h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's my birthday today... one of those milestone-y ones. Got around it by celebrating my 29th last night - what with being in Leeds and all I didn't really mark that particular occasion last year. And besides, I got stitched up on the rota and am having to work a late shift tonight. I fully expect us to get a curry in, mind...

It was really quite touching the number of people that turned out last night - three tables-worth of them! Since we all left University, I haven't normally organised much of a big thing for my birthday - invariably it's the office party season and people are either skint, already booked up or both so I don't usually do much. So it was a really pleasant surprise to have so much nice company.

29 again? How many times is that now?

Happy birthday

The first!



Actually, I'd better lay off the booze after last night... Captain Rehydration is my best friend in the world right now.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday young whippersnapper

Feeling a little eh..?

I'll just leave something fairly benign then...



Though best not drunk together, I imagine

I once had diet cola and a milkshake simultaneously...

The fact that I was only about ten at the time meant that a large amount of my stomach contents was shared with the world

This is when scarey thoughts enter my mind like - "Gosh I was still single then - I'm old enough to be his dad - wonder what his Mum's name is - OOeer.

Happy Birthday Number Six

Jules

Happy birthday Number Six - or should that be McKay the Younger?

Tomorrow I'm auditioning for a part in a film being made by some students at the University I go to. The director seems pretty keen to have me in one particular role, but the producer is a little concerned that I don't look old enough to play a character who's meant to be aged 45-50. As I will actually be 45 in March, I was secretly rather delighted to hear that.

I was sat at a parents association booze up last week, where people talked about their schooldays, and they were becoming frustrated that despite being local I didn't seem to know anyone they knew.

Eventually we reached a name I knew - she was the friend of a girl I went out with - and is the grandmother of a boy in my son's class.

They'd assumed I was 10 years younger than I was

Happy Birthday, Number Six

I don't know, male pride- it's much easier being a woman, you're not expected to give out your age

Apparently my pa looks younger than he is. He's 30 years older than me, but keeps on being mistaken for my boyfriend

Thank you, everyone

Sarge, my main problem with being 30 is the fear that I'll meet a nice girl, be getting on very well with her, and then suddenly she'll do a runner when she finds out I'm *old*!

It's funny, this getting old lark. At University I was just about getting used to not being a 5th former at school with Doc Martens and an atrocious haircut best described as long hair-with-a-ponytail-but shaved-up-the-sides-underneath. After University, I was coming to terms with the fact that I wasn't the same bloke that had to do his A-Levels twice and used to tool about in a 1974 Renault 12 playing Blur's 'Park Life' album really loud. Right about now, I'm getting my head around not being at University any more and being the bloke that did loads of drama stuff, wrote for the college paper and drove everyone everywhere in minibuses.

By the sound of it, does this sort of thing just carry on throughout your life and you get an increasingly long time lag between the age you identify with being and the age you actually are?

Anyway, I seem to have just about recovered from Friday (we had a very nice Nepalese curry delivered to work on Saturday, by the way) and today sees everything start to kick off again.

I've got the works christmas do tonight, am playing football Tuesday night, and am off to see the very wonderful Buzzcocks at the Kentish Town Forum on Wednesday night. Then it's a late shift on Thursday, a very short day off on Friday and getting up at 4am for an early shift on Saturday. Then I'll report on Barnet v Tamworth for Radio London, and hope I can get some decent sleep afterwards 'cos that'll be followed by another three early shifts.

I only hope my body can cope.

Mind you, with a bit of luck I ought to be enjoying myself a bit during all that

Sounds all right!

The thing about thirty is half your friends start settling down, while the other half are still living the single life - a sort of strange transitional period.

and of course you start meeting lasses whose biological clock is really ticking...

Happy even more belated Birthday

sprout

ooooo

Happy birfdah!!!

"Sarge, my main problem with being 30 is the fear that I'll meet a nice girl, be getting on very well with her, and then suddenly she'll do a runner when she finds out I'm *old*"
*AHEM* Some of us are shoulder-barging 50 and still thinking about pulling

Ahhh... older women

But it's not easy, is it, Gosho? Being 40-something myself, I find that the single women of my age that I meet tend to be either careworn single parents with no time for a love life, lesbians or simply those who've decided that they like being single. I sometimes get seriously depressed about this. I don't want to grow old alone.

Dammit, I'm far too nice and good-looking to go to waste.

Quite right too

Gosho - yes, but I suppose the trouble is the disparity between the age of some of the women I like and the age of me... maybe it's adjusting to that that's the problem?