More birthdays

Today would have been my father's birthday - he'd have been well over 100. I always thought it very fitting that he should have been born on All Saints' Day. I knew him as a loving and patient man, with a strong sense of family, although as a lad. his father had told him that if he didn't control his temper, he'd wind up on the gallows. I posted a photo of him a while ago, here. I revere his memory.

But today was about celebrating Ronaldo's birthday - that's him on my right, and his brother Ricardo on my left (right of the picture). We've known the brothers since they were in their early teens, in a home run by a wonderful woman called Kay, who rescued them from the favelas after they left the orphanage where they had been brought up. They also used to come and wait tables when our amdram group (of which yesterday's birthday boy, Chris, was a leading member) put on a dinner show.

Some years later, when I went to work at Price Waterhouse, I was waiting for the lift beside Edson (red shirt), without recognising him. He asked whether I hadn't worked with Dona Kay. It turned out that he and Samuel (far left of the pic), two more of Kay's boys, were working at PwC too. When Samuel later married one of our colleagues, Kay and her husband stayed with us for the wedding, and I re-met Ronaldo, who has been our handyman ever since. Ricardo, meantime, was working for a well-know tour agency, and found our younger daughter her first job.

Today we all got together for a feijoada at Ronaldo's girlfriend's place, the 'four musketeers', their children and, in Ronaldo's case, his two grandchildren. He's doing better than I did - two grandchildren at just 49!

Shortly off to try the night life in Lapa, Rio's current hotspot, where the band HH was privileged to play with on our recent Beatles Night is doing a gig tonight.