Paul's birthday

I am a lucky person.  I am in a position to give happiness to others. As I often do, I hosted a big family dinner earlier tonight -- this time for Paul's birthday.  And free dinners make everyone happy!  We had it at a local Indian restaurant at Mt. Gravatt which provides both good food and a good ambiance.  Also as usual I provided toasting champagne, my trusty Seaview.

But I was able to go the extra mile this time.  Although I had invited everyone to Paul's dinner a month in advance -- as I usually do -- Russell and Suzy had apparently already arranged a birthday dinner for Russell on the same night.  So Suzy was unable to attend Paul's dinner.  That was rather hurtful to Paul as he  puts great store by family and is always ready to do what he can for family.

As has long been the case, however, and as everybody knows, Paul and I are as thick as thieves so when I saw how down in the dumps Paul was over having NEITHER sister at his birthday celebrations, I decided to do what I could to put things right.  I succeeded!  I got Paul's New Zealand sister, Vonnie,  over for the occasion.  I shouted the airfares for Von, Simon and little Hannah and they put their New Zealand life on hold for two weeks in order to make the most of the occasion.  Paul was of course delighted.  And everyone was delighted to see Von & family again.

There were 13 of us present plus two littlies.  It was good to have George along and we got Timmy along too, which was good.  Before he had a regular girlfriend it was a bit hard to get Timmy along to family occasions.

The food was good as expected and Jenny provided a fancy cake.  The conversation at my end of the table centred heavily around Cyprus and related issues.  I think there are lots of people worldwide at the moment who are a bit jittery now they realize that their government can just seize a slice of their savings if it wants to.  A Greek island with only one million people has certainly got the world's attention at the moment.

The Cyprus banks all lent lots of money to the Greek government and eventually had to take a 75% haircut on that -- so are now broke.  Whatever happens it looks like at least one of them is now finished.

I left after a couple of hours as I usually do but some of the rest went back to Paul's place to kick on.

Self with Paul

Self with 2 beautiful ladies