BEING 58 AND 59

It is my birthday today, the 8th of August. This is a lucky date in Chinese terms - the 8th of the 8th. One of my birth years is 1952 which is the year of the Dragon in the Chinese calendar. This is also seen as being lucky and, when combined with the 8th of the 8th, especially so. My other birth year is 1953 which is the year of the Snake which is not as auspicious as the Dragon but hey, it could be worse, I might have been born in the year of the Rat or the Sheep or something. Not many people have two birth dates. The Queen does. She has a real one and an official one but these are in the same year. I wonder if she gets two lots of presents?

You. Yes you. Where's my other prezzie?

Having two different birth years is sort of like being born again.

Just as well that the second time I came out better looking.

Second Fiddle could relate to this as it fits in with his religious belief system.

How it came about that I have two birth dates is that years ago my drivers license went through the wash and got totally destroyed. To get a new one I had to prove identity and a date of birth. This was before the days of credit cards and all the other ID crap we carry around so I had to have a birth certificate. I couldn't find mine so applied to get another one. This was pre-computerisation days so everything was hand-written. The church registry or the council or something provided me with another certificate with the information entered by hand. The date was written as Nineteen Fifty Three instead of 52. I duly went to the MOT to get the new license and they picked up the difference from their records. It was easier to say that there must have been a mistake with the old MOT records (I was right there at the counter) than saying that the birth registry had stuffed up as this would have taken another couple of weeks. My new license was issued with the 1953 date.

Sometime afterwards I found my original birth certificate so now have two. The original one I used years later to get a passport so now my drivers license and passport have different dates. It sometimes causes some confusion with various agencies but I just tell them that I was born again. They look at me funny but let it go.