Joke candles.

I was at the parent teachers meeting this week.

The teacher was talking about birthdays.




There was a long, terribly serious, debate about the pros and cons of homemade cakes.

There are no allergies in the class this year.

DARN!!

It is so much easier when there are allergies.

The kids get off the shelf supermarket cake.

No washing up...

Joke candles

Then she told the story of a mother who last year had had the great idea of putting joke candles on her kid's birthday cake.

He was six.

At first it was a great joke.

The more the poor child tried to blow out the candles the more they relit.

In the end the candles became a fire hazard, the teacher panicked and threw a fire-blanket over them.

The cake was ruined.

The kid cried.

Maybe he should have cried a bit sooner?

They might have avoided calling the fire brigade then.

Blazing candles.

I was reminded of this story while thinking of what to do for Maha's birthday.

I am quite sure that I am not alone in thinking of what to do for Maha's birthday.

She has friends everywhere dreaming up plans to celebrate her birthday.

This has no doubt something to do with her extraordinarily networked radical kindness.

I had this great idea of doing a search on my blog to see how many of my posts were connected to her.

I typed Maha in the search box.

What a dumb idea...

I ended up spending hours scrolling, searching on my smartphone, copying and pasting links into Pinterest.

I tried adding links from a couple of hangouts and then gave up.

I didn't dare Storify Twitter.

We might have been here until Christmas.

I then decided that Pinterest wasn't really up to the job.


I tried doing a Flipboard magazine instead.


View my Flipboard Magazine.


I thought of doing a Thinglink but decided that that would be more than hopeless - you wouldn't be able to see the picture for pins.

I ended up with 32 links.

I reckon that Maha must be around 32.

Joke candles.

Even if there aren't too many candles now, they keep relighting, inspiring other people, other blog posts, conference papers, massive Twitter chats even.

Oh no, you see the problem, that's typical.

I had my 32 candles ready.

I start trying to blow them out, just to try, and then I realise not only will they not go out but I now have 33 candles lit and shining.

What on earth am I to do?

Any more attempts and I will be up to 40 and that will be way too many.

In any case it is indelicate to count the candles after a certain number.

She'll never notice if I just say there's 32.

Happy Birthday Maha!!

Next year, I resolve not to count candles.

I shall definitely not use joke candles again, the ones that you can't blow out.


Abonnez-vous au tableau Maha de Simon sur Pinterest.