Birthdays are contentious. Some people hate them and hide the dates from their co-workers’ calendars in a bid to forget theirs exists. Others send out invites for celebrations months in advance and burn bridges with those who forget to wish them well. For the majority of my life, I’ve partied in the second camp – an only child and a Leo I, stereotypically, love my day for me.
But something shifted in my attention-seeking heart the moment I turned 25. After weeks of cramming in cocktails, dinner dates and shopping trips (because everyone knows it’s a birth month not a birthday), I arrived at my own house party and realised I was only one thing: exhausted.
As 26 approached, and my thoughtful fun friends began to ask: ‘What’s the plan?!’, I had a strong urge to turn my phone off, crawl into bed and switch off the lights. I had birthday apathy – I’m old, we get it, who cares.
The people who spoke most fondly of another year around the sun were nearly always those who spent it alone.
Sulkily, I thought about who actually seemed happiest on their birthdays: Not my friends with a bottle of Grey Goose in an overpriced club, not the women who’d committed to dinner with their boyfriends only to realise they missed the girls, and definitely not the Queen—who looks (sorry) actually bored at most of her celebrations.
No, the people who spoke most fondly of another year around the sun were nearly always those who spent it alone. ‘I had a salad, a steak, some wine…I just wanted to sit and think about things,’ Keanu Reeves said of his 39th year. ‘It’s one of my greatest pleasures,’ Bill Nighy admitted of eating alone on his 70th birthday.
And because I’m obnoxious, over the top and seriously pushing my luck, I contacted one of London’s greatest five-star hotels, The Corinthia, to see if they’d host my experiment to spend my first ever birthday alone. And, reader, they said yes.
At 12pm on Friday, I checked in and was handed a bottle of water, a snack and someone to take my bag up to my room on the second floor. My humble abode was actually a suite and before I could even launch myself onto the bed and shriek with glee like Iris in The Holiday, I was called down for a Swedish massage in the spa.
When every kink of tension had been stealthily cracked out of my spine with ESPA oils and firm hands, I shuffled, swaddled in my squidgy robe, back up to my room where a bottle of champagne, a fruit platter and cake were waiting for me – this was already the best birthday of my life. It’s clear why Anna Delvey risked incarceration to live like this.
For the rest of the day, I read, swam, ate and bathed (there was a TV in the bathroom) before rolling into the gorgeously large bed for one of the best sleeps of my life. After years of people pleasing, arranging celebrations that worked for both my parents, my pals and everybody else but me, I’d finally spent 24 hours doing exactly what I wanted, which – it turns out – was very little.
Truthfully, you don’t need floor to ceiling windows, smoked salmon and caviar room service or embroidered towels to reset your sense of calm. This experiment would have worked on a long walk, in the corner of my favourite book shop, at a countryside spa or a breakfast for one.
But time alone, I’m now entirely certain, is the absolute best gift you can give yourself on your birthday. Whether it constitutes the whole celebration or is just the peace before the party, nothing can make you appreciate your friends and family more than the quiet and calm without them.