Entry for June 24, 2007

I will be forty in less than two weeks. Although I will be young and carefree until then, I know deep inside, that after that date I will no longer be the carefree creature I have been until now.
Forty is a Big One. It is like Sixteen and Twenty One and nothing much in between. It is a time when you can either settle or kick on; a time when you can opt for quiet nights in or new walls to climb. It is an age when tabloid newspapers will begin to cast aspersions upon you if you look at a girls' legs for too long and in the wrong way - the caption under your photo will no longer read "Jack the Lad, 39", but instead "Leering Pervert, 40".
I can't be forty surely. It seems like a blink since I was sitting on a wall listening to the B52s "Hot Pant Explosion" on the Walkman, drunk on lager when it cost less than £2 a pint, and waiting to clandestinely kiss some girl I shouldn't be kissing. Or a blink since Berethrin was playing Oasis songs in the big house where I was unhappy and made other people unhappy. Or since I was in the pub and the DJ played the demo tape my band recorded. Or since long drives to the hospital and eating chips beside the harbour while I waited.
I can't be nearly forty. But I am.