"a magic number refers to a numerical constant with no explicit explanation of its meaning." Md Abdul Halim Rafi

It was David who pointed out the potential magical significance of today's date - it's my birthday for one thing, so significant if only to me, and it's not really that significant anyway at my age - just another day that I am thankful to be here for.

Nevertheless that's some number isn't, so I tried to track down its meaning amongst all the crazies out there who ascribe meaning to numbers, and the best I could come up with was the opening quote - it has something to do with computer programming that I cannot understand, other than that it makes it difficult to understand the program.

'But no explicit explanation of its meaning' will do and is a bit of a relief in some ways. And what's the tree you might ask? Well that's a representation of a rather more superstitious idea - the seven magic numbers - 0,2,3,4,6,7,9 - and today's date has three of them so surely it's also a hugely significant day. I don't know if you turn the date around to the American way of expressing it - 06-20-2026 - whether it makes it more or less significant. But what it does show is that numbers can be manipulated, and so therefore so can their meaning. If they have one.

What other 'signs' are around today? Here's a somewhat gloomy one - my Art desk diary picture of today from Paul Gauguin. Magic, but not optimistic it seems. It's called The Ford (Running Away) and it is indeed somewhat mysterious. I couldn't find an actual person telling us what it all means - or what they think it means - but AI has scraped it from somewhere:

"The painting is essentially a foreboding self-portrait of a man resigned to his fate, waiting to be ferried into the unknown."

Foreboding because he died a couple of years later, and wasn't that well when he painted it. The front horse is said to represent death, the man behind is like Charon the ferryman, taking the dead across the River Styx to the afterlife. But nobody says anything about the people in the boat and the sea beyond. It's rather lovely, if, gloomy. I won't dwell on that as a sign.

Turning to the real world - oh dear the Socceroos lost against America, and there was an own goal too! Oh dear, oh dear. And look at this tropical storm Mekkhla heading for the poor old Phillipines again - well not this particular tropical storm coming again, but yet another one. I won't even think about the Middle East or Donald Trump.

It's a fairly dismal day, but the sun is beginning to go down, creating some rather lovely patches of sun and shadow, and I managed to walk back from the shops without it raining, which was very satisfying.

"We turn not older with years but newer every day." Emily Dickinson

As do the days - turn newer that is.

Even for Degas in my weekly desk diary it was just another day - a dress rehearsal on stage, for which he eventually produced three different versions. This is one of the two owned by the Met - a pastel over an ink drawing - in which one dancer adjusts her bracelet, one yawns and another scratches her back whilst two men laze in the chairs whilst they watch the dancing master direct the dancers. The dancers shine in the light on the stage, but the dark background forest looms behindthem.

Enough of signs and symbols. Let me turn to food. Tonight David is presenting me with a Mercer's cooked dinner. At six he will go and collect it and this evening he will put it all together according to the videoed instructions from the chef. He is nervous, and I may need to assist. We have a smoked trout and beetroot salad, a black garlic stuffed chicken breast with a mushroom risotto, followed by a burnt butter and berry friand with a berry sorbet. Yum. In some ways it is a more generous gesture than an actual dinner at Mercer's itself. For that he would just have had to drive me there and pay the bill. This way he has to work at it a bit outside his comfort zone. I appreciate that.

On one of my birthday years I began with this most beautiful quote from Shakespeare -

"There was a star danced, and under that was I born." It expressed so beautifully how lucky - and occasionally magical my life has been, and this ordinary day, demonstrates that in so many ways.

But I do wish somebody had something to say about that magic number.

"Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!"

Dr. Seuss

YEARS GONE BY

June 20

2025 - The mysteries of authenticity and Tfaya

2024 - Date night

2023 - Special birthdays

2022 - Affagato in the Yarra Valley

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - A first recipe (part two) - Thai curry pastes

2018 - Birthday celebrations

2017 - On holiday