At the exact moment the clock ticked past midnight, I was sitting on a cusion in a house in a compound in a city on the East Coast of Africa making a big giraffe poster for Zoe to put on her classroom wall. First time I've ever done that on my birthday.

She'd already long gone to bed by this stage, but when I finally finished, I found a lovely note attatched to the mirror, made out of scraps of laminated paper that she'd written on while I was drawing above creation.