On Saturday, February 25th, I drove to Canberra to celebrate a major milestone. Peter Fyfe, long time friend, was turning 50! Peter was the head of Fenner Hall, one of the residential colleges belonging to The Australian National University. One of Professor Fenner's contributions was the myxomatosis virus which helped control rabbits in Australia.
The party was held in the Frank Fenner Room, a pleasant area normally for resident socialising. The area through the windows on the upper left is the resident's kitchen, with stoves, fridges and cooking facilities, each allocated to a group of students. Fenner Hall is self-catered (translation: no dining room), so the students have three choices for meals:
Peter and Sarah's daughter Olivia.
Margaret and Murray with Peter and Olivia.
Rachel (Olivia's closest friend), Sam (Olivia's boyfriend) and Olivia.
First light the candles. Now lighting fifty candles could take quite a while, but these are not ordinary candles, as shown below.
They have a paper wick joining them together!
Quick - call the fire brigade! The conflagration really took off. The paper joining the candles is burning up as it does its job of spreading the flames.
Peter draws breath before the blow of the (half) century.
Keep going! There's still more to blow out.
Pretty good job - though there's at least one still burning!
"Ah, there's nothing to it folks!", says Peter. Note the stain on the shirt - it's birthday cake. Peter definitely threw himself into the candle business!
And, of course, a toast while singing "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow".
"Oh no! Not THAT!" says Peter as he sees what's coming in the lower left corner of this picture.
Going!
Going!
Gone! In one gulp.
Not bad for somebody over the hill! Not that I should talk, as I'd be surprised if I could drink that much without taking a breath. But then, I'm more over the hill than Peter, so at least I have an excuse!
Three generations of Fyfe women: Sarah, Olivia and (Peter's mum) Colleen.
Sarah, Peter and Colleen. Note Peter has a clean shirt! And notice how closely it resembles the cake augmented shirt - pretty clever these manager types!
Another three generation photo: Sarah, Callum (Sarah and Peter's son) and Colleen.
Peter with the Fenner Rabbit. This is the Residence Hall's mascot, honouring Prof. Fenner's best known work. As far as I know, the rabbit is not part of the Fyfe clan. As far as I know. But it is part of Fenner Hall's family, and so is Peter, so although there's probably no biological family connection, there is a social family connection.
And so the evening continued, with a number of Peter's charges coming in to join in the celebration. And as the evening concluded, I had a personal escort from Peter to my hotel - which was across the street, so the really hard part was negotiating the traffic lights!
All in all, a very pleasant evening which I much enjoyed. I hadn't seen Peter and Sarah since about October 2004 (in Las Vegas, but that's another story which will appear on the web one day).
But tomorrow was another day, so it was off to bed for me.