With dawning of his 70th, Cressroads' Mr Blogsbody muses on his miracle of life

Daughter of his late, younger brother Andy - the 'Monkey Man’ of Lyons, second largest metropolitan area of France, after that of Paris; American carver of totem poles through cooking gumbo for workers aboard oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico; and, finally - whose dying wish, but shy of any official by-your-leave, was to ask Alex, his only daughter by his second marriage, to torch her father’ mortal remains and despatch him to his Maker’s Kingdom Come aboard a blazing workboat.

‘Happy birthday ... hope it’s a good ‘un,' early bird Lady Annette Filipov of Bredbury Hall, ex-wife of a Tunisian waiter, is next to email the once cherubic altar boy grown 70-years-old, who was well-known to her grandmother.

Nette, niece of a Canadian priest, is granddaughter of the late good wife of a railway worker, who heard Sunday Mass sat beside Blogsbody’s mother of four - Welsh-born Nesta-nee-Morris - as Cheadle Hulme’s Kings Hall, near Stockport, changed its use to all but transubstantiate just as miraculously from a Saturday night village dance venue to a make-do Sunday Catholic chapel accommodating a small congregation of the faithful kneeling before ex-airborne chaplain Fr Fenlon’s battle-weary World War II collapsible wooden altar.

‘You total and utter nutter,’ announces the first of the town hack’s birthday cards.

For Blogsbody to tear open the envelope of his www.peachykeencard.com and read aloud to himself a handwritten greeting Quinked by the eldest son of his third set of nuptials over the tumultuous course of one-third of his past life.

Seven years for starters and baby grown up to become a London barrister; next his seven short, not-so-sweet months of a second marriage to a French-Canadian fashion writer; and, finally, his 14 years of a third marriage producing three primary school youngsters, who his 'child' bride saw fit to leave Bloggie to raise from the end of the last century into the 21st

‘Well, if you had reached your septuagenarian eighth decade without going mental, then I would be worried,' Matt Dylan signed off his card above gifts of a black www.moleskine.com reporter's notebook and brace of XL James Pringle Easy Care, Soft Handle, woollen dress shirts.

Until it is come time for Blogsbody unattached-in-Cressroads to try one on for a perfect fit one of them and to slip confidently into celebrating the beginnings of his eighth decade on Mother Earth – www.blogsbody.co.uk

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