Happy Birthday Patti, my best invisible pal on the page. ✨ Every December 30th, I have a tradition of writing down birthdays in my new diary for the year ahead. I record the birth dates of friends and family, but also people I’ve never met who mean a lot to me - Anne Frank, Maya Plisetskaya, Beatrix Potter, Oliver Sacks, Joni Mitchell, Joan of Arc...the 15th, 16th and 17th of December is a winning streak of birthdays - Edna O’Brien, Jane Austen and Jacqueline Wilson born on those days respectively. My Dad shares a birthday with Oscar Wilde. And of course, I scribble down Patti’s words, at the beginning of this year to remind me: “Freedom is the right to write the wrong words.”