and it's my seventh birthday and I've just come in
 from the swimming pool at grandma's house playing
 marco polo and keep the kettle boiling with my classmates
 and it's a gorgeous african deep spring day and the sun is
 shining on my cake and there is a gentle breeze blowing in off
 the veldt and onto my forehead like a caress and I become wonderfully 
 stiff which is my  secret when I'm really pleased this happens
 merely the spontaneous tribute of a child whose
 corpus spongiosum dilates when he goes into the other world and
 as adults do there's a ripple of prurient stifled embarrassment
 but I am Quite oblivious and merrily blow out all seven candles and
 taste the fruitcake and savour the sweet sweet aromatic marzipan and
 my eyes rest affectionately on the plastic Baloo the Bear and make
 a wish that nxolo and the matiwanes will win the rhodesian sweepstakes and
 the other kids are out playing on the lawn there is a patch of sunlight
 that warms the couch so I find myself walking still gloriously erect
 over to the soft suede and it's so cosy there that I assume the
 foetal position and move my tanned brown little bare feet
 - I went everywhere barefoot in those days -
 into the warmth and I think back over my special day
 and the adults avert their eyes they cannot look upon such sin and
 the oblique comments fly sharply but I am unwounded and quietly
 joyful and probably mildly autistic and certainly slightly eccentric and
 hey taboo is an idea I will one day learn the true weight of
 but for today I'm just glad to have finally reached seven