15/06/15

My birthday was different this year.  It occurred while I was in Tuvalu, and on the day that Tuvalu had a public holiday to celebrate the Queen’s birthday.  Nice of them to have a holiday on my birthday. 

The day started with Susan and I briefly skyping before she went off to work, which was a really nice way to start to the day and left me with a smile. Despite it being a holiday for the locals I still had some work to do, and so spent the morning on the computer.

I had let slip to Kat over the weekend that my birthday was on Monday, and so she decided that as a minimum a group of us should have lunch together.  That’s how Tom and Katrina, Clara, Kat, Uschi, Liam, Rob and I all ended up having a lunch by the lagoon that was full of laughter and good company.  Kat even made me a couple of cakes.  After lunch I opened up the couple of small presents that I had brought with me.

Thank you all for making contributing to the uniqueness of the day, in a great way.

Unbeknownst to everyone, that lunch happened to coincide with the time that some ignorant arseholes decided that they would break into our home in New Zealand, and help themselves to some of our possessions.  Susan discovered the break in went she got home from work and saw the back door smashed open. 

Somehow I knew, when Tony popped up in facebook asking if I could call them on skype, that something had happened.  This was around 7 in the evening.  I’m not going to go into any of the details here, for many of reasons, one of which is that I suspect it would still affect me some.  What I would like to say here though, is that I am very very grateful for the way everyone rallied around to help Susan until I was able to get home.

Thank you Susan

Thank you Tony

Than you Fran

Thank you Debbie, Mark and Ellie,

Thank you Simon, Simon, Ray and Paige

Thank you to all in Tuvalu that understood and helped me go

Thank you to the Police who stayed on the line and helped Susan enter the house and be sure she was safe and no one was there, and for all the advice and support they gave her

Thank you.