Ten Crazy Things I Have Done With the B——ster: A Birthday Celebration.

1. Remember the time when we were dared to drive home with the roof of the V-dub open, wearing avaitor hats and scarves blowing in the wind. We were five or ten minutes from home when we got rear-ended. Saying we failed the dare was unfair. I do think that if that happened today we would not have taken everything off—merely untied the scarves from the rollbar and exchanged details like we did this sort of thing everyday.
2. Remember all the other V-dub adventures. The time Leigh squished the huntsman into a green smear on the windscreen with his shoe, and we had to get it off with the windshield wipers. Or the dog poop under the fingernail day. Or the time we were the accident on the radio. Or when we spruced the car and ourselves up to take Guy Leech to a store appearance and he snubbed the dub! I am surprised it wasn't you that had to help me push the car out of the Oakleigh drive-in, up and over, up and over, because the battery was flat and they wouldn't let us wait inside for the RACV—that would have been apt.
3. Remember leaving for Europe with our matching 'world map' shirts. I know it was the eighties but we must have looked very daggy. Not only were they matching, but they were tucked into our jeans.
4.. Remember when you were the grape and I was the vine. Riding down the valley of the Seine can often——with it’s up and down rolling hills——drive you a little in-Seine. B———— had a purple jacket, I had an olive green one. After miles and miles of vineyards it seemed only natural to emulate our surroundings and make like the grapes. Don’t know what the passing traffic thought, but the photo always brings back funny memories.
5. Remember when we thought we'd share just half a cake each in Amsterdam. Nothing changed so we had another one and flew home to London on the bus.
6. Remember when the thing that sent us home from Eurodisney was not Big Thunder Mountain or Space Mountain, but the teacups. Yes, the teacups. You big wooses. But we got that thing up to speed, no doubting that. Don't ever take a teacup for granted.
7. Remember driving in a rental car, in a torrential rain storm, off road, through red-coloured puddles of indeterminable depth, in the Northern Territory, in our undies. It seems that you, me and a car usually means we end up in a weird place.
8. Remember all the times we have trolled through the racks at Savers. I think we even managed it in the really hot summer days of 2009, with no air-conditioning and the sometimes questionably smelly locals. The best trips were always the ones where there was a cupboard for sale out the back that had a mirror and we could try stuff on their instead of waiting in the queues at the changing rooms. The trips always end with eating and drinking somewhere where you can wash the blackness and the smell of the millions of recycled items off your hands. And, later, the four-pickles show and tell. Its an institution.
9. Remember another of those special driving moments—Sicily to Greece in twenty-four hellish/hilarious hours. That was one crazy day. Buses, trains, planes, automobiles; scrabble, billiards, scrabble; no sleep, tiny nap, the best sleep of our lives—and only a madman would take the ‘upgrade to the chair’ over the fabulous sea-night air we had.
10. Remember all the 4 Pickles couch moments. There is always a lot of jest, laughter, wit and malice directed at the public as we see it on the box. I feel particularly proud if I can emit from you a spurt of whatever just went into your mouth. You feel particularly proud if you can get the rapid head jerk. It’s a cocoon—a special cone where silence is definitely not the objective, but it is probably well and good that no one else can hear.