It was on this day, a whole 30 years ago, that my big sis­ter was born. When I was little I always had a sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that Rachel being born at 4.11pm was just part of the world’s biggest suck-up trick (my Dad’s birth­day being the 4th, and my Mum’s the 11th. Oh, what a handy coin­cid­ence for someone look­ing to seal their fate as Favour­ite Daugh­ter!), but then I also also, vari­ously, believed that Rachel was adop­ted, I was adop­ted, and Um Bongo had poison in it. One Christ­mas, my only present request was for a burst bal­loon, so you can make your own mind up about the way my mind worked as a child.

I’d claim Rachel got all the good genes, but she is both older and shorter than me, so HAH! When we die, we should prob­ably be bur­ied next to each other and have sep­ar­ate grave­stones with, “which gravestone’s tallest?” engraved on them, although that would be mostly point­less because Rachel’s will be stand­ing on tippy­toes and our skel­et­ons would do noth­ing but fight. She got all of the attract­ive, healthy and soci­able genes, but was also lumbered with a hard time when we were grow­ing up because I got the men­tal arith­metic gene. And look where that one got me, eh, every teacher I’ve ever had? If I went back in time my advice to little me would be to go for attract­ive, healthy and soci­able too: it turns out that nobody ever really needs their seven times table (you can even get a degree without doing any maths past the age of 13) and soon they will invent this thing called Word which will cor­rect all of your spelling anyway.

Happy birth­day, Rachel.