Happy Birthday Kat! 🙂 Aaaand... what do we say when noms enters your mouth?
Nope. Try again, Peanut.
Happy Thirtieth, my angel.
Thirty years ago today, in Moscow, baby-Kat was born. It took her 25 years and a collective four countries to bring us together, and make me the happiest human in the universe! I treasure every single day since that moment our paths crossed, my angel!
| Full name | Katherine Apostolou |
| Known as | "Kat aka Katya aka Katherine aka K-Dawg aka Katrina aka 'The Big Kat-huna' aka Kathew-San aka LOML" |
| Inception | 10 September 1996, Moscow |
| Day of week | Tuesday |
| Listings | Moscow → Toronto → Paris → London |
| Languages | Fingerlish, Russian, Ukrainian, English, Mafs, Business-German, French, and now Greek. The organising priority throughout has, of course, always been the ability to order delicious noms in each of them. Greek tops out, confidently and universally, at 'kala, endaxi'. |
| Coverage | Professionally, The entire crude barrel, front to back. | Personally: The entire family. Cooks amazing noms for everyone, clocks what everyone is feeling three steps before they do, and somehow has us all sorted out before any of us even realised we needed taking care of. (Except Tishyfloof, of course, who makes sure the entire flat knows the second she wants more treats - which is always!) |
| Volatility | Almost entirely a function of how hangry she is, and of how far the temperature, wind, and general humidity have drifted from the narrowest possible ideal range. Within tolerance: extraordinarily steady. Outside it: I've learnt to carry snacks and a spare layer - one that's usually not needed, until it very suddenly is. Humidity control outside the home environment remains, sadly, outside of my control. |
| Technicals | Strong upward momentum; completely impervious to heights (unlike Fingers) |
| Liquidity | None whatsoever. Not for sale fanks. She mine forever, ok?! |
| Holders of record | 1 (me), forever |
| Rating | One of one |
Brent averaged $20.64 a barrel the year she was born (just a fun piece of trivia). Whatever Brent was doing in 1996, Kat was doing something far more important: being born yo' (by SVD!)! The real story on this chart is the other line: thirty years of Kat, steadily becoming more incredible - and the most wonderful precious asset the world has ever seen
Let it be known, on this the tenth of September of the year two thousand and twenty-six, that the official title for the Most Wonderful Belly in the Universe goes, once again, - uncontested, unchallenged, and honestly with nobody even close - to Belly.
The Belly Monster wishes it formally recorded that he has reviewed the field exhaustively and found no competition whatsoever. He considers this the undisputed single greatest belly in existence and is ready to throw hands down and challenge/defeat anyone, anywhere, anytime about it. All the tasty food and Michelin noms in the world are incredible, sure, but they'll always come a distant second to Belly itself. He has spoken.
He also wants it clearly understood that he loves her to bits, that he’s the happiest monster around, and that keeping him locked down today - of all days - is a miscarriage of justice, and an absolute outrage that needs overturning immediately.
Michelin publishes once a year, has never eaten a single meal with us, and has never once accounted for the one thing that actually matters: our opinions! The Belly Bonanza is judged continuously, by two people who were actually there, on the only criteria that have ever mattered. It is a considerably more reliable guide, and its rulings are final. For such a major birthday milestone, it was essential to create a tally of all the wonderful noms we've had together so here it is!
Whatever the Michelin Guide, La Liste, or anyone else says about these three - the only rating that actually counts is the Belly Bonanza, and it remains pending until we've been in person to check.
Thirty years young today, and I wanted to take the opportunity to capture some of the most beautiful moments we've shared, and some of the most wonderful evenings of my life. Sitting next to you in those halls, hearing the greatest pianists alive, is something so uniquely ours. Other people might enjoy a concert, but you and I hear it, debate it, and feel it in our souls the exact same way, which is so incredibly rare my love Right from day 1 and our chats about Gould and the GB Variations, I love sharing it all with you!
Beans, the thing I didn't expect to find was someone who doesn't just like the same music as me, but actually feels it the same way, at the same moment - the same phrase in a piece will hit us both at exactly the same second, every single time, and we don't even need to look at each other to know it's happened. That's not just similar taste. That's something stranger and rarer than that, and I just think its just so so wonderful to have something so special like that - to share that with your human is just amazing honestly
Also, I've told you already but your ear is incredible, honestly - you catch things in a performance that only someone incredibly musical could ever possibly hear, which is such a wonderful gift, and hearing music through you has actually changed the way I hear it when I'm on my own. And then afterwards we'll talk about it for hours in the car or lying in bed - going back over the second movement, debating over which recording actually got it right, picking apart every little detail of how someone played something. The concert itself is only ever half of the evening, and honestly the best half for me is the bit after, just the two of us going over it together!
That's the part I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. Not the music. But having it with you.
| Status | Pending |
| Proposed trade | One private thirtieth birthday concert. Highgate, N6. Audience of one, plus Tishy if she can be trusted, which she can't. |
| Progress | Bwains has escalated four times. The band have not responded, which he is choosing to read as encouraging. He says these things move slowly and to stay patient. |
| Sticking points | Logistics, apparently. Also the flat. Also they have never heard of me. |
| Revised timeline | Taking longer than expected. Now targeting the second 30th. Bwains has re-run the spreadsheet and remains confident. |
| Interim measure | Fingers has offered to do a private performance of Dave Gahan's moves. |
We gots to see them front row!! The first of hopefully many many times peanut!!
