My Birthday Month :)

As I turn my calendar page from the dreary, grey month of January to the new month of February wonderful images come to me.  For me February is full of anniversaries, birthdays and expectation as the days become longer, and the garden begins to awaken.


Roll on Spring!

February is my birthday month.  I was born on the last day of Aquarius and my parents joked about the significance of my water carrier birth sign as we toted buckets of water around the garden in the month traditionally known for water rationing, drought and wilted gardens.  Back in those days my parents filled their garden with water hungry English roses, bedding plants, and Northern hemisphere bulbs. Australian plants were considered straggly, boring and only fit to populate the bush while pride of place in our back yard was taken by two enormous English Oaks grown from acorns planted as the house was being built in 1951.  In the Australian climate they grew three times as fast as they would have done in England and when, after sixty years, my parents moved from their house, those oak trees had taken over like giant triffids.

February is also the month my son was born, two and a half months early in 1982.  Three years later in February I was heavily pregnant with my daughter. Visitors brought armfuls of beautiful golden daffodils and now these joyful flowers always remind me of my babies – now considerably larger!

I met my present partner at the beginning of the first February of the new millennium and this Sunday we celebrate those such happy years together while we look forward to many more. I’m sure he is looking forward to not many more years of coping with me stressing over coursework deadlines and getting my referencing system right!  In our first year together I started my final year of my anthropology degree.  Poor thing got landed with proof reading my dissertation, and putting up with my son doing his final year of A levels and my daughter starting GCSE’s – not a particularly peaceful household.  It must have to be true love – we are still together!

When I was at school February was the start of our school year as we returned from our long summer holidays. Here in England February is buckling down time.  We are halfway through the academic year, tired from a long cold winter and working hard to meet coursework deadlines, the requisite number of clinical hours while balancing work and social life. 



Is this the cure for enquiry unit ear?

I have just begun working each Mondays in the Enquiry Unit which gives me one and a half days of regular hours per week.  On my first day it seemed that all I did was ask questions and bug all the more experienced staff but now I have been there three weeks I am finding my feet more.  I have discovered a new condition called Enquiry Unit Ear.  Its symptoms are one ear feeling quite warm, puffy and worn out after having a phone handset in close proximity for seven and a half hours!

My regular readers know that I have decided that I have moved New Year match with the Iranian New Year called Nowrah celebrated at the Spring solstice; this year it falls on the 20^th March.  There is a wonderful Persian shop in Peckham called Persopolis where there will be celebrations with treats and different events – right up my street! As it is also my daughter’s birthday the next day we have even more to celebrate.