Last Thursday was my forty-thirteenth birthday, in case any 'Catter didn't know.

Late in March this year, I started a new job in IT. I am a combined software developer and Technical Support helpdesk person, which means that as soon as software deadlines are fixed, a server will crash, four people will forget their passwords and some drama queen of either sex will accidentally delete their emails.

There are perhaps fifty people working on the site, not a huge cross-section of the popularion. On Monday last week, I was asked to sign two birthday cards. I thought it was a coincidence that three people had birthdays in the same week. I was startled to find that it was actually three people had birthdays on the same day.

Given that December is not a popular month in which to be born, would anybody care to calculate the odds?

I think that next year, one of the other two people sharing my birthday will burst into my office waving a bloodied samurai sword and intoning "There can be only one!"