If we counted time in a different way, say in 100s, then today would be a very special milestone for me. But we don't, we count in 365s and 31s, so it's just another day. Another day of getting up, going to work, battling against petty bureaucracy and coming home again. Although, if you look back over my life, that isn't 'just another day' at all. In my earliest years 'just another day' would have involved gurgling around in nappies. Soon afterwards it would have meant seven hours at school and home again for tea. And even though I've been working now for two decades, the nature of that work (and of the daily commute) has changed no end. There's no such thing as 'just another day', just temporary ordinariness.
I've kept a daily diary since I was pre-pubescent, so I thought I'd take this special opportunity today to look back and see what Day 5000 and Day 10000 were like, just to see how my life has changed. I wonder what ordinary used to be.
Day 5000: Thursday 16th November 1978 (age 13, Watford) Yes, as I suspected, this was a very ordinary school day. Starting with double English (a mysterious lady visitor sat at the back of the classroom and frowned), then French (some comprehension exercises about the Paris metro), History (our teacher was away and so let us spend the whole lesson colouring in a map of the American Union) and double Science (a test, oh joy). At lunchtime we celebrated a classmate's birthday by buying giant 99s from the ice cream van parked opportunely outside the school gates (only 30p, and dripping with hundreds and thousands and artificial raspberry sauce). In the afternoon there was Maths and RE before a particularly tedious orchestra practice. And then it was off home to do my History homework and watch the Bionic Woman on the telly.
All perfectly normal for me back then, but utterly alien today. I haven't conjugated a French verb or sat a Science test in decades. Nobody cooks my tea for me any more. Jaime Summers and her bionic hearing have long since been relegated to televisual nostalgia. But most tellingly of all I'm no longer in touch with any of my former classmates, and yet at the time it would have been hard to comprehend spending my lunchtimes with anybody else. All my teenage problems and issues, so important at the time, have long since faded into insignificance. How easily we move on. And thank goodness we do.
Day 10000: Saturday 25th July 1992 (age 27, Bedford) Here's the opposite. A day so abnormal that I'd almost forgotten how sociable I occasionally am. Maybe being a summer Saturday was to blame, but this was utterly atypical of my life at the time, honest. I woke up in one bed and went to sleep in another, neither of them my own (and no, nothing like that happened). I spent most of the day out of the house, with other people. I observed the couple nextdoor welcoming a mysterious pair with obviously dodgy 'swinging' intentions. I attended a party and met several people I could almost have counted as friends (no, really - absolutely unheard of). You might just remember this particular Saturday - it was the date of the opening ceremony for the Barcelona Olympics. But I remember it most clearly as the day I decided once and for all that, yes, I really would go and get myself fitted with contact lenses. If lots of the people I was spending the day with could wear them then surely so could I. And by Day 10003 I was. Bit of a turning point really.
Again my life isn't like that any more. Early 90s Bedford feels so very very far away now. I'm no longer in touch with any of those temporary friends either, although I did accidentally bump into two of them at the seaside a couple of years back, which was nice. My life, my acquaintances and my day-to-day concerns have moved on a long way during the last 5000 days. Today only feels 'ordinary' because it's a bit like last Monday, whereas in fact it's utterly dissimilar to the majority of Mondays I've ever lived through. And all for the better for it too, I think. Hmm, I wonder what normal will feel like in another 5000 days time...
Day 20000: Wednesday 11th December 2019 (age 54, somewhere) I don't think I want to know.
Not yet anyway.
[you can check your own 'useless dates related to your birthday'here]
Day 5000: Thursday 16th November 1978 (age 13, Watford)
