so everyone had a turn, it went back to Daisy, but still nothing happened. You will notice that, while Lynne had made an effort with a Harry Potter-themed T-shirt and, occasionally, the round glasses, I was cutting across this somewhat with my Homer Simpson T-shirt. I'm such a rebel.
And then.... BOOM! Well captured by Lynne, Rosanna was the one who suffered the shock of an explosion of sweets.
This was the mess that was left. Someone will have to clean this up. But as long as the kids had fun.
The next game involves having hidden identities on the back, like the ones where you put a post-it of a celebrity on your forehead and have to guess who it is. (Well, I presume that is what is happening.) Daisy has what looks like a baddie from Harry Potter. (Look, I've never watched any of the films or read any of the books so I don't know the characters, and I am refusing to search on the internet for who it is. I am just assuming that you will know and therefore it's superfluous information anyway.)
On the basis that Rosanna and Daisy have the pictures on their front, I would guess that they have successfully identified the character attached to them. It's a bit poor that Harriet hasn't got hers given who it is, but maybe that's TOO obvious.
After all that activity, they must have generated an appetite. Well, were it not for shoving large quantities of chocolate (and possibly sweets) down their throats. For lunch, it was McDonald's. I vaguely seem to remember going in and getting a huge bag of food to takeaway. Note that we have tempered the unhealthiness of the fast food with bowls of fruit out on the table. I would hope that most or all of this would get consumed but it's not guarantee.
Actually, whilst it is not promising that they looked untouched, they were actually for another purpose. The chocolate fountain. You can also see marshmallows ready for dunking. Dousing in chocolate may somewhat temper the healthiness referred to above.
Here is the chocolate fountain in full use, with the long cocktail sticks being used to spear the relevant item ready to be coated in delicious milk chocolate.
It's then time to finish proceedings by blowing out the birthday candle on a sweet-infested cake.
After all that excitement (and calorific consumption), there was still time to heat back out for some skateboarding action.
And that's the end of her ninth birthday. In the end, it was rather fortunate birthday party timing as, just over a week later, the COVID lockdown started and all parties were off.
It's somewhat the end of an era then, and the next page, for her tenth year, is in a new grouping (it was cleaner that way; there's nothing particularly notable about being nine). Alternatively, you can go back to the Secret Portal.