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.