Before her there was one of me. You are, of course, the reason there are now forty-two. Every one of them was summoned into existence by you specifically, every one of them adores you without reservation, and not one of them has ever voted against you on anything.
Mama
→ Love from Mama
Papa
→ Love from Papa
Babushka Alla
→ Love from Babushka Alla
Philip
→ Love from Philip
Theodoulos
→ Love from Theodoulos
Daria & Vadim
→ Love from Daria and Vadim
Morgan
→ Love from Morgan
From home, again
→ Love from Babushka Rimma and Dedushka Michael
The Godparents
→ Love from the Godparents
Happy Thirtieth, my Love!
Kat, you are the most remarkable person I have ever known. You are the most beautiful and sexy and gorgeous woman alive. I get butterflies every day I see you. I see you from a distance and you still stop me from across the room. You are also the funniest hooman I know, and I can't count how many hilarious moments we have shared and the amount of tears I've had running down my face from all our inside jokes.
You are also so incredibly wise peanut. And have helped me endlessly in all my challenges and difficult moments in life. I'm so very lucky to have you - I tell you this all the time, but it's important to me that I tell you again how grateful I am that you are my person....life isn't easy, and we both know the struggles we have both faced, and still face. You've helped me navigate life in really dark moments. And I also wanted to give you some advice from someone who turned 30 a few years ago and got to celebrate it in the most wonderful way thanks to you....my first birthday with you, way back then. So here it is.
You are one of the most capable people I have ever encountered, and I really don't just say that as your husband with love-goggles. You have always done the hard version. You do it properly. You do it when you have no idea if anyone is ever going to hand you anything for it - just in case. That is rare to the point of being essentially absent in pretty much every room I've ever been in.
I know saying it doesn't fix anything. We both know all too well that the world doesn't distribute according to merit and it never has. The bible says "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." But think that through, my love, because it cuts both ways. If position isn't earned, then position also isn't a measure. It can't be evidence for you and it can't be evidence against you. Whoever ends up higher up a ladder tells you almost nothing about who is actually good - and you and I both know exactly who is actually good.
What you've built is in you. Not in a title, not in a number, not in anyone's opinion (except Birbie's). It hasn't been recognised nearly enough YET - but nobody can take it, and nobody can grant it either. The effort didn't disappear. It went into you. Every single thing you've done - the moving, the languages, choosing the hardest option and then doing it anyway - built something that will serve you well for the rest of your life.
So yes, play the game where you have to. You're stuck in it for now, and refusing to speak the language of a room you're sitting in doesn't help you. Everything we've spoken about - you're learning the register, use it, be as loud as you need to be, be smart about it. But just don't fall into it completely. And don't ever start believing it. The environment is what it is. Put on your gas mask, take it off later, and don't let it or them ever change you or turn you into them.
And please don't ever be made smaller by people who lack the capacity to see you. Remember what MPW said. It is EQUALLY true for you! Their opinion isn't evidence - they've shown you who they are already. Comparison is a rigged game anyway, because you never see what someone started with, or the luck they had, or what they did to get there.
But here's the part I most want you to hear, and it's the same thing I said to you last year. Life is short and it is completely unpredictable. Loss arrives out of nowhere, with no warning and no fairness to it at all - we have both learnt that the hard way, more than once. Which means the recognition you're owed might come late, or come in the wrong order, or not come in the way you might expect. Do not wait for it before you start living. Don't put the good parts of your life on hold until somebody finally hands you the thing you've already earned. Take time off if you need it. Take the trip. Eat the thing. Say the thing. Prioritise your health. We get one of these and nobody tells us how long it runs for - I can only hope and pray for a very long time
And know that you have never once been unseen here, in this house, by me. I know it's a lonely thing being this far from home, in a world that's made getting back so much harder than could ever have been imagined. We can't fix that, only get around it as best we can - and we are. But whatever the mirror is telling you out there, it's a bad mirror. Mine is accurate. You're the most capable person I know and I'd bet everything I have on you.
When I was at my lowest, my mom gave me this poem. You know that already. But I want it here, today, on your thirtieth, because I had a dream the other day and she wanted me to share it with you too.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Invictus · William Ernest Henley · 1875
She never got to meet you. She would have adored you, and she would have recognised you immediately. You are the master of your fate, my love. You always have been.
And you are never alone in this. There is an entire cast of 42 ridiculous magical creatures who exist purely because of how much I love you - Birbie, Beakie, Tongue, Beans, Thumpy, Fingers, Bwains, Peepers, the Belly Monster, all of them - and all of us, unanimously, are permanently by your side. Or in your ear. Or on your head. They have no other job and no other purpose (they'd get lost anyway). They were made entirely out of you and me and the completely absurd private world we've built together, and they are here to love you and support you no matter what, no exceptions. Even Tongue, who remains deeply nervous about Gobby, has confirmed he is fully committed.
You're Thirty, my love!! I can't wait to spend a lifetime of thirties with you!!!
I love you with all my heart and soul.