When I'm Sixty Four

That’s the song that my mummy keeps singing to my Grandma. It’s her birthday today. She and Grandpa came over to visit us at our new temporary house. Our real house is being made very different - with walls taken out and a new kitchen being put into the old dining room. Mummy is quite fussed about it all - and is worried they never will finish when they say they will.

Anyway, back to the song, it goes like this: (It’s really supposed to be about a man being 64, but Mummy says Grandpa is a lot older than that.)
 

When I get older losing my hair (Grandpa lost all his hair before but he has a little now)
many years from now
will you still be sending me a valentine
birthday greeting, bottle of wine
If I'd been out till quarter to three
would you lock the door
Will you still need me
Will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four

Mummy says that the song was written by Paul McCartney, one of the Beatles, when he was 16 and it came out in 1967, the year when Grandpa and Grandma got married, and that he wrote it because his dad was that age that year.

My grandma is that age - which seems very old to me. I am 2 ½ (although mummy always says I am really a bit younger than that since I was born 2 months early) and Grandpa kept saying, "She is 32 times older than you are. Susannah, can you say, ‘Grandma, you are really old?’".

We went out to lunch for Grandma’s birthday - and I had garlic bread. I didn’t want the pizza. Grandma doesn’t like our new kitchen. When she was here over last weekend, Mummy asked her to make the supper - which was only pizza and my pasta - and twice the fire alarm went off. She is upset because there are no windows in it - and you have to have the fan on all the time when the cooker is on because even just steam will make the fire alarm go off. And when it goes off it makes me cry. It hurts my ears. I think it hurts Grandma’s ears too because she told Mummy she could cook her own food - and went and sat in the living room for awhile.

Mummy gave Grandma a bottle of gin for her birthday. She seemed very pleased. When I go to Grandma’s house I always am allowed to drink fizzy stuff that she says goes with her gin. The bubbles tickle my nose and I like to watch them in the glass.

I gave Grandma one of my best paintings and she says she will take good care of it and put it on the bulletin board. Grandpa hadn’t bought her a present so before lunch, Mummy took them to a nice craft shop - and Grandma picked out a wooden fruit bowl.

She wore a new turquoise top today and I gave her a label to put on it that Mummy and I made which says "I am 64" - just like my badge that says, "I am 2." Mummy thought all the people in the restaurant would like to know that it is her birthday and we sang to her, softly, but really it didn’t matter because we were the only people in there. I like to sit on her lap and feel her face. She has a few spots or buttons on it (that’s what I call moles) but Grandpa has lots more buttons on his face, but it is all scratchy and I don’t like the feel of his face very much.

Grandma made a special banana birthday cake which she brought with her. The icing was the best part.

I like it when my Grandma and Grandpa come to visit especially because I get to do things that normally my Mummy won’t let me do. Like today I threw the bunches of Styrofoam shapes from Mummy’s package all over the room. She says it takes a week to get me back to normal after I have been visiting with my Grandparents.

Anyway, I am glad that I will not be sixty four for a long time. But I won’t mind being four, because that is what my cousin Tasha is, and she has a bicycle.