Birthday a time to celebrate our lost pals

A BIRTHDAY! The only true celebration when you think about it.

It means another year of the wonderful gift of ‘ life’, experienced since the very beginning of, well, I suppose, you.

Whether a good year, bad year, whatever year, it’s still another year of life. And that is the greatest celebration of all I reckon, for a very good reason, ‘ it’s a privilege denied to many’, as the old saying goes.

We all have friends who have lost their birthday, so perhaps on our day, we should also share a moment for our mates who won’t have one again.

Yeah I know, a little serious, but with very good reason, I have a birthday coming up, and while going through the Pocket Of Mayhem, my phone, I was taken back, taken back to a time when four of my dear mates, had birthdays.

And there were messages, in this fascinating time machine, from them to me. Sorta like how we used to keep Christmas cards, and see the wonderful wishes from Grandma who has since joined the passing parade.

Touch the words, and feel her moving the pen over the page, her smile, her laugh, and the writing of course was always magnificent.

Well here in this age of the sometimes cold and inhuman electronic wizardry, we actually carry our mates with us.

There, somewhere in that I ( don’t know how it works) phone, words typed freely from the heart by dear friends are there, messages never to be deleted, though they may be from this physical world.

When I have my celebration this weekend, I’ll celebrate a moment with a few great mates, their last words to me, still in my phone.

Two incredible broadcasters, Pete and Keith, a forever mate Rob Pots, and a doctor mate whose cancer had returned and the terrible battle was truly on.

He loved the horse races. I’m looking at his last words to me now and they send shivers and a smile, for we would laugh so loud in his surgery, goodness knows what people would think. He wrote this when I asked how he was: “Neck and neck, turning into the straight, it’s going down to the wire, how are you mate?”

Liam was a wonderful man, and still is, alive in my memory, also helped along by this little device of the new century.

This is not to be taken morbidly please, quite the opposite, simply a reminder to celebrate, If we are so blessed, another birthday.

Well the summer donation device known as the Ergon ATM, the aircon, is now back on.

Mother Nature has indeed switched the heater on, not too much, but it will soon be on high. There are four Bowen mango trees down near The Strand, and the bats are having a ball.

I reckon a cherry picker, make that a mango picker from the council could do the job, the mayor could sit there and sell buckets of them for charity. Just a thought.

Hang on, if the money doesn’t come through for you know what, it’ll be picking for the pipes.

Happy days. Ooroo.