April 1st Birthdays.

It is so hard to accept that while we in the north cower under pitiless rain and such dismal conditions that even the Meadows' seagulls have retired from their worm baiting, the south of Britain is basking under blue skies and temperatures at least 15 degrees warmer than here. Oh the injustices of nature!

Meanwhile His Lordship is lunching with an army pal who is 80 today. They were both teenagers when they spent 2 years of National Service crawling through the jungles of Malaya fighting communist insurgents during the Malaya Campaign in the fifties.

It seems depressing weather in which to celebrate a birthday but there is another one today containing a square of lucky numbers and belonging to Magpie.
A very happy birthday to them both.

I wonder if on their births on the 1st of April, they would have liked to enter this world uttering, if they could, the immortal Scottish words ' Hunty Gowk'!* to surprise their parents.

* the expression used in my childhood after the successful completion of an April Fool's practical joke.