Oh fuck I'm 44!
Now there were four years that passed with impolite haste. So quickly in fact that I fear I may check the calendar at the end of writing this entry and find I am now 48.
I can remember my fourth birthday - that's probably the first memory I have of card and badges with my age on - and now it's forty years after that? No way. This is not on. Who can I talk to about this? Because I refuse to accept this whole getting old concept. It's stupid. We should clearly get to 25 and then stay that age forever. Balls.
Forty-four does seem a lot older than 43. I can't deny that I am in my mid-forties. But I will continue to deny it.
To be honest I was actually quite glad to have a birthday though, because it gave me a valid reason for a proper day off. No gig, no writing, no blogging, no podcasting. It's been a good while since that's been the case. I think I maybe had the day off on May 17th and I had four days off over the Easter weekend, but aside from that I have worked every day since mid-March. Which is properly insane. So I relished this chance to just do some stuff for fun.
We'd been planning to go to Chessington World of Adventure, because I may be 44 but I am still that four year old at heart, but it was more fun to laze in bed watching DVDs in the morning, so we decided to go out in London instead.
I fancied a visit to Westminster Abbey, which was a bit more of a 44 year old thing to do, but nice to be spending my birthday with the bones of people who were seven centuries old. Nothing makes you feel more like a spring chicken. I was dressed up smart because we were going out to a posh restaurant tonight, but we stopped off for a coffee and a snack to keep us going. I bought myself a birthday gingerbread man and put it in my pocket. It amused my girlfriend that I was in my suit and had a gingerbread man poking out of the pocket. She said it pretty much summed me up. That four year old is still insistent that it is his birthday, not mine.
I loved Westminster Abbey, though I note it's doubled in price to get in there
since I last went. At £16 a head, with a constant stream of visitors Ian Westminster is really coining it in. But it was worth the money to once again be within feet of Edward Longshanks' long shanks and to see the burial place of Elizabeth I and Chaucer and a load of posh forgotten people who no one cares about anymore. So much for their vaunted self-opinion. There's a little museum too which includes some spooky wooden funeral effigies and ancient waxworks. I liked the one of Nelson, which is apparently a great likeness. I am much more impressed by dead celebrities than living ones. I will have to start writing some proper poetry and shit so I can get buried in amongst the writing greats in Poets' Corner. Or maybe they will set up a Bloggers' Corner. I'd have to get in there surely?
I got my picture taken by the oldest door in Britain.
We then improvised our way through the afternoon, having a pizza, watching a film (Hangover 2 - not great and unrealistic in that I think not many people would cheer if Mike Tyson turned up as an unexpected wedding guest) and then fitting in a quick cocktail before our super posh evening meal. This was a big improvement on
last year's birthday where I was mainly vomiting on to my own diarrhea.
I gave up drinking for six and a half months after that experience and have not really got back into heavy drinking since then, but did manage a fair few drinks today, without getting too drunk. I paced myself quite nicely.
We then headed to the casino where we had some early luck, but ultimately lost some cash. But it was OK as I was pretty confident that I'd win the Eurolottery. It was my birthday after all. So it would be rude of fate not to give me £161 million. When I found out the prize had been won by someone in the UK it seemed to confirm my feeling. It hardly seemed worth bothering to actually check the numbers. I might as well just ring up and claim the prize.
Unfortunately somehow fate was not interested in celebrating my grand old age and not only did the number 44 not even come up, but I only got one star and one number which wins you nothing.
But after a brilliant day with my brilliant girlfriend I was already a winner and the luckiest man alive - though if I had won £161 million I would have dumped her and gone and lived on the moon with Amy Pond. But there's no need for her to know that.
