OLDER SISTER

Happy birthday to my older sister—the original family experiment and living proof that Mum and Dad didn’t get everything right first time. You spent our childhood inventing rules, bossing me around and claiming that anything good automatically belonged to you because you were older. You call it guidance. I call it years of unpaid middle management. Growing up first doesn’t make you wiser; it simply means your knees started clicking sooner and you now send me articles about symptoms I hadn’t considered worrying about. Still, you protected me, taught me several useful lessons and demonstrated exactly which mistakes I should avoid making myself. You weren’t merely my role model. You were the full risk assessment. Love you, you ancient control freak x