Rowan is Ten!
It was Rowan’s 10th birthday last Friday. Unbelievable, double figures already, ten years since Gill and I spent a long 36 hours in Whipps Cross Hospital. She looked very grown-up too, as if she had climbed up to the next developmental stage overnight.
Also on Friday night, Rob and Kay visited Sheffield and took me out to see The Magic Numbers - I’d only heard snatches of two of their tunes in passing, but they were awesome - absolutely beautiful music (and some especially nice, very clean guitar solos, notes dribbling off the fretboard) and the most appreciative band I have ever seen live - after each song, when they heard the applause (which admittedly was almighty) they beamed at each other and at the audience as if they couldn’t quite belive, without pinching themselves, that so many people liked their music so much. I was really glad I went.
The next day, that “heightened awareness of something you’ve recently become familiar with” thing kicked in, and The Magic Numbers were everywhere, on the radio, on the (still-broken) CD player in the Showroom bar, in shops, everywhere. Since then, it feels like I’ve been unable to get them out of my head, but what I’ve actually been unable to get out of my head is the freakishly similar-sounding Flaming Lips singing “This Here Giraffe” (possibly because the cot and changing mat here have pictures of giraffes on then, with the words “mummy loves her little giraffe”).