Harppy Barssday

Hey all, thanks for all the Happy Birthday emails - I am terribly shocking at remembering birthday dates and end up feeling guilty for a week or so around an estimated date. This of course means I spend most of the year with a vague guilty feeling... so sorry if I forgot yours, you have no idea how I suffer, such tremblings, such flutterings all over me such spasms in my side, and pains in my head, and such beatings at heart, that I get no rest by night or by day... hmmm I may send out one of those birthday calendar things.

It was a nice birthday. The kids at school played a Harppy Barssday song on the intercom for me. Sadly also the anniversary of the Kobe earthquake which killed over 6000 people and I was constantly reminded of this.
Liz took me out to dinner at a wee place that makes dinner sets (a compartmentalised box with many tiny dishes) in a place that I always thought was just a house and then we watched Alexander which I wouldn't if I was you, and drank some Jackson's Creek wine. I even made cake which worked surprisingly well with the funny flour. Nice.

I had my first real yucky bout of homesickness last week. Maybe because I've been here long enough for my surroundings to seem totally familiar, I just had that weird ache where you want something truly, properly, really, familiar y'know? Maybe it is just the weather getting me down but I would have given anything to smell some warm sun screen or run down a hill into the Wellington wind or hear someone quote The Castle in daily conversation... maybe it has just been too long since my last hug. Ay me. At least I have chocolate. And too many socks. And movies starring Colin Firth. Any my crocheted tree. And my sanity.