OH, YOU'VE GOT TO TAKE CAKES IN...

The carrier bags were digging into my fingers. When I got to the kitchen, I dumped the three bags of cakes, biscuits, doughnuts and treats on the counter and started unpacking.

"Your birthday?" said someone, swinging an empty mug on their index finger. He knew the drill.

"Yesterday," I said, nodding. Before long, the counter was sprawling with coloured packets of sugary snacks.

"Oh you've got to take cakes in," my sister had said, "It's like... the law."

And she's right, it is a bit like the law. I don't know what it's like in other countries, but here in the UK, in offices up and down the land, it's an unspoken statutory requirement that on thy birthday, thou must take in cakes.

It's also required that thy colleagues do scoff 'em as quickly as is humanly possible. When my computer had woken up, I sent out the required email to everybody:

Recently, I discovered that I’ve completed yet another solar orbit. Naturally, cakes have materialised in the kitchen as a form of sugary celebration. Enjoy.

I went back at 11:30 to find an empty box of mini-rolls and a lonely looking Jaffa Cake.

Now, statistically, it's a fact that in a group of 23 people, it's more than 50% likely that two individuals will share the same birthday. In a medium-sized enterprise, there are a lot of birthdays... all the time. It's no wonder obesity is on the rise.

You know what, next year, I'm taking in fruit.