The birthday boy

Sami’s birthday is actually 10th, but his sister wanted to arrange a party for midnight. She had bought all the balloons etc and ordered the cake (which has a photo on it) and cooked lamb and a rice dish, too. I was hugely impressed.

Afghanis do not usually celebrate birthdays, according to S and S, the siblings, who grew up mostly in Afghanistan. The flatmate E, who is Afghani but grew up in Iran, is more used to celebrating birthdays. We ate and drank and took hundreds of photos and had a good time. Possibly it was a mistake of mine to bring a bottle of wine, as the boys are experimenting with drinking alcohol but are not used to it. S drank his with Pepsi because he didn’t like the taste. He decided he quite liked the floaty feeling it gave him and asked if they could keep the rest of the bottle….

We did not hold off eating the cake until midnight, thank goodness! There was a sort of firework on it and S got so alarmed that he blew it out, and all the candles went out too, and we had to relight them for the official blowing out! We heard about forty versions of Happy Birthday, too, on various phones. Everyone admired my new iPhone.

The boys walked me home, and I was in bed by midnight, just. My Fitbit told me I’d done 10,00 steps today. Not bad for only the second day I’d worn it !

Contrast with S’s birthday last year. I gave him a duvet cover and we had a Tesco ready meal but no party: https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/3191911742888217606

PS it’s three years to the day since we got our daft cat, Indie! We had to drive to Llangorse in Wales to get her. She is still crazy and had brought us a great deal of happiness.