Remember, Remember

November, what’s not to love? My mother, my brother and I have birthdays within 5 days of one another. The whole of the month just feels like one long jamboree. Having a birthday around Bonfire night is excellent. I get one whole week of fireworks which is of course my due, and quite frankly, if there isn’t a firework display going on when I come out of the station, I’m astonished 🙂 Just what’s needed by someone with an already over-inflated sense of self-importance! When I used to live in Battersea, I could see the fireworks from my 6th floor flat which was awesome. Now I’m in Chiswick, I get to see them from the comfort of my sofa. The pictures in this post are from that sofa. As you can see, I was too lazy to even open the window for a clearer shot, so blasé have I become about the whole hoo-ha. I’ve thrown in some pictures of nebulae because they’re what fireworks remind me of.

I started my celebrations by meeting my friend Katie and her son Devesh for lunch. Devesh is nearly 3 and has a brain the size of a planet. I sat there open-mouthed, watching him count to a zillion and reading his book. He combines this with being absolutely adorable. The sheer, raw computing power of the human brain never fails to amaze me. Watching a good one work in its natural habitat – absorbing everything it sees and processing it, is fascinating. There is the added boon of seeing it in a child; cleverness in a child is as natural for that child as breathing. They learn just for the sheer pleasure of it and haven’t become aware of  adult labelling and pigeon-holing yet. It reminded me of seeing my niece identify every colour under the sun at a similar age. Imagine my total lack of surprise at the fact that 16 years later, she’s at MIT. Please encourage the little ones around you to learn, our world needs their smarts. They don’t all have to be brainiacs either; they just have to do whatever they choose to do really well. The rest of us will owe you a debt of gratitude. Have a stardust-sprinkled weekend.