The birthday card conundrum

Choosing a suitable birthday card is hard, much harder than it should be. Choosing a birthday card for the first birthday into a new relationship is nigh on impossible. I've just had to choose a birthday card for my boyfriend and literally spent almost an hour staring at the selection in Clintons a few weekends ago, before giving up and walking out without a card.

Maybe I'm reading far too much into it, but a birthday card generally says a bit about the person who's sending it, the person who's receiving it and the relationship they have. I have the same crisis when having to choose cards for my immediate family. So much so that my brother and I have given up and now send each other cards intended to be from the cat, for the best teacher or my particular favourite, to our local priest.

So back to my little Clintons breakdown. Firstly I was never going to choose one that had 'To my lovely boyfriend' written on it, or was covered in pink hearts or whatever. I'd scratch my eyes out with a rusty spoon before buying one of those. It's just not me. Never has been and probably never will be.

What about the supposed humerous ones? Well they are never funny really, not as funny as they think they are. The current trend for captioning old photos with something funny is the closest I'd get, but none of them were right. Plus some of the cards are very English-centric humour, which is dodgy territory when you're wishing birthday love to someone across the pond. So that ruled most of them out, along with the singing Cliff Richard, which although I think are hilarious, I'm not sure translates all that well.

So what did that leave me with? The general happy birthday ones, the 30th birthday ones or the ones with just a photo on the front. Ugh. What a decision.

In the end I got one from the garden centre across the road from my office. I'm not telling you what it is because I posted it late and I don't think it's arrived yet (I know, I'm such a good girlfriend), I had a much narrower selection to choose from and ended up quite happy with my choice. But surely it shouldn't be this difficult? Or I shouldn't care so much? Answers on a postcard, and remember I'll be judging you on your choice of postcard...