Entry for July 13, 2007

I have received canoeing lessons and a helicopter ride for my birthday. How cool are those as presents? Turning 40 is not so bad after all. Because it is a significant birthday, your nearest and dearest have to exercise their imaginations in present-giving. They cannot get away with buying you a Top 30 CD out of ASDA and sticking it in one of those ready made Present Bags.
Note - present bags are unacceptable: any gift worth the giving must be smothered in gaudy paper and bound tighter than an Egyptian mummy. Presents should be virtually impossible to extract from their wrapping, so that the anticipation of the recipient is heightened. Rather like one's early sexual encounters, it is the waiting that makes it worthwhile (although in fairness, in my case, I am not sure that the girl concerned would agree - presumably she now prefers her birthday presents delivered in an Easy Open Jiffy Bag which apologises profusely for how quickly the gift was extracted).
I am considering skipping birthdays 41 to 49 inclusive altogether, and jumping straight to 50 next year. This seems a sensible precaution. Given my festival of eating over the past few days, I suspect that I will die of some obesity related illness overt the next decade, so it would be a shame to miss out on another excellent haul of presents. I will use up my 50th, 60th and 70th birthdays over the next three years just in case. At any event, by the time I reach 43 I will be too old and demented to recognise my family, let alone appreciate a ride in a helicopter.
I might as well enjoy middle age to the full.