Birthdays are often great, but a birthday with a 9 on the end can give cause to ponder as the end of another decade grows uncomfortably close.
Today is my 59th birthday which means the end of my sixth decade is suddenly on the horizon, indeed my 60th year on earth officially starts today. I'm not sure I'm ready for this.
So I thought I'd look back at my previous birthdays ending in 9, the moments I found myself on final approach to another decade's end, to try to remind myself that it's never as bad as it seems.
Saturday 9th March 1974 (age 9): I didn't have much concept of a decade back then, having not yet experienced a full one, but I knew double figures would bring special status. I was still in my second year of junior school at the time, somewhere beyond learning italic handwriting with my Osmiroid pen but not yet in thrall to the nice lady who came in to teach us a few French words on a Thursday afternoon. Life was not yet complicated - food appeared, holidays happened and my social universe was happily compact. This was also just before we moved house, so my last birthday before I got a bedroom of my own and introspective privacy became a thing.
I don't know what I did in the morning, it not being a schoolday, but BBC1 was showing Mary, Mungo and Midge, Josie and the Pussycats and Casey Jones, so they may have featured. Later in the evening Doctor Who was fighting the Daleks, but I probably missed that episode because a birthday tea with carefully-invited friends would have taken precedence. Somewhere in my Dad's sideboard is the blue plastic number 9 that would have topped the cake, indeed there might be two 9s because it was also my Mum's 39th as she hurtled inexorably towards 40. What I do know (because I still have the programme) is that in the evening we went out to see Captain Pugwash, a swashbuckling musical show for kids at Watford Palace Theatre, and I thank my parents for their forbearance.
Friday 9th March 1984 (age 19): In a mighty decade leap I now found myself at university. Jolts don't get much bigger than being ripped from home and relocating to a higher educational hotbed seething with thousands of people your own age you'd never otherwise meet, a bedroom of your own and free money from the government. I know it's not entirely like that now but wow, what a blast it was then. I was mixing with future artists, economists, politicians, journalists and general go-getters, as well as others destined to fall back under the radar instead. What I didn't appreciate at the time was that this unique burst would last only three years and I should truly make the most of it, and that in this case the gamechanging age wouldn't be 20 but 21.
My 19th birthday wasn't just a Friday but the last day of term so everyone was up for a celebration anyway. I woke early to open my cards and presents and was pleased to discover I'd accumulated the grand total of £17 so went off to spend it in the shops. I bought a blank C60 cassette from Boots, a Thompson Twins album from Our Price, a road atlas from Parkers and a Creme Egg from the Co-op. While I was at lectures my friends strung a string of teabags across the door of my room, because I hadn't chosen the wildest crew, and later in the afternoon came round with a bottle of sweet white wine and a tin of Quality Street. I made time to watch Doctor Who (the inimitable Caves of Androzani) and then a gang of us went out for a meal. Pancake palace Go Dutch was alas full so we went to O'Sullivans (long since closed) where I had a big burger and Paul took the candle apart. After ringing Mum on the way home (happy birthday!) we ended up at Tim's party bopping to ABC and I finally crawled into bed at half past three. It's funny, but reading back 40 years later I was expecting it to be wilder than that.
Wednesday 9th March 1994 (age 29): Life had got serious over the last ten years and I now had a job, a flat and a much stunted social life. A single choice had flung me down a career path I hadn't been expecting on my 19th, one I turned out to be good at but it wasn't at all clear where it might be leading. Instead I just got on with things, settled into a rut and did what needed to be done without finding much time for fun. It wasn't a bad life but only retrospectively have I realised what I was missing out on, and in this case the gamechanging age wouldn't be 30 but 33.
I spent my 29th birthday at work, it not being possible to get out of it. I only had two cards to open first thing, one of which inspired me to ring home and wish Mum a happy 59th(!) before catching the bus to work. My colleagues had ganged up to get me a cake and a gift which turned out to be a pair of annotated boxer shorts, handed over with kisses - these days you'd probably be able to describe this as workplace harassment and get the perpetrator sacked. We still swap Christmas cards. I worked conscientiously through the day, survived the wet hour and made sure I had a Creme Egg in my lunchbox. After work I bought two CD singles in Our Price (M People's Renaissance and Blur's Girls and Boys) and a readymeal roast dinner in Safeway as a birthday treat. Other than enjoying those the highlight of the evening was watching Brookside, and I think that says everything about my late 20s.
