Rainbow Tree, 'Be careful on the escalator' poster, Tottenham Court Road station

It's my birthday today, so it's one of those 'time to reflect' kind of times, like New Year's Eve, and National Nettle Week. Did I tell you about National Nettle Week?

I'm happy today, not just because Steve has a proper night off and we're going to a place that serves Chipotle Glazed Artichokes. Although that is good! And I'll tell him to switch his mobile off, just in case his boss forgets it's his night off. Yes, I'm happy, because I've realised that the only problems I have right now are related to good things, like having a very nice boyfriend that I worry about, and wondering soppily how much I'll miss when he goes away for two and a half weeks... And, well, other problems are really just minor stresses. I feel better for having written about the Steve-work problem, even though I know that if he saw it he'd probably dump me. No, only joking... I think. He wouldn't do that on my birthday, would he?

I used to think, 'Well at least life's not boring' when things went wrong. Lots of things have gone wrong in the last year - since last year's 'National Nettle Week' actually...

I wrote to Steve this morning and told him I had a carrot muffin for breakfast. I think we'd both like a simple life, and email exchanges discussing what we ate for breakfast, rather than emotional ups and downs, and other stressful stuff.

I made a muffin sticker once, quite a while ago. Maybe muffin magic is about a dull but happy life?

Amy asked me to draw some stickers the other day. I found myself in the strange situation of not knowing quite what to draw. I drew my first ever unhappy sticker. I drew an empty headed person, bald with a small forehead and an empty 'think bubble' drifting from his poor empty head. He was smiling, but he just couldn't think. So how could he be happy? And I wasn't thinking, 'I can't think' when I drew it. No, I was thinking... of someone else. Someone I think about an awful lot. When I looked in my sticker bag this morning, wondering which of my stickers to use on my birthday, I couldn't find this empty headed man sticker. That's probably a good thing.

Amy wanted me to draw another sticker after I'd finished the sad one. I suppose I was a bit empty headed myself. I couldn't think of anything to draw. My first experience of stickerer's block?

Amy decided to help, she gave me her 'magic pen' to hold. This is a garish, multicoloured, sparkly pen, with the word 'Flirt' written on the side. She showed me how to hold it properly to work the pen's magic.

I closed my eyes.

'You don't have to close your eyes!' She said.

I said I wanted to close my eyes.

I don't know if it was magic, I don't think it was, but I don't know what it was... I just knew what to draw.

'I'll draw a tree,' I told her.

She smiled. 'You see, the pen is magic!'

'A rainbow tree,' I told her.

I used every one of my special stickering pens. I drew spots, and stripes, and squares, to completely cover my cartoon rainbow tree with colour.

I don't know why I did that.

But then, I think the best magic is mysterious and unknowable. I hope it gives me a good birthday today. I think it has already.

Happy silly (magic) fun Birthday to me.