Eight Absolutely Impossible Things

Today’s my 26^th birthday, which got me thinking. Or rather, yesterday’s arrival of a card from my father did. Sure, books are great, and I won’t turn down a nice pair of earrings. But if I could have anything for my 27^th ... if some really generous genie came along ... what would I choose?

In no particular order:

1. For my father to acquire taste in birthday cards. This year’s was a particularly awful piece of frou-frou floral hideousness. I think I preferred Christmas, when he forgot me.

2. The ability to cook things more complicated than stir-fry without needing a recipe in front of me. How do the contestants on MasterChef Australia do it? And why is it that I can list every British monarch since the Norman Conquest but can’t remember how to make pancakes?

3. The magical vanishing of all additional structures in the yard next door. First, they put up a whacking great double garage. Then they put a carport in front of it. Now they’ve gone and enclosed the carport, so when you look south from our place all you can see is an ocean of cream steel.

4. More hours in the day!

5. Legs long enough that I no longer have to cut great swathes of fabric off the bottoms of jeans, skirts, dresses, etc. And I’d want this extension to take place without my gaining so much as a gram of extra weight, so they’d be not only longer, but thinner.

6. The ability to draw people. I’m okay with inanimate objects, but for some reason portraiture defeats me. Not good when you’re feeling artistically ambitious and want to produce a drawing of those upcoming NaNoWriMo characters who’ve taken over your imagination.

7. Clichéd but worthy: World peace.

8. A meerkat in the garden. They’re so cute!