Birthdays....

It was nobodies birthday today. I do not have a hilarious tale of birthday shenannigans to tell. So if you came here looking for birthday shenannigans.... you can fuck off.

I want to merely ask about the origins of the 'Birthday Candles'. Yes, you read it correctly, the candles. Not the cake. I cudn't give two wanks where the cake came from. Hell, christmas has a cake, weddings have cake, christenings have cake, baptism cake, 'cheer yourself up cake', 'our little girl just started her period' cake (with extra jam), and on the complete other end of the spectrum (and I quote Russell Howard so I don't get in trouble) the 'menopause' cake, (dry with with NO jam). But there is only one cake where it is compulsery to have candles... the Birthday Cake!

So it's your kids first birthday where he is old enough to understand what the fuck is going on, and he's having a lovely time. He's got a shit load of presents, had a load of crap food, he's got his friends around him, and all in all he is crazily hyperactive. Then Mummy and Daddy bring out a cake they have spent hours slaving over to make look like the face of one of his favourite TV characters (because for some reason adults think that children delight in devouring thier childhood hero...) and it has a big burning saftey hazard sticking out the top... one for each year of your life, just so as you get older and older, there is more and more chance of something going wrong and them "we symbolize life candles" actually end up killing you. Can you taste the irony? No, you can't yet, cos you havn't eaten the cake....

So let's just say for example that the cake makes its way SAFELY to the table. Depending on how far away the kitchen was to the table, you will now have a directly proportionate amount of candlewax ruining your lovely cake. Then everyone has to sing happy birthday whilst everyone watches the above candlewax creep further and further across the icing, making your lovely boys 'Thomas the tank engine' cake look like it has developed a serious case of facial herpes.

The singing is finished, and now comes the icing on the cake (yes, the pun was intended, and no you may not laugh, it was awful.). Your over excited, hyperactive, foaming at the mouth child now has to blow out these candles, projecting his saliva all over the cake. To which everyone responds with "YAY!" and then "Who's for cake?" to which everyone replies "YEAH!!!!"... except me, because I would feel like eating that cake would be like making out with said child after consuming a mouthful of candles.

The last bit of dialogue is sometimes not as listed above, because sometimes the child has so many firiends, or siblings, that they also want to blow out the candles, so they are relit, adding more wax, and then re blown out, adding more saliva. Meaning one slice of that cake is like a big child orgy in my mouth.

And it gets worse as you get older as well, because by the time your child is 80, and you are long gone from contracting facial herpes of the thomas cake you baked him when he was little, there will be even more candles. And if the old peoples home (unfortunately) doesn't burn down to the ground, your child, who now has no teeth to prevent not only spittle, but actual DRIBBLE falling out of his mouth, will have to take several attempts to get all 80 of them candles out. Not to mention the candle wax percentage has rocketed, meaning that there is no longer any need for icing on the cake, because by the time you have brought it from the kitchen and the candles are blown out, the combined wax and old person dribble will have created a lovely thick pink layer of goo ontop of the cake, just how you like it. And then all the other old people get jealous and then THEY want to blow the candles out and.... well.... you know how that ends.

The final mystery surrounding the birthday candles is the SHEER BRILLIANCE of the 're-lighting candle'. We all remember when our parents first bought re-lighting candles to use (for example) on your Great Uncle Albert's cake and didn't tell us, and he had to blow and blow, covering the cake in copius amounts of saliva, and still the candle would re-light, then he would start licking his fingers and trying to get them to stay out by tapering the ends. And still they re-light. and then he would start taking them out and get shouted at by your parents because aparantly 'the magic candles only go out if you keep blowing them' and he shouldn't spoil the illusion for the kids. So he blows and blows AND STILL THE CANDLES RE-LIGHT. But he keeps blowing, on and on, never stopping for breath, because he must get these candles to go out. For the kids. He kept blowing. Never stopping for breath.

And that was how Great Uncle Albert died.

So if you are thinking of buying re-lighting candles for someone... just don't.