Me: Happy birthday for yesterday, Ants! Ming, his partner, my mother and I all toasted you with green juice before eating our kebabs and gozleme.
Anthony: Green juice? Where was the champagne? And what the hell is gozleme? Is this one of your diets?
Me: No!
Anthony: Let me get this right: no champagne for my birthday.
Me: Yeah, sorry about that but….
Anthony: No message from you ON my birthday which, by the way, was yesterday, and I also overheard you saying that I would have been 85 when, as your mother pointed out, I actually would have been 86.
Me: Math isn’t my forte, Ants, you know that! Anyway don’t you automatically revert to your favourite age in Heaven?
Anthony: Yes, but still … no champagne? It’s a shock, Jules.
Me: Other things were happening yesterday that distracted me, Ants – fires down south, the covid disease, earthly stuff you have obviously forgotten.
Anthony: Fair enough, well said. I apologise. How is my Ming?
Me: Just like you – it’s uncanny. He has the surety of the unsurety down pat (or the reverse, not sure): suffice it to say, he feels omniscient.
Anthony: That’s my boy!
Me: (Sigh) I think I might get that bottle of champagne after all.
Anthony: Don’t you still miss me, Jules?
Me: Stop fishing – yes, of course, but you are also like a thorn in my side.
Anthony: Sorry, Jules.
Me: Loving you is/was the most difficult thing I have ever done but the repercussions of that are unbounding.
Anthony: Is that a good or a bad thing?
Me: Happy birthday, Ants, for all of the yesterdays.
jmgoyder 
❤
Awesome conversation