Transatlantic Felicitations

On my birthday day, wherever I am or however I feel I always get a phone call from my youngest sister.

In the days before name and number display I could be in a meeting, up in a loft or otherwise indisposed and, taking the call, have 18 seconds of a personalised and unconditional 'Happy Birthday to You' sung down the line.

This could be overheard and envied by my fellow delegates around the conference table, sound close-up, personal  and comforting under the eaves of a roof or just echo around the toilet compartment with me trying to hide the fact that I was in the loo.

The receiving of such a sentiment is a great boost to an already special day. My other siblings are also, on the occasions of their birthday days, so celebrated and it does bring us together even though we are now, as a famliy, reasonably dispersed around the UK and in the case of youngest sister, in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.

A birthday phone call is however often used with guilt as a main motivation. I speak for my own sorry self in that a call can make up for the unforgiveable absent mindedness or overlooking of the clearly marked entry on the calendar. If my youngest sister had £1 for every time I told her there was a card in the post she would, by now, have sufficient funds to get quite a nice padded one with sickly sweet rhyming couplets and attempted alliteration for 'unique', 'fantastic' and 'sooper dooper special'. She must by now be worried that her postal delivery person is on the take as nothing that I have vehemently professed to be 'in the mail' has ever arrived.

This year, well yesterday to be exact, was a further sub-section in my catalogue of shame.

I did remember the significance of 26th October. I was determined to make an attempt to return the sing-song birthday greeting as a small gesture of reconciliation for what I refer to as the lost years of distant separation from my youngest sister. On a positive note, if you took into account all the years that I omitted a greeting, my sister would still only be in her early thirties.

The time difference between East Yorkshire and Tennessee thwarted my initial plans. A call placed at 8am British Summer Time would equate to 3am in Memphis. I would have to put post-it notes in prominent positions on the car dashboard, my desktop computer and in the lavatory at work to keep my plan live and viable.

A problem was evident at about 2.30pm UK time. I had three different phone numbers for my sister on my contact list. A voicemail  received from her the week before had been deleted amongst my forty or so
saved messages in one of my enforced purges to make my mobile phone lighter. Logically I presumed that the last one listed would be the most recent. I dialled it. The pause and then the very distinctive Stateside ring tone of two short tones, rest and then repeating could be heard so I was at least on the right Continent.

An automated non-descript voice urged me to leave a message. At the tone I launched into a Gilbert and Sullivanesque version of 'Happy Birthday to You' with accentuated high and low notes and a melodic finale of 'Yoooooooooo' over a couple of wheezy and squeaky octaves. It was, in my mind, a competent performance,  but no cigar as they say.

At about 3pm my mobile showed an incoming call from the number I had used. I had made a contingency plan that if a missed call was noted on my sister's phone I would give another live rendition. Mindful of an increased number of colleagues in the office this version was more in the style of an obscene call, low gruff voice, monotone and frankly, not a little bit menacing.

A male voice on the line asked in a rather effeminate drawl ' who's calling please?'. This was totally unforseen on my part and I, colouring up rapidly, explained that the number had been my sisters work phone but obviously was not now. Regaining some composure I went on to say that he could use, without fear of sanction, my previous and recorded greeting for any of his family and friends as long as they were called Susan. The man was most gracious for my intrusion and assumptions as to his private circumstances and we ended the call with him passing on his best greetings to my sister.

Obviously, 'Happy Birthday to You' is a widely accepted, non threatening, gender neutral and not faction or religion specific sentiment. There was a brief understanding and bond between myself and the mistaken recipient. I did immediately delete the number however, out of the operating interests of my old and limited mobile phone.

I did eventually make contact with my sister on her Special Day with a third , and by now rather weary version of the song.

I am hopeful that the birthday card will arrive soon.

I am not now sure if I put an old address for somewhere in St Petersburg, Florida on the oversized envelope containing a squidgy soft, upholstered and gloriously cheesey rhymed offering. The sheer scale of the weighty tome should make it difficult for that thieving bastard at US Postal to ride off into the sunset with it on his handlebars as he has done every year for the past decade and more.