Twenty-one.

Two.

Six.

Eighteen.

A week ago he turned twenty-one, so we celebrated with dinner at the Little Hungarian (no, we’re not), a modest glass-fronted café of the gingham-cloth kind in Glenhuntly Road. 

On a cold wet midwinter night, we ate finely-hammered schnitzels edging over their plates like storm-tossed boats, chicken soup with matzoh balls, szegediner goulash; lecsó salad, sautéd red cabbage and sauerkraut sides; and then followed these with caster-sugared strudels and crepes leaching fruit like snow-dusted forest floors. 

Egri Korona red wine filled glasses which, through their prismatic distortions, turned the lights of the trams sailing past outside into little planets of rain-streaked gold.