Born on the 5th of July. Born to the same mother. Born in the United States. Wait! That was Bruce Springsteen, wasn’t it? Sure, but a lot of others, too. Jamie and Robbie, for example. Born on the same day. Which would make them twins except they were born a year apart. Same day, though.

“Nothing was ever planned. It just happened that they arrived on the same day,” says mum, Pam.

She’s got a point because seriously who sets about planning the precise date of delivery although there have been some near misses, like my dad and me. Born just a day apart but separated by a respectable gap of 26 years.

The Robinsons — Pam, hubby Joe, and the boys Jamie and Robbie — are Australian. The family just happened to be in New York those two consecutive years as Pam, a designer by profession, was contracted to work with a company that was doing the costumes for a lavish theatre production.

Exhibiting typical Aussie modesty, Pam says, “Not the head designer or anything. I was just one of the several women with their needle and thread, and sewing machines, stitching up the seams of hundreds of battle uniforms and the like.” Which Robbie, in private, assures me isn’t totally accurate. Pam has a degree in design research. Anyhow, somewhere in between stitching and fitting costumes, Pam (and hubby Joe, of course, who admits shamefacedly that he did have a lot of time hanging on his hands) managed to fit in some time to produce not one but both of their sons.

Meeting them, Jamie and Robbie, now 12 and 11 respectively, are as alike as — to use that old cliche — two peas in a pod. Although, I must add that every time I’ve closely inspected peas in pods (which isn’t all that often, I hasten to admit, lest readers think me a tad eccentric) they’ve rarely looked as identical as they’ve been made out to be.

Anyhow, on first sighting it’s easy to believe that Jamie and Robbie could be identical twins. They couldn’t be more different, Pam assures me, adding in their presence, “One arrived smiling and slept soundly for hours, the other came bawling his lungs out and never stopped till he was taken out of his baby cot and cuddled by his mum. I won’t mention names!”

It is left to me to use my investigatory skills — a la Poirot — and scrutinise the two faces closely watching for the telltale rush of blood to the cheeks that will ‘reveal the culprit’. It doesn’t take long to discern that the one who slept soundly post-birth was Robbie. Jamie’s face resembles a tree in India we used to call the Flame of the Forest, more commonly known as the gul mohur.

We are all seated in their spacious backyard. Pam has just served tea (a real English tea that is, not tea as in what some Aussies call dinner). Pam, apart from being an expert seamstress-slash-designer is a professional baker in hubby Joe’s humble opinion, and mine. Her skill working with dough is to be seen to be believed. It’s as if a ball of dough recognises her touch and decides, “Right, for this lady, we’re going to be soft and elastic and springy.” Dough in my hands and under my ministrations is another story and requires another column so we’ll set that aside. Anyhow, the tea table is awash with Pam’s baked offerings. Scrolls, buns, roulades, cookies, brownies. We are all tucking into it healthily. All, that is, except for Robbie. I give Pam a quizzical glance and she says, “One of them is going to be a millionaire the other is going to show us how money should be spent.”

Turns out Robbie prefers buying a doughnut from the shop at the corner.

“You could cook the tastiest delights, Robbie will ask for some money to go buy himself something from outside,” says Pam.

Jamie, meanwhile, is lathering cream onto another scone.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.