The Most Beautiful Candles
There was to be one more surprise. As we sat talking
things through, the quiet and unassuming figure of Martinch appeared
on the stage half naked, with the phrase “Happy Birthday” emblazoned
across his chest. Tomorrow was Jonathans’ birthday, and they had
planned something special for him. I’m not sure I can do justice
to the show that followed other than to say it involved our beautiful
hosts decked in tassels, loud tunes, volumes of combustible liquid,
and clouds of fire. It was beautiful in so many ways. As it drew
to a close, I leaned over to Jonathan and said “As long as you live,
you will never have such beautiful birthday candles”. Jonathan,
being the master of the moment took the opportunity for a quick
speech, which went something like this. “Thank you, I am deeply
honored. As long as I live, I don’t think I will ever have such
beautiful birthday candles”. He then turned to me and winked, as
I now found myself laughing at my own joke. Afterwards he said to
me that he figured I wouldn’t mind him stealing my line. How could
I? He’d taken what was meant as a simple, if honest joke and turned
it into what was a beautiful and just compliment. The big nosed
thieving …clown.
There were then huge numbers of photo’s as everyone
had their picture taken with everyone else, and one of the best
group photo’s I’ve seen for a long time that started off very sensibly,
and ended up as everyone in a huge pile on the floor. We then proceeded
to drink the night away and I was introduced to B52’s, a combination
of coffee liqueur, cream, absinthe, fire, and a straw.
I managed to time it perfectly so that just as
Jonathan was ready to call it a night and head out of there, I’d
just acquired a drink. Given that I didn’t have a clue how to get
from the club to the flat, I figured I should probably make sure
I got a lift, so he left to give Ed and Ieva a lift and said he’d
stop back in on the way back to pick me up.
I’m so glad I did stay that little bit longer,
or amongst other things, I’d have missed out on the ‘normalcy’ conversation.
It started off with someone asking if we thought they were a freak
(“well duh! join the circus”), and ended up something like ….. In
an insane world, there’s nothing sane about being normal, or to
add a different dimension to the same subject, if you ever meet
anyone you think is normal, you very probably don’t know them well
enough. We could suggest that anyone differing from 50% of society
are not normal. We’d then have to decide which 50%, and accept that
if only half of society are normal, it’s just as normal to be abnormal
as it is to be normal. The most normal person, being so exceptionally
normal, that they are more normal than everyone else, could by definition
be defined as unique, and therefore a freak. It’s probably not that
normal to wax lyrical on this subject of normality but maybe whilst
it’s the things that make us the same that keep us together, we
should treasure each others uniqueness. Anyone who wants to be the
same as everyone else is crazy. Anyone who tries to be unique for
the sake of it is, well, probably no different to anyone else, as
we all value our own identity in some subtle way. It was late, we
were drunk.
I finally managed to time it perfectly by getting
another round about a minute before Jonathan came back, so we then
had to carry on having fun and freaky conversations over the bar
while we did justice to those too.
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