Age is but a number…right?

I was at the hairdresser on Saturday getting some curls added to the ole wig-do, because I was going to one of those events that happens less and less as the years go by: a birthday party.

More funerals than birthdays

I think I go to more funerals than birthday parties nowadays. Here’s something they never tell you when you’re seven: there will come a time when folk don’t care to make a big fuss about their (or your) age every year.

There will come a time when a half-year, once an occasion for boasting ‘I’m seven-and-a-half,” means nothing.

A birthday merely becomes an annual excuse to mainline cake and wonder why everyone your age looks so much older than you do.

And also, when did they started hiring children as policemen? This birthday, however, was an occasion a decade in the making, a big, scary, roundy birthday.

The birthday boy was turning 60. Obviously I’m nowhere near 60 – I mean, just look at that (17-year-old) photo of me.

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Sexagenarian era

I’m merely heading towards my 40th, for the 12th time. But now I actually have a friend in my peer group who is a sexagenarian.

As my father would have enjoyed reminding him, he’s in his seventh decade. On the way to the hairdresser I looked for a suitable birthday card, preferably a gently amusing one because when you get to a certain age, age jokes just aren’t funny anymore.

And anyway his wife says he’s not taking it well, even though getting older certainly beats the alternative. So I chose a card with a ring of truth: ‘I finally figured out what I want to be when I get older… Younger.”

My hairdresser asks what the special occasion is. A birthday party, I tell her. ‘Ooooh, fun,” she says, then her smile falters.

‘It’s my birthday soon, on the 16th.” ‘That’s on…” I try to do maths, but I don’t know what the date is. It’s a miracle I know the month, because that’s another thing that happens as you get older: days run into weeks run into months run into years and you’re left going, huh? Where did my life go?

“Tuesday,” she finishes for me. ‘And how old will you be?” ‘Ah Jennie,” she says, big-eyed, dewy-skinned, ‘I’m getting SO old.” ‘How old?” She swallows hard. ’28.”

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