Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness

It's my birthday today. I was born exactly 25 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, which anniversary is now marked every year as Holocaust Memorial Day. Today we remember the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis, and all the other people that regime set about systematically annihilating because they were gay or Roma or mentally 'defective' or Communist or or or. We also remember those who died in subsequent genocides, in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur. Et al.

HMD was first marked in the UK in 2001. Until then, I had no idea of the date's significance. Initially, I was pretty pissed off that it was on my birthday. But I've been coming round.

This is me and my grandma in 1988, when I spent three months in Israel during my year off. She was born in 1920, and left Germany for Palestine, with her father and siblings, in 1928.

So she survived. My dad got born - during the war, when Auschwitz was still in full swing. Some years later, I got born too.

Today, I missed my mum a bit, had a lovely lunch with M and my dad, had a brief love-in with Otto the dachshund, bought some chicken noodle soup in Booths, and came home to do an hour or so's work. I could have gone to the HMD event in Lancaster, where one of Anish Kapoor's 70 candles for 70 years was being lit. But I went to yoga instead, and did my remembering there.

Check our matching noses. Keep the memory alive.

joella

So, how am I doing?

This photo was taken when I was 20. It's one of my favourites. I look young and happy and indefatigable, but also more or less fully formed. There aren't many photos like this, certainly not of me.

I had a party for my 20th birthday. In those days you designed your invitation by hand, then photocopied it up onto a sheet of A4, then bought coloured paper or card, duplicated your A4 onto multiple sheets, chopped them up with a guillotine, and put them in the internal post. I can still remember the invite: it said 'please come and help celebrate the fact that I will never be a teenage mother'.

And these days, when I am making an important choice, I don't ask myself what Jesus would do. And nor do I make decisions based on what's easiest, what's expected, what's the least difficult, least boat-rockiest thing to do right now. Instead, I think about the woman in this photo and try to make sure I'm not letting her, or the people who gave her the space and freedom to be herself, down. And generally, yeah, I think I've done pretty well on that front, though no prizes for guessing what one of those important choices has turned out to be.

Tomorrow, I'm going to be 40. I'm not about to invite my friends to celebrate the fact that I will never be a mother at all. We celebrate motherhood, we don't celebrate its opposite, even when it's freely chosen.

And I think that's ok. There are enough children in the world who know they weren't wanted without reminding them that some of us are better at not having them. And now I am 40, I know that most women want children, and that's something to be celebrated too. If my mother hadn't wanted me, I wouldn't be here, and hell, that would be a tragedy.

But me, I made my choice, and it was the right one for me. So I raise a glass of posh Sauvignon Blanc to humanity and turn up the Internationale*. My 20 year old self would be cool with that, I think. Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.

joella

* Ignore the video, I hoped to find this version on Spotify but it was not to be.

Cash in boots

My lovely parents bought me some lovely boots for my lovely birthday. The boots I settled on were from the Gudrun Sjoden winter sale. You can only buy Gudrun Sjoden stuff online, unless you live in Stockholm, Malmö, Gothenburg, Oslo, Copenhagen, Hamburg or Nuremberg, and it's a bit of a pain, frankly. But the clothes are so completely unlike anything I see anywhere else that occasionally it's worth it. In the sale -- as they are also on the pricy side.

These ones are purple. They call it aubergine. They were £160, now £120. This makes them the most expensive boots I have ever owned by a factor of at least two, but they are lovely, and when things are lovely I wear them for years and years. I looked at a photo of them for several months, and I didn't want them any less. These are not a crush, or an impulse purchase. This is love.

So I ordered them. They took ages to arrive. Imagine my excitement when they arrived the Friday before my birthday, and imagine my disappointment when they turned out to be too big. They came straight off like wellies. I tried them with my very biggest socks (which are very big) but no. If you're going to have posh boots, they have to be the right size.

I checked on the website, and they still had the 37s in stock. I rang up to double check and it was the last pair. I asked them if they could put them aside for me until I could return the other ones but they said they couldn't. So I had to buy another pair. At this point I had spent £240 on boots. At the end of the month. My overdraft was creaking. I packed up the 38s to go back asap for a refund.

Then yesterday I got an email saying that the 37s had, in fact been out of stock, so they had refunded my (second) £120, but they would be back *in* stock on Feb 4, so I might like to re-order them.

I rang them up again. They said they had one pair. I should buy them now. I said hang on, you've taken £120 for the first pair, which were too big, so I'm sending them back, but you still have my £120. You've taken £120 for the second pair, which you say you've refunded, but it hasn't appeared in my bank account yet. Now you want £120 for a third pair? This could go on forever! Am I financing your entire operation?

Ah, she said. Well, I can put this pair on hold for you. I wish you'd done that last time, I said, when you said you couldn't. But great, thank you. So if I send back the 38s, you'll replace them with the last pair of 37s, which you're putting on hold?

Well, she said, when you send back the 38s, it will look like the 37s are out of stock, because they're on hold, so you'll have to put a note on the return slip to tell them that they aren't really out of stock.

Right, I said. OK.

So at the moment I am down £240 (actually, technically now I am down £120 and my dad is down £120 as in the meantime his money came through) and have no boots, but you've got to (try and) have faith. If these ones don't fit, I'll cry. And there has to be an easier way to get shod.

joella

The stopping train to Hangover Central

I don't have a good record with Burns Night. The first one I went to was in my first year at university. I was just getting it together with my Significant Ex and I got so pissed that he had to a) stop me lying down and going to sleep in the middle of Whewell's Court b) take my contact lenses out for me and c) hold my hair back while I chucked up in the sink. I saw him down the end of a long tunnel and said 'I love you'. It must have been a terrifying experience for him.

The one on Friday wasn't quite that bad - I got myself home, kept the tatties and neeps down just fine, took my own contact lenses out and (probably) did nothing too much worse than waking everyone up by singing happy birthday to myself in the early hours - but on the whole I think I should not be allowed more than one whisky at a time. It's a fine and noble drink, but too much of it and it hollows out your soul while you sleep and leaves you in no fit state to cope with your birthday leg wax appointment.

So that part of the day was quite unpleasant, but I pulled it together valiantly for a lovely birthday walk, hair-of-the-dog at the King's Arms (sitting outside! In January!) and brief art interlude at MOA, where guest of honour was an enormously pregnant ex-housemate S. She was an installation in her own right.

Brief interlude for a bit of whimpering under the duvet (no, that's not a euphemism) and then we were off for dinner at the lovely R's with other guests of honour including Ms Y and plumbing S. Home late for merlot nightcaps and the Ballad of Lucy Jordan. Yes, I am that old, and today I felt it. However, I have Aveda body products and Benefit lip products to go with my MAC eye products, so at least I am sparkly and smell nice. I also have a Gerber multitool with auto-recoil needlenose pliers and a milk bottle full of worm urine, so don't mess with me.

joella