Friend's 50th Birthday Party

Click on image to enlarge. Copyright: DawnTreader.

Yesterday I had the honour of being a guest at a friend's 50th birthday party. I have not been showing a whole lot of pictures of friends and family on the blog. Myself, I confess I also feel a lot more comfortable behind the camera than in front of! However, I decided to do a collage of some of the photos from yesterday. It will give you an idea, and since the pictures don't get too detailed this way, I don't think anyone would mind.

Middle: Birthday Boy.
Upper right-hand corner: Birthday Boy's Wife (in blue).
Upper left-hand corner: Peruvian friend dressed up in his national costume.
Bottom right-hand corner: That's me to the left (in blue).

Birthday Boy and Wife have been close friends of mine for almost 24 years. When I first got to know them, individually, they were not yet a couple. As newly-weds, a few years later, they were my next-door neighbours for a while, across the landing. They have their own house now since many years, and two teenage boys. We do not see as much of each other as we used to, but we usually get together in a small circle of friends once or twice a year. They're also the kind of people you can always turn to in a crisis... Even if it was a while since you last talked!

Yesterday was a big party, so I also got to meet with several old friends I had not seen for years. Didn't have a chance to really talk to all of them, but it was good to see them, and to catch up a bit with some of them. It was a long time since I attended a party this size. Some 50th birthday parties I've been invited to during the last decade I have not been able to go to, because of my chronic pain problems including difficulties travelling etc. This one was at my friends' own house and not too far away, so I was happy to be able to go. It was an open house kind of thing, so people kept coming and going. I came among the first, who also happened to be people I know fairly well; and I got a lift home with a friend and her daughter before it got too late (long-lasting) for me, so it all worked out well.

Birthday Boy had said he did not want presents, but would be happy if people wanted to give some money to a foundation for which he works, helping people with drug/alcohol problems. Besides such a contribution, I made him a birthday card with a collage of autumn photos that I had taken the same morning. (Follow link to see it in my Picture Book.) Inside the card, I included another collage of pictures from the years we've known each other. I also took 38 photos during the evening which I will copy onto a CD for him (after some editing - I've spent this morning fixing red eyes!!!). He took some photos himself too (you can see he's holding his camera in the picture above!), but being the focus of the party yourself, it is not easy to concentrate on being the photographer as well... (I know from experience...)

No one else seemed to have brought a camera.
Strange people!
-LOL-