[Dave, Melbourne,Australia]

It's May19 in Australia and today is my actual 60th birthday. I feel lucky when I think of a few friends and relatives who died in their 50s and younger. Looking back on the "60th birthday" album I compiled two years early, a few of its songs mean more to me than they did then. "Borrowed Heaven" because I dedicated it to Mum when she passed away in February this year. "Angels of Fenway" because my beloved Melbourne Football Club broke their 57-year championship drought in 2021 in Mum's 57th and final season of supporting them. (They're also undefeated half-way through the 2022 season and short odds to win the Grand Final again, this time in Melbourne in front of their home fans including me.) And Tony Rice's bluegrass cover of Gordon Lightfoot's "Go My Way", because Rice died on Christmas Day 2020, aged 69.

I'll be spending my 60th birthday working from home, like nearly every weekday since the COVID pandemic arrived. I was looking forward to the evening at a restaurant with wife and both daughters and their boyfriends, but one daughter living away from home has COVID (I'm the only family member who's never had it) and it's been cancelled. Instead my wife and I are just going to the cinema.