Under six months til my 40th birthday. I am not going to make a big thing about it though. It doesn't bother me at all. I'm not even thinking about it.
Watching Daniel Radcliffe in the Harry Potter film on telly tonight it struck me how strange fate can be. That young lad is now a millionaire and it's thanks to his physical resemblance to a fictional character dreamt up by a woman without a publication contract.
According to
wikipedia Rowling had started writing Harry Potter in 1990. Radcliffe was born in 1989. Little did that baby know that wheels were already in motion that would lead to him starring in a massive film franchise before he had even hit puberty. Unless the baby Radcliffe was like the baby Jesus and could see everything and knew where his life was heading. His fate was in the hands of someone else and whilst he might well have been a successful actor without this grumpy-faced woman's crazy idea, he would never have found himself in the position of being such a star so young.
Maybe someone had an idea somewhere today that will impact on my life in a decade or so's time. Perhaps it will be a crazy old goblin character that I am destined to play in some TV series in 2019, or maybe it's a terrible atrocity dreamt up by Osama Bin Laden that I will end up being in the middle of, despite my recent conversion to total support for his organisation and its stated opposition to toilet rim blocks.
Or maybe I had an idea that will impact on the life of some tiny tot who is just a babe in arms. Unlikely as I had another fruitless day of writing, but possibly I might just now come up with the notion of a talking hamster that can fly and stop time and after many years of struggle of trying to convince the world that this is a good idea for a film, I will finally meet a madman who wants to finance the project and the hamster's voice will be provided by the baby (now grown up - there's no way my flying time travel hamster would be voiced by a baby - that would make a travesty of the idea). But the baby doesn't know it yet? How could it? It knows nothing. It certainly doesn't know what it's voice sounds like yet and that it's going to grow up to have a voice that would suit a flying hamster.
If JK Rowling had decided Harry Potter looked just a bit different then Radcliffe would have been out of the frame. If only she'd decided that the magical school boy would have a premature ageing disease and look like a short fat long-haired 39 year old man, then that could be me up there, hanging out with Ron and Hermione. I think the Harry Potter series would have been much better if that's what Harry had been like and I will make a plea to JK (Rowling, not the bloke from JK and Joel) to make the necessary changes in the 7th book at least. Though maybe make Harry look about 45 cos that's how old I'll be when it comes time to make the film.
It's just strange and also totally mundane the way that one person's life can impact on another's like this.
I do talk crap don't I?
