My birthday seems to be at a busy time of year for everyone, most people being occupied with other people’s birthdays because – I don’t know – the nights drawing in around November cause an unholy boom in births in late July, a million screaming Leo’s popping out and generally not stopping screaming (at least for attention) for the next few decades.
Not that I believe in astrology. But then, I’m a cynic. Typical Leo.
Ah, the old ones are the oldest.
Anyway, the upshot is that people would rather apparently spend time with their husbands, wives, children and “close family” than someone they see every other month for too many cocktails. Charming.
I’m just kidding, but I do wish I could move it as it’s the same people I don’t see every year.
To be fair, I have been celebrating for a month, starting with pinballing round the French Quarter in New Orleans with assorted reprobates.
Back in London, this weekend saw an amount of karaoke that I believe transgresses UK quotas, brazenly upping our debt of Frank Sinatra covers to the Japanese. No genre went unpunished. Bon Jovi may have been involved. I’m not sure. I’ll have to study the tapes.
Tomorrow – my actual birthday – will be relatively solitary as I guess some people have actual jobs that require them to be in offices in a physical way, so after work and gym, I reckon I’ll make myself a Ramos Gin Fizz, head off for lunch with one of my lovely editors, knob about in town for a bit to watch a film in an empty darkened room and then head back to the ‘hood for friends, noodles and booze.
This year is near impossible to summarise. I can’t even look at it directly. Like the sun, or cleavage, you just have to get a sense of it then look away. Sure, there were some times when I wanted to hack out my soul with a plastic spork, but mostly it was gushing torrents of awesome. Awesomeness? Awesomicity?
Not too shabby on the personal lifetime achievements front, where I managed to tick off: getting published in the Sunday Times (mainly as it’s the paper my uncle wrote for as I was growing up and until very recently, and I always thought if I could just do that, then it would justify my choice to be a journalist) and appearing on an officially recorded and released CD (the Tobias and the Angel soundtrack, an opera I was in about 4 years ago). Not earth shattering, but satisfying to me. There was other stuff, but you’d need to buy me untold drinks.
Highlights: diving into secluded underground caves, drinking tequila and staring at the stars in Mexico, becoming a Godparent for the first time, hearing the train go past the window of a B&B in Chicago, swanking it up in New York, managing to live for most of the year in New Orleans (Halloween, Mardi Gras, Thanksgiving races, joint birthday with my friend Todd), hitting many fancy cocktail bars in Chicago, London and Amsterdam, touring Thailand, deciding to get in that taxi to the airport at 5am one November morning, sun-drenched picnics, more hotel days than I can even remember and generally finding myself in a happy spot.
Al this, plus I staved off chronic obesity, random violence, terminal illness and indeed terminal death for another 12 months (Yes, I am touching wood.) (Yes, I mean ‘wood’ in the English sense.) And that, friends, is the state of my nation as I enter my 3(noneofyourbusiness)th year. To quote my old grandma, it’s been rizzeal.
