Happy Birthday to all people born on this day and thus sharing their birthday with my youngest; I’ll have to call A, in  the interests of anonymity and to protect him from scroungers wanting a piece of him. He’s an attractive 11 year old young man with several “special” attributes. I suspect he’ll turn out to share at least one of my traits, worryingly, as a parent! On smashing through the wrapping paper which covered the door to his newly decorated and furnished bedroom, he spotted the 2 helium balloons, turned to his sister and said,

“Do you want to do helium with me?”

And when the balloon was nearly finished he exclaimed,

“Oh no its running out, lets get some more”

Thinking back in my life, a long time ago, I hesitate to point out, substitute helium for something else and you’ve got me in a nutshell. Oh dear, i’ll have to watch this one! Maybe we could legalise Helium and tax it to prevent the watering down of the gas by sinister balloon and card shops, if the Helium trade was legalised the government could receive a large chunk of income and silly high pitched voices would ring out from children birthday parties all over the land for longer due to weapons grade Helium. You could choose strengths and concentrations and could thus predict the length of whiney voice and in turn prepare an amusing monologue rather than just saying “Hello, Hello” over and over before the effects run out.

I pea’d on your phone.

In other news the Ashes is well and truly underway; Day 1 seemed to belong to England with our bowlers tearing through the top and mid order of the Australian batsmen, until Steve Smith scored an innings saving 150 odd, backed up by the tail-enders, leaving them with a respectable 280. Day 2 was attritional test cricket at its best, slow scoring, maidens a plenty and England reaching to within spitting distance of the Australian score, Rory Burns, an English opener, who I haven’t heard of until now scored a brilliant maiden test century, batting all day in his deeply unorthodox fashion. He had some luck and the Australians didn’t, we lost 4 wickets but the day definitely belonged to England, the idea being to push on today, bat until tea, declare with a 150 or 200 lead and put the Australians in, hoping to take a couple of wickets in the final session of day 3. Maybe I’m mentioning the bloody obvious but there will be countless twists and turns on the way, which is why I love cricket so much. My friend was at the game, what a day to go, £80 for a full days play, plus beer money, sounds like a bargain to me.

If you don’t follow cricket, then you will have no clue what the entire last paragraph meant. My advice to you? Listen to Test Match Special, and let the commentary wash over you; yesterday they were talking about the astonishing number of words for the bread roll, how exciting is that!?

Yesterday I bumped into my Ex-brother-in-law, he and my sister divorced, and we hadn’t seen either of them or the kids for a couple of years. We went upto our local last night, having arranged secretly to meet them there, what a surprise for A, he didn’t suspect and was overcome when his brain kicked into action and slow recognition became apparent. Amazing to see them, slightly more grown up but still thick as thieves.