Another year crossed off.

It's my birthday on Saturday. Another year of waving 2 fingers at the grim reaper. Better luck next year, pal. It's also my grandmother's birthday on the same day, I should add. She'd be about 150 million years old I reckon. For the non Kiwis amongst you, Saturday is also New Zealand's national day. Known locally as Waitangi Day. Given Sweden's love of public holidays, I'm surprised that they haven't picked up on that one yet. It's got to be better than their own one, which they share with D-Day. Nice timing there, folks. The high point of having your birthday on a public holiday is that you get a day off work. Or a day from school when I was a lad. The downside to that is that restaurants and the like were usually shut. The good ones anyway. KFC and gas stations are still open, thankfully. Otherwise my birthdays would have been a total write off. Relevance ? Well, in a previous life, in the dark days before my Swedish saviour spirited me away, I was married to a Kiwi girl. I recall, after we'd been dating for a couple of weeks, her mother took me aside and told me that I could do so much better than date her daughter. A shocking thing to hear at the time, but hindsight showed her to be wise beyond her years. But I'm moving off track here. Now, I wouldn't say that she was deliberately uncaring or unthoughtful. Just a bit slow out of the blocks. She would remember my birthday, every year. Like clockwork. Problem was, that she would remember about an hour after she woke up. Sometime are lunchtime on the big day. Every year I'd hear the slam of the front door, followed by the squeeling of car tyres. She was usually back again in about 10 minutes. Which was about as long as it took to drive to the gas station up the hill and back. I amassed a rather impressive collection over the years. Several bags of firewood, a garden hose, a set of six BP glasses, a sparkplug spanner, and a number of "easy listening" CDs. Dinner was a romantic trip to KFC. Dining in, not drive through. It was a special day after all. The celebration of my birthday has improved considerably over the past 8 years. Due to the change in casting. It'a a lovely day, and I look forward to it again, just as when I was a kid. It's just a bit of a pisser that I now have to go out and buy my own firewood.