I believe that today is Angus Ashman's 38th birthday. It's exactly a month before mine. Given I haven't seen him for 30 years it is weird how certain things like this will stick in your mind. I imagine that when I am old and senile, the date of Angus Ashman's birthday may be all I can coherently remember.
Anyway happy birthday Angus, you non-car door opening pussy.
I wonder what he looks like now. I wonder what he is doing. I can only see him as a grown man, with his eight year old's head on his shoulders, still wearing his school uniform and glasses. I doubt he still looks like that. But it would be pleasing to find out that he did, even if that meant he was suffering from some rare and presumably fatal genetic disorder, which also made him want to wear his school uniform (or a specially tailored adult version of it). Is it wrong to find that pleasing and even reassuring? I don't know. But I do anyway.
Of course the real tragedy of this is not the strange genetic disease that has possibly affected my old school-chum and enemy, but the fact that in one month's time, I too will be 38 years old. Which is quite an old age to be. Luckily I do not have an 8 year old's head on my man's shoulders, but possibly I have been afflicted by a genetic disorder which means I still possess an 8 year old's sense of humour.
Tonight at the Oxford Arms after a satisfactory gig to some slightly quiet people I looked at the old photos of Camden High Road in the olden days. There was no date on them, but there were rubbish looking old cars and buses in them, so would that make it about 1920? I don't know. Let's say it's from 90 years ago. The world has changed so much and the people are now all dead. There were no giant models of Dr Martin boots sticking out of the shops then. And nairy a punk rocker in sight.
Yet it's thirty years since that car door opening incident, which is a third of the way back into the past. Time flies by. It won't be too long til the unborn people of the future are looking at pictures of our present day Camden High Road and thinking how quaint it all is, that for example, no-one had hover cars or jet packs and that people lived in stone houses and went to actual shops rather than living in a Matrix style virtual reality created inside a computer.
Ah well, I'm still 37 for the moment, so that's one in the face for you Ashman!
Not that I want to spoil your big day.
