For my birthday, my girlfriend (yes I have one), brought me a helium balloon emblazoned with "Birthday Boy". I've always been a fan of helium balloons, firstly for their otherworldliness i.e. the way they keep trying to quit this one by going up, away from it, and secondly for the way, when captured, they make your voice go funny.
These days, of course, balloons are made of foil, so keep their buoyancy for much longer than they used to, mine had spent the week sinking lower and lower on his tether and was now settled on the table. I decided to release him from his string to see if I could achieve what is for me - balloon nirvana, that is that he would stay where I put him, not ascending rapidly to the ceiling, nor descend sullenly to the floor like his air-filled cousins, but rather have neutral buoyancy. After a bit of excess foil-paring, I got him to float, though he still had a slight tendency ceilingwards.
This weekend my girlfriend came to visit, at three in the morning nature came calling and forced her out of bed, as she opened the bedroom door a shape loomed out of the darkness, it was Birthday Boy or BB as he came to be known, he had left the living room and had circulated through the kitchen and then up the stairs. I have to say that this is what we assumed, but his uncanny ability to appear in the least expected places did lend him a degree of the occultish self-determination, you'll have of course noticed that he is "he" not "it". During the day he thoroughly explored the house, turning up in different rooms, occasionally leaving rooms surreptitiously so that one minute he was there, and the next - gone. At one point he came up behind me in the bathroom and gently rested against my leg as I cleaned my teeth. For this gift of company I gave him a boost by placing him in the hot air of the radiator.
Last night though, he was getting tired, no longer able to get upstairs, he sat on a step halfway down - moribund, I fear his time has come, he will, like us, be subject to the indignity of gravity, I find it quite sad, pathos abounds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQhvgo62l74
