2007-03-15
The significant birthday looms (well - two months off). When I think about it I am utterly staggered that I have got to be this age and apart from the aches and pains that never seemed to trouble me before I’m still doing reasonably OK. Keeping the grey hair at bay without recourse to chemicals - despite what my friends accuse me of. I know I’ll be officially old when I find the first grey pube.But I don’t like it. It didn’t bother me at all at the last significant birthday. I could happily think to myself I was doing well and I was only about half way done. Now I’m more pessimistic: it’s all downhill from here. The pains will get worse, the forgetfulness more frequent. Stupid-old-man syndrome will set in. And if I think of the things I’d quite like to do I realise that time is running out if I want to do them while I can still enjoy them and not have to worry about whether Saga insurance is going to cover me if things go wrong. Specifically, I was chatting with Jo the other lunchtime in a pub at lunchtime [here we break to say in parenthesis that we had a very nice time together, being happy friends and remembering some ‘bad’, ’naughty’ times: “When we were fighting last week I had a sudden thought whether I would have carried on with this if you’d turned out to be rubbish in bed…or even not so good..”] and I voiced that wee fantasy of mine about making the road trip from Alaska all the way down to the tip of Argentina, see all the sights - Alaska, through Canada, Seattle, Californian, Mexico, Central America and Panama Canal, on to Colombia and touch Brazil, up over the Andes, Bolivia, Peru..Tierra del Fuego. Spherical Tim was talking about a boys trip to Brazil recently. I want to do a big adventure before I croak (hey second croaking reference in three entries - get a grip, Kevin, and stop being so damn morbid!). That might do.
Anyway. How to celebrate the significant birthday? Ten years ago my friend Kenny (who gets there exactly one month before me) and I hired a boat with a jazz band and cruised up and down the Tyne for a few hours. It was a good night although the May weather which had been beautiful all the week before took a down turn. Not wet, just a heavy sea mist -haar as the Scots call it - rolling in and enveloping us. My brother Michael brought a good selection of fireworks and we let them off the back of the boat causing the captain to come storming up with complaints that the coastguard were wanting to know if they were distress flares.
So what this time? Kenny and I have been getting together every now and again to discuss it but to be honest neither of us have been greatly moved to get on with it. I think both of us have a feeling that we’re not really sure we want to do it, but the whole subject seems to have a momentum of its own in the form of other people’s expectation. We keep getting asked when it’ll be and unfortunately neither of us is sufficiently certain that we don’t want to do it that we even got as far as agreeing a date without having a clue where. The obvious place - seeing as I work there - would be the brewery. But can I organise a piss-up in a brewery? Clearly not, and surprisingly there seems to be a restriction on music and dancing there so it’s probably not a starter. No doubt there are hotel function suites, rooms above pubs available but the boat of ten years ago seems to have set a precedent. People are expecting something unusual or at least a little bit different. Kenny got in touch with Catherine’s school (his boy goes there too) to see if the rugby (another sport Americans don’t get!) pavilion is available. Looks like it is, but the bar looks like one of those places built out of formica and only serves fizzy beer. Won’t do,
So this morning I think I’ve managed to arrange something at the big cricket ground in the city. Not talked money or numbers yet but it sounds promising. They mentioned the possibility of a spit-roast porker as a barbecue…
I’ll get down there tomorrow lunchtime to look it over, and then we’ll make a decision. But to be honest, if it’s not there I can’t think what we can do now. Keep 5th May free. I’ll expect you to come.