Tuesday 9th March 2004 (age 39): Having shaken the dice either side of the millennium I was now leading my best life. It could have gone terribly but instead I had a role with influence, a centrally-located pad and a group of proper friends again. Admittedly BestMate had recently buggered off to America so being 38 had been a lot less frenetic than being 37, but that just gave me more time to write my fledgling blog. I told my diary that 40 looming "didn't feel scary" and this proved prescient, things were only just getting started, and in this case the gamechanging age wouldn't be in my 40s at all.
By my 39th birthday I had a job where days off were a possibility so I grabbed my chance and took the train to Cambridge to meet my parents halfway. This meant I could wish my Mum a happy 69th in person and hand over my wrapped gift of the complete boxset of Tenko on VHS. The outdoor thermometer I received in return is still giving sterling service. Because I was with my parents we did parenty things like browsing the haberdashery department in John Lewis, taking tea in the Copper Kettle and snapping photos of the Backs with Dad's new digital camera. For lunch we went to Garfunkels where I had mixed grill and profiteroles, like it was still the 1990s, and Mum had gammon and waffles. One further tearoom beckoned, because being almost 70 seemed to involve increasing amounts of sitting down, and then we headed our separate ways home. The day out inspired me to blog about being halfway to my average life expectancy, roughly speaking, and it scares me slightly that 20 years later I'm now up to three-quarters.
Sunday 9th March 2014 (age 49): Work was very different in a team of three rather than a team of 30, but if they were still willing to pay me I was happy to be there. My career progression was now very limited, it turned out, but sometimes it's best not to know what's coming next. For example at 39 I hadn't realised I only had five more years to wish my Mum a happy birthday, and 9th March has felt less complete ever since. Again I wasn't overly unnerved by approaching a decade's end, not yet feeling the first signs of inexorable decay, and in retrospect the gamechanging age wasn't 50 but 55.
Plans for a 49th birthday day out with BestMate evaporated when the stag do he'd been on overran so instead I took the day's itinerary into my own hands. First I took a celebratory ride on the Dangleway, using the first of ten freebies I'd been gifted yesterday, then headed to the Barbican for a safari round the tropical conservatory. For the main event I took the train back to the village of my birth and walked the whole Croxley Boundary Walk which proved to be six and a half miles of unbridled nostalgia. The day had been unseasonably warm (20°C!) so I'd stripped to a t-shirt and also nipped into a shop on New Road to buy a Fab lolly, just like I might have done 40 years earlier. You won't be surprised to hear that dinner was accompanied by a bottle of Becks and a Creme Egg, nor that I spent the evening writing about my day out (which is the way so many days now end, birthday or not).
Saturday 9th March 2024 (age 59): tbc. But not yet 60, hell no.
Birthdays are often great, but a birthday with a 9 on the end can give cause to ponder as the end of another decade grows uncomfortably close.
My 19th birthday wasn't just a Friday but the last day of term so everyone was up for a celebration anyway. I woke early to open my cards and presents and was pleased to discover I'd accumulated the grand total of £17 so went off to spend it in the shops. I bought a blank C60 cassette from Boots, a Thompson Twins album from Our Price, a road atlas from Parkers and a Creme Egg from the Co-op. While I was at lectures my friends strung a string of teabags across the door of my room, because I hadn't chosen the wildest crew, and later in the afternoon came round with a bottle of sweet white wine and a tin of Quality Street. I made time to watch Doctor Who (the inimitable Caves of Androzani) and then a gang of us went out for a meal. Pancake palace Go Dutch was alas full so we went to O'Sullivans (long since closed) where I had a big burger and Paul took the candle apart. After ringing Mum on the way home (happy birthday!) we ended up at Tim's party bopping to ABC and I finally crawled into bed at half past three. It's funny, but reading back 40 years later I was expecting it to be wilder than that.
By my 39th birthday I had a job where days off were a possibility so I grabbed my chance and took the train to Cambridge to meet my parents halfway. This meant I could wish my Mum a happy 69th in person and hand over my wrapped gift of the complete boxset of Tenko on VHS. The outdoor thermometer I received in return is still giving sterling service. Because I was with my parents we did parenty things like browsing the haberdashery department in John Lewis, taking tea in the Copper Kettle and snapping photos of the Backs with Dad's new digital camera. For lunch we went to Garfunkels where I had mixed grill and profiteroles, like it was still the 1990s, and Mum had gammon and waffles. One further tearoom beckoned, because being almost 70 seemed to involve increasing amounts of sitting down, and then we headed our separate ways home. The day out inspired me to blog about being halfway to my average life expectancy, roughly speaking, and it scares me slightly that 20 years later I'm now up to three-quarters.
