Happy Birthday to me - the support of friends and the slow rise to an educated public

I have just had the most enjoyable birthday party I can remember. Not the biggest, not the most significant in terms of my age, not the highest numbers attending.
This was an informal gathering of our friends from the village where we live, and only numbered nineteen in total, including some of our children and our two staunch helpers, Debbie and Ann.
My wife, Pia, cooked two simple main courses - a chilli with rice, and a homemade meat and potato pie for those who don't like spicy foods.
Plus a homemade cauliflower soup (spiced with caraway in acknowledgement of her Czech mother) and a tiramisu filled with a brandy cream that I can only describe as well, orgasmic.
So why, then, was tonight so special?
Firstly because of the intimacy and informality of the event, all those there being from our village, Irwell Vale, or its neighbourhood.
Secondly because of the way the evening ended.
It was our neighbour Andy's birthday today - mine is actually on Monday, the 28th.
Andy bought me a lovely bottle of 10-year-old Scotch malt, and I was pleased not only because I like whiskey, but also because we used to make a lovely peppermint soap using the container (a tubular cylinder) as the mould. I vowed to make the soap again as a wave of nostalgia for our experimental days took me. We used to call it Minty Big Boy. ok, perhaps not politically correct, but the soap was wonderful and lived up to its name.
Feeling guilty, I desperately hunted around for a reciprocal present for Andy - I couldn't give him whiskey as he's a connnoiseur - so I thought about the products we're offering on our winter sale.
A large, glowing stone candle - made of paraffin wax and filled with little phosphorescent stones that make the candle glow when lit.
A neon dream candle that glows when the candle is lit, courtesy of a little internal battery. This candle, too, made from paraffin wax.
A set of candles shaped and looking like real wine bottles, made of paraffin wax.
All these have to go in our winter sale - it's all good stuff but not the way we now try to live. It's stock we bought in to tempt customers not yet ready to go natural or organic but that doesn't really fit in with our brand image.
And Andy's remark?
'No, Dennis, I don't want that stuff. Just give me an organic, soya candle, that's all I need.'
And he meant it.
He's learned the difference between 'normal' wax candles and our new, environmentally-friendly soya ones.
So if you're still into 'normal' wax candles, made of paraffin wax, that's fine - we will be able to help you.
But if you've already realised the disadvantages of paraffin wax, industrially-produced soaps and skincare products, then there's lots on our 15% discount winter sale page that we hope will tempt you too.
The point of all this:
Education, or put another way, the road to awareness, in whatever sphere of life, is a long one and you will travel it at your own pace. So feel comfortable with your own beliefs but be open to others around you and you will travel far.