A 70th birthday bash

We will be missing Margaret’s big Birthday celebrations in October so we do a surprise mini Birthday while she is here.
Margaret always volunteers to help out with the shopping so I wasn’t able to buy a birthday cake without her seeing - she didn’t bat an eyelid when I put a huge cake in the trolley… Maybe it was because it said happy birthday in Portuguese not English.
Today it was supposed to rain all day but Margaret’s optimism and sunny disposition shone through, and it was nice enough in the afternoon to go to the beach. Margaret and Donal headed there first and we hung back and decorated the boat. She got a great surprise when we got back from the beach, the cake hadn’t given away our plan at all - she just assumed I had bought it because I love cake.
We had champagne and presents in the sunshine in the cockpit. The most precious gifts were the ones Ruby and Colm had bought themselves and the cards they had made. They had hit the tourist shops of Lagos before Margaret ever landed in Portugal. Ruby found her a traditional ceramic dish and Colm gave her a bag with a Portuguese tile pattern printed on it. In each pocket he had put a little surprise - a patterned pen, notebook and a Portugal postcard.

For a celebratory dinner we go to a traditional restaurant which Margaret had enjoyed several times on previous trips here. The food is cooked on an open charcoal grill and we eat cuttle fish, ribs and tuna. The views are nearly as good as the boatyard - we are looking across at the train station.
The party rolls on to the funfair and Margaret instigates a ride on the King - this will definitely catapult her into her seventies. Ronan, Colm and I join her and we start off laughing which quickly turns into screaming and as the King does a 360 overhead and thunders back around to the ground there is silence and white knuckles. Once the King slows down, our voices find laughter again. Margaret O’Driscoll’s joie de vivre is incredible.Read more