It's that birthday feeling again.

It's that birthday feeling again.


It hardly seems possible but it's that day of the year again. With a delightful regularity it's the one day of the year when you suddenly become aware of the passing years, the logical progression of time and impending old age. Only kidding of course. Well not quite old age as such but it now occurs to me that maybe I do need to slow down, smell the roses and coffee and just take it easy. To be honest though I've never felt fitter and happier, free from the constraints of working life and now blogging with the clearest of minds.

 Early retirement has now opened up my otherwise closed mind to the wide expanses of free thinking. But I have to admit that I now tend to get up in the morning in instalments rather than seconds and the process of waking up is a major operation, one that is carried out in painstaking stages with the gradual realisation that all of the vital organs are working and nothing needs a thorough medical examination. Still, the arms and legs are fully functioning and all things considered I'm in good nick. My health is still my wealth and to quote Bill Shankly's mum if you've got your health every day is a holiday. Shankly always did have his pearls of wisdom.

Tomorrow marks my 55th birthday all being well and I have to tell you that 55 is the new 25. Birthdays have always represented something much more than the celebration of the day you were born. It is a time for taking stock, sober reflection, the enjoyment of being among family and friends and a moment or two for self analysis and introspection depending on who you are and whether you attach any importance to birthdays.

Birthdays, when all is said and done, should be the cause for much rejoicing, hip-hip hooray exultation, excessive partying, dancing, eating and drinking for as long as you like and whenever you like. It should be a day for spoiling yourself, pampering yourself something silly and blowing out the candles on your cake with the heartiest of all flourishes. Go on, paint the town red, dance along your street with the silliest smile on your face before abandoning yourself to riotous revelry in your local pub.

When I think back to my childhood I've no clear recollection of properly organised birthday parties. This is not to suggest that I was somehow deprived of a wild day of cake, jelly and ice-cream consumption. My parents always lavished me with train sets and Lego sets on the said day but I don't think birthday parties figured prominently on their yearly agenda or were heavily prioritised as the most important landmark on the social calendar.

I can vaguely remember being invited to my childhood friend's birthday party and dutifully passing the parcel or running around a living room and then waiting for the music to stop before we were all told to grab a seat and then slumped exhausted onto the nearest available seat. Oh for the sweet joys of children's birthday parties. It all seemed so long ago and as the years went by it all seemed like a passing phase in our lives and then we reached those gilded teenage years where time suddenly flew and in no time at all adolescence came knocking on the door and it was time to grow up.

In a sense though birthdays have now assumed a much lower key, more modest, more understated feel. Of course by the time you reach that momentous 50 plus period of your life you're almost inevitably bombarded with more thick and woolly pullovers than your wardrobe can possibly take. And then there are the  sheepskin coats perhaps, the reassuringly warm scarves, the natty hats or caps and the kind of clothing that must come as a painful reminder of not only how old you feel but how much younger you'd like to be.

That's the annoying thing of course. Why do people stop buying you train sets, Lego and Meccano sets, toys that go whizz and bang, board games that fill us with hours of pleasure and gadgets that engage and absorb us for hours on end when quite clearly this should not be the case? But hey hold on it is time to stop living in the past, wake yourself out of this juvenile dream and realistically accept that eventually we do grow up and our expectations are no longer the youthful desires of a five year old.

So here we are in the throes of maturity and now you're given shirts, watches, jewellery, vinyl 1970s records, 1980s tapes, albums and singles, stereo music record players and tape decks with hundreds of buttons that can be turned off and on with the greatest of ease. Now though birthdays assume the kind of impressive hi-tech sophistication that as very young kids we thought we'd never see.

There we were joyfully whizzing around our back roads on our green lime bikes with stabilisers, totally immersed in the overflowing happiness of being children. Summer holidays and birthdays seemed to be held on a daily basis. I can now remember being presented with my first bike on some very early birthday occasion and oozing with immense gratitude. Bikes would provide me with my first mode of transport to far off and exotic locations where the smell of hibiscus and jasmine would drift languidly from magnificent coconut trees and the BBC World Service would crackle magically from a distant hut.

And then I would wake up from my stupid reverie the following morning, climbing reluctantly into my school uniform and then school friends would chuck you shamelessly into a sand pit and give you something called the Bumps. Birthdays would be days to be fondly treasured and stored away into some nostalgic chest of drawers along with the balloons, streamers, silly party hats and all the cheesy remnants that accompanied that year's birthday party.

Still most of us still look forward to our birthday for no obvious reason other than a simple recognition of your special day rather than somebody else's special day. We all look for the love and approval of family and friends because we know that this is our time to share those good times, days of congratulation, feeling quite naturally that we deserve to be the centre of attention. So it's time to book that restaurant, settle back to watch that much anticipated film in the cinema and then open those lovingly beribboned birthday boxes while you feast ravenously on several layers of cream cake.

Nowadys of course presents come in hi- tech electronic packages with thousands of Apps, thousands of games and an astonishing multitude of programmes, sounds and colours that look as though they were made in some in some scientific space station millions of miles away from Planet Earth. Me? Well, tomorrow my wife and I will be spending a quiet evening in a location which will never be revealed. Sadly the days of jelly, ice- cream and fish finger sandwiches belong to some now historic tense where everything was in black and white and a pint of milk was a mere shilling or two. But to all those who are celebrating their birthday have a good one folks and be uninhibited with your alcohol but go carefully with the orange juice. Happy Birthday everybody. Mine's a half a lager.